There’s a huge amount of first-rate ski holiday advice and information out there. If you’re planning on making the most of the snow and heading to the Alps this winter, it’s worth persuing these websites for short-term ski condition and snow forecasts.

If you ask wintersport enthusiasts what they consider to be the leading wintersport website in Europe the majority (55%) say it’s Snow-forecast.com. We at Skiweather.eu were very curious to find out if that is true. Last year we addressed a similar question regarding Dutch wintersport websites. Self-proclaimed number one wintersport website Sneeuwhoogte.nl in fact appeared to be by-passed by Milq Media’s Wintersporters.nl. We have monitored the Dutch wintersport websites for a while and noticed much dynamics in the top-league. We have predicted the trajectory of some websites which turned out to be fairly accurate.

The Dutch wintersport website scene is very crowded. Some of the Dutch websites therefore extended their business into Europe. Snowplaza by Spalder Media Group is probably the most active. Wepowder, one of the few more dedicated and focused websites, was also successful in broadening their geographical horizon.

In an effort to gain more insight into the competition within Europe and into the question whether the Dutch wintersport scene is really overcrowded we have extended our research to draw up a list of leading European wintersport websites. As in the previous research we are not interested in pure traffic rankings but in a multi-dimensional principle which includes economic impact and link authority. The objective was to find both the key players (companies) and individual key wintersport websites. In this research we have included al wintersport websites who focus on both ski resort – and ski condition information for the countries in the Alps.

We’d expected a massive amount of European wintersport websites based on our experience in Holland. In fact, the European wintersport website scene is neither as wide nor as diverse as we had expected. There are around 50 wintersport websites with substantial authority, of which several are solely focused on a specific language area or country. By and large we are speaking of 30 independent companies of which 30% is from the UK, 27% from Holland and 17% from Germany.

The leading wintersport information companies turn out to be Bergfex, followed by Snow-forecast.com and Skipass.com.

Bergfex does an excellent job in providing detailed and accurate skiresort data and channels it’s content to the most important language areas. Bergfex is listed with 4 websites (domains) in the European wintersport website top 50. The most popular being Bergfex.at and Bergfex.com.

Snow-forecast.com is in fact number two in the league, as opposed to the public view. This is used to be the standout website for up-to-date snow forecasts. Snow forecasts are still very important to wintersport enthusiasts and many have signed up to the snow alerts of Snow-forecast.com. Among the leading European wintersport websites there are several more specialised on the weather and ski conditions e.g. WeathertoSki, Alpenweerman, Skiweather, Wintersportweerman etc. Almost all of them are based in Holland

Skipass.com is in the top 3 which is fairly remarkable due to the fact that it is in french. Once you get passed this you will notice that it is a great looking and very informative website. It is very diverse.

Russia is presented by Ski.ru in fourth position. It’s position is very close to skipass.com. Ski.ru surpasses the latter in economic authority. We can not comment on the content of Ski.ru, but we have a feeling that the visuals on do not hinder the ranking in the top-league.


Reporting from Ski.ru

MountainNews Corp. -owner of SkiInfo and OnTheSnow- is fighting it’s way to the top in a similar manner as Bergfex. In Holland MountainNews Corp. was able to settle itself in the top league with SkiInfo.nl in just a short time. MountainNews Corp. is owner of 6 websites in the top 50. The french version of SkiInfo being the most popular in Europe.

Spalder Media Group is represented in the top 50 with 5 websites, of which the Snowplaza.de is -by far- the most popular.

Regarding the top 30 we would like to make some remarks. Tiscover (#7) is not a dedicated wintersport website. Moreover it applies a massive amount of 590 forward domains to push it’s ranking. In our opinion it’s presence is inflated. We think it’s natural position in the ranking should reside around position #12 or #13.

IgluSki is in fact a ski holiday agent -UK’s largest-, but does cover the requirements for this research. The same can be said of Crystalski (TUI), but this website is positioning itself as a full-blown ski holiday agent. The primary focus is well beyond that of a general wintersport website. Both in economic impact and site traffic Crystalski.co.uk outperformes IgluSki. In our opinion Crystalski belongs to position #7. That raises the question whether IgluSki is (still) the largest ski holiday agent in the UK. One thing is for sure; Inghams is Uk’s third, but it is not a dedicated -general- wintersport website like the other two.

Snowheads.com is a long-established and thriving community forum on all skiing matters, but does not have native content on ski resorts or ski condition, but the members do provide up-to-date information on both ski resorts and the ski conditions.

The Dutch websites Wintersportweerman and Alpenweerman are focused on both the weather in the Alps and in Holland. Their objective is not solely the Alps. The position of the Dutch Skiing Association (Nederlandse Ski Vereniging) is inflated by their ski insurance business.

Leading European wintersport companies (last update Mar 10nd 2017)

RankHostnameCompanynameCountry
1bergfex.atBergfexAT
2snow-forecast.comSnow-forecast.comUK
3skipass.com1997 MediaFR
4ski.ruSki.ruRU
5skiinfo / onthesnowMountainNews Corp.US
6J2skiJ2skiUK
7skiresort.infoSkiresort Service InternationalDE
8tiscover.comTiscoverAT
9igluski.comIgluUK
10wintersporters.nlMilq MediaNL
11snowheads.comSnowheadsUK
12skigebiete-test.deSkigebiete TestDE
13skiclub.co.ukSki Club Of Great BritainUK
14snowplazaSpalder Media GroupDE
15schneehoehen.deSchneemenschenDE
16skisport.dkSkisport.dkDK
17skinet.czSkinetCZ
18skieur.comNiveales MediasFR
19welove2ski.comWelove2ski.comUK
20wepowder.comWepowder B.v.NL
21sneeuwhoogte.nlSneeuwhoogte B.v.NL
22wintersportweerman.nlWintersportweerNL
23weathertoski.co.ukWeathertoskiUK
24inthesnow.comIn The SnowUK
25powderbeds.comTsb ServicesUK
26wintersport.nlNederlandse Ski VerenigingNL
27alpenweerman.nlGemi MeteoNL
28skiweather.euSkiweather.euNL
29skiinformatie.nlSkiinformatie.nlNL
30iloveski.orgIloveski.orgES

The popular snowsports news website PlanetSki.eu is not listed because it does not meet the requirements of this research. If we would list this website it would take over position 26.

please contact us if you want to obtain a detailed list of the individual leading European websites.

Europeans from every country love to ski, but the Dutch have an outsize love for the slopes. They descend en masse on Alpine resorts, most of them Austrian, like Gerlos, Westendorf, Kirchberg, Sankt Anton and Ischgl. In 2012, while the country was still struggling with recession, nearly 900.000 -out of a population of almost 17 million- spend one or more winter holidays in the snow. This winter season, well over 1.1 million Dutch people are expected to enjoy the snow, and the bitter cold of the last few weeks is not going to spoil that ambition if it’s up to the Dutch!

As fanatic skiers the Dutch want to know what is going on all the time and there is no shortage of online skiing information in Holland. The love for skiing is explicit in the number of winter sport websites in Holland. There are around 15 websites dedicated to skiing, ski resorts and ski conditions. By and large, of the 30 leading independent winter sport information companies in Europe Holland comes in at second place (27%), just behind the UK (30%) and well ahead of Germany (17%).

Authority instead of traffic

In an effort to gain more insight into the impact of Dutch winter sport websites Skiweather.eu maintains a continuous research based on data-science methods to draw up a yearly list of leading Dutch winter sport websites. The objective of the research is to trace the key players -the winter sport information companies- and to make an accurate estimate of the impact of it’s winter sport website on the Dutch ‘market’ of winter sport enthusiasts. In the research we have included all websites with a focus on both ski resort and ski condition information for the popular ski resorts in the Alps and who present the information -at least- in Dutch. Tourism companies -as a representative for a region or country- are also out-of-scope for this research.

We are not interested in pure traffic rankings but in a multi-dimensional approach. In order to evaluate every website in an objective way we use indicators that measure -amongst others- economic impact, heartbeat and link authority. In our opinion traffic estimates or not very reliable, are flawed and do not say anything about the importance or authority of a website.

Wepowder and Snowplaza are challenging the leading winter sport information companies

Last year’s leading winter sport information company was Milq Media with their flagship Wintersporters.nl, and -not surprisingly- it still is in 2018. Wintersporters.nl took over the first position from Sneeuwhoogte.nl at the start of the 2016-2017 winter season and has since then hold on tight to the pole position. The number one winter sport website has a substantial larger authority than runner up sneeuwhoogte.nl, but the advantage did not become larger during the last 12 months. This may very well change as the Dutch Skiing Association (NSkiV) took over Wintersporters.nl recently and will merge it with their own winter sport operation Wintersport.nl (currently at #8).

Wintersporters.nl and Sneeuwhoogte.nl both have a slightly inflated link authority due to the high proportion of startpage-like referrals (e.g. ski.startpagina.nl). The authority of those pages are inherited from it’s main domain (e.g. startpagina.nl, authority 63*) and in turn overrate the authority of the websites at the receiving end (+3 or 4 in authority). For Sneeuwhoogte.nl this influence is more proncounced as it was the first major player in the market when competition was nearly absent and the influence of startpage websites was substantially larger. Add to this the ‘widget’ effect -Sneeuwhoogte.nl was the first to provide snow report widgets for third party websites-, and it is clear that Sneeuwhoogte.nl depends more on legacy (old monopoly) than on intrinsic motivation of visitors or current popularity.

At the moment, Wintersporters.nl is one of the 2.000 most influential dutch websites (out of 3.37mln); just behind websites like nporadio2.nl and bnr.nl, both broadcasting agencies. The nearest business neighbours are Weerplaza.nl, Sunweb.nl and Vacansoleil.nl. To put things in a broader perspective Wintersporters.nl is at place #10 in the ranking of leading European winter sport websites, just behind Igluski.com from the UK.

Snowplaza by Spalder Media Group is in third place and still at some distance from the top 2. However, it’s impact grew faster than the top 2 players. Snowplaza will soon challenge Sneeuwhoogte.nl for the second position as it has a substantial advantage by means of it’s economies of scale from being an important information company in Europe (#14 in Europe). Snowplaza is one of the most complete winter sport websites around. It combines excellent ski resort information, reviews with -sometimes questionable- snow depth information and is present in several European countries, most notable Germany.

At fourth place is freeride community Wepowder. Wepowder is a one of the few dedicated and focused websites with a clear identity and a well-defined market profile. It was very successful in broadening it’s geographical horizon during the last 12 months, just like Snowplaza. Wepowder poses some challenges to be ranked as it’s main domain Wepowder.com is a gateway for several european languages, not just the Dutch language. In absolute terms it is most likely to reside among the leading 3 dutch winter sport websites: very close to number two, if not at second place. However, in the Dutch market it comes just behind Snowplaza. By any measure it is one of the fastest growing winter sport websites which is remarkable as it’s social media presence is limited, especially on Facebook. We see something similar with other ‘late majority’ companies like Snowplaza.

Surprisingly, Skiinformatie.nl claims fifth place. This winter sport website has a very fast heartbeat; it’s news provision capabilities is quite substantial. In that respect it faces the top 3 with pride.

The fastest rising star at the sky is at sixth place : Alpenweerman (AWM) by Gemi Meteo. This -primarily- weather website for the Alpine region (and Holland) scores relatively high on both heartbeat and link authority. Although the impact did rise substantially, it’s Alexa traffic ranking dropped hard. In the near future this will have a downward effect on the authority score. However, Alpenweerman did move past it’s direct competitor Wintersportweerman.nl (#7), which is on a return trip in both our ranking as well as Alexa’s. Wintersportweerman still has a substantial larger audience than AWM. But on authority AWM is doing remarkably better. The authority rating of both websites are slightly corrected for their broader scope (weather in Holland).

Wintersport.nl of the Dutch Skiing Association lost quite a bit on authority compared to the previous and has landed at 8th place. Most likely this website will not return in next years’ ranking due to the merger with Wintersporters.nl.

Mountain News Corporation – the company behind Onthesnow and Skiinfo – is at 9th place in the Dutch league with Skiinfo.nl. It’s impact slipped a bit compared to the previous measurement. It’s heartbeat is lower than direct competitor Snowplaza. Skiinfo is more about statistics (snow depth, ski resort stats) and less about stories, impressions and opinions.

Wintersportlive.nl is the website which lost the largest amount of impact in the last 12 months, but it was able to remain in the top 10 (at #10). The website has a substantially lower heartbeat than it’s direct competitor Skiinformatie.nl. Wintersportlive.nl also experience some competition from major league player Snowplaza.

The ranking of leading dutch winter sport websites in 2018

scores represent the impact on the dutch winter sport scene (score 0-100)

Leading dutch winter sport websites of 2018

The detailed list of scores (xls)

*) Wintersporters.nl was the first to claim important wintersport and ski related startpages which it used as a springboard.