The real cost of a budget ski trip

Ever wonder how much someone’s vacation really costs?

Knowing the true line-item cost of a trip can help you decide if it seems worth booking yourself. It can also give you some insight into how you might make some tweaks and do it even better — or more affordably — than someone else did.

Normally, it’s no fun to go on a trip and come home with a calculator totaling up every snack, ticket and gallon of gas purchased. However, that was part of the goal of a recent ski trip I took with my kids.

I wanted to see if a ski trip could still fall within the realm of affordability — without living on PB&Js and ramen or skipping all the extras like ski lessons. So, we headed out to Brian Head ski resort in Utah, looking to save every receipt and see just how much a ski trip costs … if you purposefully visit an affordable ski resort.

With the purchases totaled up, here’s how much a family ski trip cost us this year.

Related: These credit cards come with bonuses worth $1,000 or more

How much it costs to go skiing

Before covering each expense from my trip, it’s important to know a few key details.

For this trip, I considered the costs for myself, my teenager and my 8-year-old. My parents were also there, but we didn’t count their expenses in our total (nor did we cheat and hand them over all the bills for meals or the rental car).

I did not factor our transportation to Las Vegas into the total cost either since that expense can vary significantly based on where you are coming from.

I did include the car rental from Vegas, as you can’t just wiggle your nose and magically appear in this part of southern Utah. The other aspects of our visit I included are the two nights we spent in Cedar City, Utah, and all of our expenses for the two days we skied on the mountain.

As mentioned, we purposefully selected an affordable ski mountain, Brian Head, for this trip, but we didn’t alter our spending to be more or less than it otherwise would have been for this article. That also means that if you ski in a big-name mountain like Vail, Aspen or Park City, your cost will be much higher — often double for many things. So, select your ski destination according to your budget.

Related: How to plan your ski trip using points and miles

Lift tickets

Lift tickets are usually one of the biggest ski expenses, but you can save a lot off retail prices if you are selective in when you buy, how you buy and where you ski.

If you’re going to a big-name resort, you’ll almost certainly want to get a ski pass like the Epic Pass, Ikon Pass or Mountain Collective, even if you just go for a few days. That can take your per-person, per-day lift ticket cost from $200 or $300 to $100 or less.

In our case, we went where kids ski free and lift tickets for teens and adults are simply more affordable than most places. We are tied to a school calendar, so we couldn’t go on the $29 lift ticket days. Still, we did OK. My two-day lift ticket for Presidents Day weekend rang in at $168 plus tax; the same price applied to my 14-year-old’s ticket since she’s beyond the kids-ski-free age range.

However, my 8-year-old could ski 100% free as part of the standard offering at Brian Head (as did my 75-year-old dad).

Related: Comparing the best ski passes

Pro tip: Never wait until the day of skiing to buy your lift ticket, as it will almost always cost the most at the window. Where we skied, I would have paid more than double if I had waited until the day of to purchase lift tickets.

Total for lift tickets: $357.60

Equipment rentals

Note: Some of the lift tickets, gear and lesson purchases for the kids are estimated as they were sold as a non-itemized package. So, the total amount spent is exact, but the breakdown for each component is slightly estimated.

I own my ski gear and have had it for years, so I didn’t have any out-of-pocket costs to rent gear for myself. However, if that’s not your situation, you’d want to budget more here per person than we had to. (My cost to rent would have been the same as my teen’s if you want to mentally add that amount in.)

Two-day gear rentals for my teenager for standard ski equipment from the mountain cost $89.40, while my 8-year-old’s gear rental cost $52.74. Note that we fly with our own helmets, so that saved $20 per child over renting them. I recommend this tactic if you ski at least annually since you’ll often recoup the price of owning a standard helmet versus renting within a couple of seasons.

I didn’t have any fees for checking my ski gear with United since I have both status and a United cobranded credit card. However, check the rules for your airline, as it can add up if you have to pay bag fees every time you check your ski gear.

Pro tip: You can avoid some checked bag fees by having the right credit card.

We also had a $12 locker rental for one day to keep our walking boots in the building. On the second day, we skipped that rental in favor of just using the car as a locker, but I’ll include the $12 price for the first day here since it was gear-adjacent.

Total for ski gear rental: $154.14

Lessons

Ski lessons are not where you want to skimp out.

I skipped lessons for my oldest daughter about a decade ago and blew my knee as a result of a slow-motion but unfortunate incident. So, my advice is to pick a mountain where you can afford ski lessons and pay the professionals.

For this trip, we booked a half-day lesson for our eight-year-old. It cost $238.87 for the lesson and another $40 for the tip at the end. Truthfully, she probably needed a full day to really dust off the snow and get back at it since this was her first day out there this season. But, by the time we realized that, it was too late.

Total for the child ski lesson and tip: $278.87

Snow tubing

Unless your family consists solely of really hard-core skiers, I highly recommend including some non-ski activities on a ski trip.

Snow tubing is one of our favorite things to do on the mountain apart from skiing. It can cost more than $50 per person at many mountains, but at Brian Head was just $25 per person for unlimited runs for 90 minutes.

Total for snow tubing: $83.38

Related: How to enjoy a ski vacation without hitting the slopes

Lodging

Lodging costs can be where a ski vacation budget goes to freeze to death. On-mountain lodging can easily run close to or even over $1,000 per night at many mountains. This is why using points at places like the Park Hyatt Beaver Creek or St. Regis Deer Valley can be a tremendous value … assuming you have enough points to pull it off.

Luckily, our price to stay in Cedar City, Utah — about 30 to 35 minutes away from Brian Head — was much more reasonable. We paid $493.10 for our two-queen room for the two-night stay during Presidents Day weekend.

Subtract the $100 we saved by using an Amex Offer, and our out-of-pocket expenses came to a total of $393.10. You could also have used points, which my parents did for their room, at a total cost of 28,000 Marriott points for one night and a 35k Marriott certificate from the Marriott Bonvoy Business® American Express® Card for the other night.

Total out-of-pocket cost for lodging: $393.10 for two nights in one room at the Courtyard Cedar City. (Add $100 if you don’t want to count using the well-timed Amex Offer.)

Ground transportation

We rented an SUV to drive to Utah from Las Vegas for our trip, and it rang in at $311.67. We scored a virtually brand-new 2024 Suburban that was able to hold all our ski gear and luggage when picking from the Hertz President’s Circle Aisle. This was actually a great deal for what we paid, even though it represented a large chunk of the budget.

Pro tip: I got my Hertz President’s Circle status* and my pick of the best cars thanks to my The Platinum Card® from American Express.

*Enrollment in the Hertz Gold Plus Rewards Program is required

As handy as the SUV and its size were for our needs, it was also a bit of a gas hog. We spent $110.44 on gas during the round-trip journey between Las Vegas and the Brian Head area; this included heading from Cedar City up to the ski resort and back each day of the trip.

Total for ground transportation: $422.11

Related: How to avoid common mistakes when renting a car

Warm gear

We already own all of our ski gear, and much of it has been passed down from one person in the family to the next. But if you’re new to ski gear, here are some tips for what warm gear you need for a ski trip.

Another option, if you are starting from scratch and skiing for the first time, is renting it. You can rent warm gear starting at about $30 per day for kids or $50 per day for adults for short trips via a company such as Kit Lender. (The price per day decreases significantly for longer trips.)

Note that using a service like this can also dramatically cut down on the luggage you need to fly with. You can get it delivered to your accommodations and ship it back from there as soon as your time on the slopes is over.

Total for warm weather gear: $0

Food

You get hungry on a ski trip, so we didn’t try and get cute with skipping meals. However, we did luck out a bit that our hotel, Courtyard by Marriott in Cedar City, gave us $20 in food and beverage vouchers each day for each room with Marriott Platinum status. I have this status thanks to having the Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant® American Express® Card (enrollment required).

This credit essentially covered all of breakfast one day and part of breakfast another day, along with some bottled drinks and cookies.

We had two lunches on the mountain. The first consisted of chicken fingers, fries, chili, a burger and a few drinks, and it came to $43.91.

The next day our order was similar and almost the same price at $44.23. This is a serious deal by on-mountain ski lunch standards, as prices can easily be double that for the same order at bigger resorts. Packing sandwiches is a great way to save if you can pull it off, especially if you are in a ski home rental where making lunches is a little easier.

Dinner the first night was at an Asian food restaurant in Cedar City with huge portions. We may have over-ordered a bit, but our part of the bill totaled $65.05.

The second night, we ate at Golden Corral next to our hotel and paid $55.40 for dinner for the three of us. And I have to say, don’t judge a restaurant by its reputation; it was great and offered the perfect mix of protein, veggies and fruit after a day skiing.

Add in a few other Gatorades and assorted snacks, and you have a grand total of $246.10 for food and beverages for the two-day ski trip.

Total for meals and snacks: $246.10

What it really costs to go skiing on a budget

Our total for two nights of hotel, getting to and from the nearest major city of Las Vegas and all of our expenses for those days on and off the mountain for three people rang in at $1,935.30.

That’s an average all-in cost of $322.55 per person per day. This is very similar to the per-day cost when we did this same exercise at Disney World.

If we didn’t need ski school, the cost would have dropped by a few hundred dollars, so I am looking forward to a year or two from now when that’s our reality.

We could have shaved another $393 off the cash cost by using Marriott points instead of cash for the hotel. Going during an off-peak time — when lift tickets and lessons cost less — would have also shaved some cash off the total. Unfortunately, we didn’t have that luxury this year.

Packing lunch and eating somewhere like McDonald’s for dinner could have saved a bit off the food costs if you want to spend as little as possible.

If you used points for your hotel stay, didn’t need ski school and packed your lunch or ate a cheaper dinner than we did, you could likely pull off the trip for $200 per person per day. That is true is if you travel under similar circumstances and book in advance while tickets and gear are at their lowest prices.

Skiing isn’t cheap, but what it costs to go skiing can be similar to going to Disney World per day. This is to say it isn’t a super budget-friendly trip, but it is doable for many families with some advance planning and strategic decision-making along the way.

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