2 min summary When to go Top destinations Austria Finland France Italy Lapland Top 10 holidays Families Activity holidays Saying no to fake snow

Family winter activity holidays

Winter holidays for families are a great way to spend time together, learn new skills, and create magical stories that are sure to be recounted for years to come. The best thing about winter holidays for families is that they suit just about any age - with younger children meeting reindeers, sledging and making snow angels, and older ones snowshoeing, building igloos and looking out for Arctic wildlife.

Home\Winter

Family winter activity holidays

I can never usually persuade my son to go for a walk in the mountains. Give him a pair of cool, high tech snowshoes and a wonderful mountain guide to lead the way, and suddenly he's Chris Bonington

Winter activity holidays are a big pull on the family budget, especially on the back of Christmas. Although, if you choose wisely, they can often be the most memorable escapes you will have together. Most importantly, frosty, family fun doesn’t have to mean downhill skiing. Try hiking through the snow dusted Grand Canyon, snowshoeing and jumping into thermal pools in Slovakia, or reindeer/husky sledding in Lapland. There are many carefully crafted and expertly guided winter holidays for families out there, which go way off piste and way off the tourist trail too. Leave the chair lifts queues behind and lift your snow angels’ spirits in a completely new and exciting way.

See all our Winter Holidays

Give us a call

Winter activities for families

Meet the Sámi

Spending time with the Indigenous Sámi people will open your children’s eyes to life above the Arctic Circle. Reindeer herding, ice fishing, felt making, aurora camps, kota dinners, music and storytelling. Some experiences can feel a bit exploitative, so travel with our local experts who understand and support Indigenous culture in a sustainable and respectful way.

Snowshoeing

For families who like to hike, there are plenty of snowshoeing opportunities out there, often thrown into activity holidays that include other fun snowy stuff, such as tobogganing, sleigh rides, husky sledding and so on. But snowshoeing in Slovakia or Sweden, Lapland or the Pyrenees will show them what slow travel, in the snow travel, is all about.

Winter wildlife

Children’s adrenaline will be pumping on a winter activities holiday, but nothing will stop them in their tracks, or have their heart beating quite as hard as when they see an elk standing proud in the Finnish wilderness. Or a chamois leaping from one icy rock to another in the Alps, an Arctic hare dashing across snow or a polar bear crossing the tundra.

Transylvania

No lions or witches in Transylvania. But opportunities to break out your winter wardrobe, and take magical Narnia-like horse-and-cart rides through snowy forests. Low-key ski resorts, animal-tracking, ice caves and of course the obligatory vampire folklore make for magically alternative family winter holidays in Romania.

Contact Us

Call us for a chat about our holidays. We are happy to discuss your holiday and help in any way we can. No bots, queues or awful hold music.

01273 823 700 01273 823 700

Call us until 6pm

Calling from outside the UK

rosy@responsibletravel.com

Winter holidays for families tips

No-no to in/out Lapland holidays

Riitta Kiukas, founder of our specialist Lapland partner Skafur Tour, on 24-hour Lapland holidays:
“I remember when Rovaniemi was little more than a couple of gas stations. Now it’s so commercialised, it’s pretty awful. Occasionally our groups will spend a day there, but for the most part it’s very inauthentic. We get them elsewhere as soon as we can. Experiences like that are not what winter in Lapland is about.”

High Tatras holidays

Petr Ivanek from our partner Slovakia Explorer on why the High Tatras is becoming such a popular family destination:
“The High Tatras region is a simply stunning place for family winter sports holidays. These are the highest mountains in Central-Eastern Europe, and holidays here offer a wide selection of activities for the whole family, not just skiing. In the mornings you play in the snow, in the afternoons you relax in outdoor thermal pools. It’s only a two-hour flight from London and very affordable too – you can find pretty much everything here that you’d get in the Alps, but for less.”