Skyscanner, a leading travel search site providing instant online comparisons on flight prices for over 670,000 routes and on over 600 airlines, highlights three surprise secrets to cheap ski holidays, and reveals Serbian skiing costs less than a third of French resorts.

Flights comparison Skyscanner compared the cost of flights, ski lift passes, ski hire and accommodation in various European and North American ski resorts and found startling differences in the total costs, with Val D’Isere coming in as the most expensive ski holiday, costing three times as much as a trip to Kopaonik, Serbia. Even though return flights to Geneva, the gateway airport to Val D’Isere, cost just £50, when the price of the other components were factored in, the total cost soared.

In fact the Skyscanner research showed that it is cheaper to buy flights to Canada or America and go skiing on the other side of the Atlantic, than to ski in Val D’Isere. Long haul can be better value for longer holidays, it stated.

Savings are even more apparent for longer ski trips where the cheaper resort costs balance out the more expensive long haul flight costs; a 14-night ski holiday in Val D’Isere cost £3308, whilst in Vail (Colorado, USA) it was £2921, and in Whistler (British Columbia, Canada) is was £2530.

The company suggestred prospective travellers to consider alternative locations

Ski holidays have been considered as a secondary trip by some, but Skyscanner’s research shows that they are far more affordable than many people realise providing savvy skiers and snowboarders look beyond the traditional haunts of the Alps and consider alternatives such as Bulgaria and Serbia, the latter of which has seen a 130 per cent increase in winter flight searches.