The leading wintersport websites in Europe

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)

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.