The Guardian Travel is asking readers to share their much-loved small ski resorts this winter, with a £200 prize on the line. The brief is simple: tell them about a lesser-known European ski village that has kept its local character — no sprawling lift systems, no purpose-built apartment blocks, just proper mountain atmosphere. They're open to suggestions from anywhere on the continent, whether that's a hamlet in the Alps, a slope in the Pyrenees, a Scandinavian spot or somewhere tucked away in eastern Europe.
The reward is a £200 voucher towards a stay with Coolstays, a holiday rental company listing more than 3,000 properties worldwide — think cabins, chalets and characterful self-catering rather than hotels. Winning tips get published in the Guardian's Travel section and on its website, and the judging is handled by Tom Hall of Lonely Planet, so a well-argued tip carries genuine weight.
A few rules matter if you're planning to enter. Tips should run to roughly 100 words, which forces you to be punchy: name the resort, say what makes it special, and give one or two concrete details like a favourite piste, hut or evening spot. Photos are welcome but won't influence the judging — it's the writing that counts. You must be a UK resident to enter, and the deadline is Monday 12 October at 10am BST, so there's a narrow window to get an entry in.
Even if you don't fancy competing, the resulting roundup should be worth reading. The big-name resorts — Val d'Isère, St Anton, Zermatt and the like — get plenty of coverage, but the smaller places where locals still outnumber tour operators are harder to discover. Think single-lift villages where the liftie knows your name, family-run mountain huts serving knock-off-priced goulash, and lift passes that cost a fraction of what the mega-resorts charge. Past winner roundups from previous editions of this competition are already on the Guardian site if you want a flavour of what tends to win: specific, personal, and useful rather than flowery.
For skiers, the timing works nicely too. Autumn is exactly when you should be booking winter trips if you want affordable accommodation in the smaller resorts — the good chalets and apartments in villages with only a handful of beds tend to go first. Whether or not you enter, now is the moment to dig out that resort you've been meaning to return to.
If you do enter, our advice: skip the superlatives and give the judges something they can act on. A named restaurant, a run worth doing at opening time, or the reason the resort feels different from its glitzy neighbour will beat a paragraph of praise every time. Full terms and conditions are on the Guardian site.
