Private ski and snowboard lessons

A ski school group class puts six to twelve people of roughly similar level with one instructor for a fixed slot, usually the same one every morning for a week. It is cheaper per person and it is genuinely good for children who want to be with other children.

A private lesson costs more per hour and buys you three things a group cannot. The instructor watches only you, so a fault gets corrected in the first hour instead of the fourth day. The content is yours to choose — moguls, a first black run, carving, getting a nervous partner off the blue runs. And the time is yours: two hours on the one afternoon you have, rather than five mornings you do not.

The usual honest answer for a family is both — group class for the children in the morning, one private for the adults on the day the weather is good.

Every instructor here has a profile you can read before you book, whether they teach independently or for a ski school: how many seasons they have taught, what qualification they hold and who issued it, which languages they teach in, what they specialise in, and what the people they have taught said afterwards. If you would rather leave the choice to a school, schools can also sell lessons without a named instructor: you book the school, and it assigns someone from its team.

You can message an instructor before you book anything. Most people do, and it is worth it — you find out whether they have taught someone in your situation before, and you agree a meeting point that is not a guess. Ski or snowboard, first time on snow or first time off-piste, a four-year-old or a nervous adult: those are different jobs, and the person who does them tells you which ones are theirs.

The instructor sets their own hourly rate, and the figure on their profile is the figure you pay. No booking fee, no subscription, no card surcharge, nothing added at the end. Alpine Pal keeps 10% of that price and the instructor keeps the rest — so the rate you see is what the instructor decided their time is worth, not what a school decided plus a margin.

Some instructors charge a little more per extra student in the same group, and that is shown on the profile before you book. Lift passes, equipment hire and insurance are not part of the lesson price — those come from the resort, and each resort page here links to the official site.

You pick a date, a start time and a length, and you send the request. You pay when you book, and the money is held until the lesson has happened — the instructor is not paid before they have taught you.

The instructor has 48 hours to accept. If they let it run out, you are refunded in full, automatically, without asking. They can also propose a different time, which is usually what a clash actually needs.

Once it is confirmed you can keep messaging them — snow conditions, where exactly to meet, what to bring for a child. And you can cancel with a full refund up to 48 hours before the lesson starts, unless the instructor or their school asks for more notice, which is on the profile and shown before you pay.

Two paths lead to a profile on Alpine Pal. An independent instructor sends us their documents and a person checks them before the profile goes live; the qualification is marked as verified only once we have actually checked it, and identity only once Stripe has verified it, when they set up their payouts. An instructor invited by an authorised ski school is vouched for by that school: we review the school, not each of its instructors, and the profile names the school that stands behind them. Where the country keeps a public register, the credential number is checked against it.

That matters more in some countries than others. In France and Italy, teaching skiing for money without the professional qualification is a criminal offence; in the United States or New Zealand there is no state licence at all and what counts is the industry certification. Each country page on this site names the qualification that country requires.

There is a second kind of profile, labelled clearly as such: a companion, who shows you the mountain rather than teaching you to ski. It is not offered in the countries where that distinction would not hold up. If you want a lesson, book a certified instructor.