Independently owned and run ski chalets are not new. They have been around for many years. Over the last 5 years, however, there has been an increase in relatively inexperienced people selling up in the UK, and moving to the mountains to run catered ski chalet businesses.

When independent catered ski chalet operators first appeared on the scene, the owners and hosts tended to be passionate skiers who, after living for many years in a resort, had finally found a way to upgrade their situations from "ski bums" to "legitimate business owners". They worked hard to develop their businesses built around their love of the mountains, their knowledge of the local area and of course their skiing ability.

Given that many of these original "ski chalet pioneers" had cut their teeth working in restaurants and hotels in ski resorts, cuisine was also high on the agenda. Before long, the independent catered chalet holiday became synonymous as a way of staying with hosts who knew the mountains like the back of their hands, could show you the best places to ski, and would serve up top class cuisine after a day on the slopes.

Over recent years a dirge of reality TV programs in the UK have focused on alpine businesses and made them look like attractive business propositions. Under closer inspection, it isn't difficult to see why such a business could look so attractive to an outsider.

Anyone can buy a large house and run a B&B from somewhere in France. The trouble is it may be hard to quantify how many people visit the area, what the future trends for visiting the area might be, and even how long a season might last. In a ski resort, to some extent you can take away a lot of this uncertainty. The ski seasons are quite well defined, and the ski industry is still a rapidly growing market.

Couple this with many equity-rich property owners in the UK and it becomes obvious why there has been such a rush to jump on the bandwagon and move to the mountains.

All of this means that there are now a number of ski chalet owners that hide behind professional looking websites with no experience of running such a business. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Many, if not most of these new businesses thrive on hard work and enthusiasm and attract repeat customers year on year. But be warned. Just because a couple of accountants were good at their professions in the UK, and just because they spent a million euros on a chalet, doesn't necessarily mean that they are the sort of people who know how to make a holiday work, or indeed the sort of people whose home you would want to stay in for a week.

A week's catered chalet skiing holiday is not cheap, especially for a large family, and with so many apparently good, professional chalet businesses around, it can be difficult to know if you are choosing the right one. Two very important things to look for are recommendations/word of mouth and independent chalet reviews.

Firstly, recommendations and word of mouth are both invaluable! If a friend who you trust recommends somewhere to you, then book it. Try and find out where other people have been on holiday, and whether or not they enjoyed it.

Secondly, try a website such as All Mountain Ski Holidays (www.allmountainholidays.com) which has a ski chalet review section (www.allmountainholidays.com/reviews.php) and see what others think of a place. Sites like All Mountain Holidays have made it relatively easy for new chalet businesses to get up and running. However, the same medium should also be used to build the reputation of good quality chalets which deserve it.

If you stay somewhere, and you love it, let others know about it and encourage others to do the same for you!