Richard - Founder

I went on my second ski holiday to Andorra in the winter of 1979, during which the ski instructor did the usual sell of "have dinner at my chalet-hotel’, so the team said why not! The food was excellent, with unlimited wine included, and the atmosphere felt good. However, the house was missing guests and was less than half full. After the meal and before the big Spanish brandies, I asked for a house tour - The chalet felt right and a better idea than running an advertising agency! And so, with nothing to lose, I made the offer to fill the Hotel Roc de St Miquel the following winter.

The house for the winter of 1980/81 was full. I can sell and analyse, but I also had a good chunk of luck. Andorra was great value and had an excellent British-run ski school, plus Dan Air (anybody remember them?) flew aerospace personnel to Toulouse but not on Sundays and so flight seats where cheap. The airline’s sales director gave me a big break, and best of all, package ski holidays were about to boom!

Baqueira in the Spanish Pyrenees was added to our offering just as the resort had started to seriously invest. Ralph and I even met the King of Spain on the slopes, although no pictures were allowed and he had one very serious bodyguard! The following year, Ski Miquel added Barèges in the Pyrenees to the holiday offer.

To make the business really work so that I could escape advertising land completely, it had to expand, and this included adding Manchester flights. The only way was more resorts! Before the computer revolution, adverts in the Saturday paper were the most effective way of selling, and one single ad of just three lines sold over fifty holidays - Happy days! I also had another stroke of luck, as Francine was one of the ad agency staff who proved to be great at selling holidays and the subsequent admin.

You could say the rest is history, but not quite! Tough events first - The Alpe d’ Huez chalet rent was doubled by the landlord, which is a pity as it's a good resort, but unfortunately we had to pull out of it. The result was no more landlords wherever possible! When the owner of the Tannenburg in Bad Gastein rang to say her boyfriend could no longer stand the mountains, I was happy to step in and buy it!

The steady devaluation of the UK Pound made selling harder. The volcanic ash cloud and the resulting flying ban in 2010 looked bad, although we did manage to get our guests home that day by coach, and thankfully flying resumed shortly after. Then of course Covid hit us in 2020, but we did our best to do the right thing by our guests, and thankfully we came through it.

The good fortune far outweighs the tough events. The guest offer needed a Swiss resort and Dan Air flew into Zurich and introduced me to a possibility in Lauterbrunnen that led to buying and completely renovating the Chalet Rosa in 2006. Working with the Swiss was both a privilege and an eye-opener, as they certainly know how to design, build and finish on time.

The guest choice then needed a second resort in Austria and my unimposing accountant had heard of a property for sale, which became the Chalet-Hotel Christina. This addition happened just before the resort started to boom, so somebody was looking after me!

I researched Whistler in Western Canada before it got expensive and many of our guests and our own team had excellent visits, including the world’s best-value heli-skiing at the time, so no complaints there, but after thirteen years it unfortunately became unaffordable.

I knew the time had come for Ralph to run Ski Miquel, and our guests continue to enjoy the results of our hard work. Hilary and I are loving the new chalets and continue to meet guests who we skied with back in the day, and we couldn't have made this progress without the excellent staff we have worked with over the years.

Please note, you can still ski when you're quite old, and the senior lift passes in some of our resorts can be quite cheap!

See you on the slopes.