Chalets Direct gets interactive for skiers and snowboarders

September is traditionally the time when people start getting serious about booking their ski holiday. In response to this, the leading ski website chaletsdirect.com has grouped together a variety of services to form a new interactive area for people looking for ski and snowboard breaks.

Called simply Chalets Direct Interactive, the new section provides holidaymakers with more tools to find their ski accommodation, in addition to traditional searching and browsing. Visitors can also use the interactive area to find and research holidays.

Chalets Direct Interactive includes message boards, resort reviews, a ski blog and The Solutions Room, where users can post up their holiday requirements and wait for offers to come back to them. The site also provides a Promotions area where visitors can view promotions and special offers for specific dates or resorts. The aim is to give independent skiers and snowboarders a better choice when looking for their winter holiday and to provide more ways of getting results.

Some key features of the interactive area include the Solutions Room, a unique bulletin board where people looking for holiday accommodation can say what they're looking for. Chalets Direct members can then reply to them to either match their requirements or propose alternatives. Launched in 1999, the Solutions Room has proved a useful tool for both holidaymakers and advertisers. A post made in the morning will usually have attracted several replies within a few hours, by the evening there will often be more than 20 proposals for the enquirer to choose from. Further development of the Solutions Room is currently taking place and enhanced features will be introduced later this autumn.

The Resort News and Reviews area means visitors can see what others are saying about resorts. This section is also an area to get news “as it happens” – with current bulletins about weather and snow conditions or upcoming events.

The Ski Blog, launched this summer, is a general discussion area focusing on ski industry events and news, with useful advice and hints for booking holidays in the mountains. The What Makes A Great…Beginners Week post for example, gives helpful hints for first time skiers and snowboarders.

Chalets Direct Interactive also has a jobs board and Q & A area for people wanting to do a ski season or a long term let.

The interactive features can be found by clicking on the home page of Chaletsdirect.com .