In reply to Frank4short: My god there isn't half an awful lot of jingoistic sounding nonsense being spouted here.
Clearly ESF have some extremely dubious protectionist practices, no one's denying that and it's obviously completely inexcusable that ski instructors would lose kids or even when finished their lessons leave them on the other side of the mountain to where they started. Though complaining about French ski instructors in France English pronunciation is just splitting hairs. Same goes for the wife who keeps getting put in beginners groups because she takes a day to find her form. Either try and be a bit more assertive or just don't go to the ski school till after the first days warm up.
However those aside an awful lot of the complaints just sound like people's own personal prejudices rather than actual reasoned arguments. In some cases lack of forsight.
The idea that Brits are just a cashcow for instance is just a nonsense. By the nature of most Brits ski holiday's they usually end up going to the super resorts. They don't over charge cause you're British they charge because there's massive extremely expensive infrastructure to run the place that cost huge amounts of money just to run. Most ski resorts don't make any money on lift passes. All of the money tends to be made on property or concessions. So if you're going to super resorts don't be surprised if it's expensive.
Ergo smaller, lower resorts will always be cheaper if you're willing to take a punt on going to them.
In my personal experience once you stay away from the big resorts for the Christmas hols & the month of Feb (Europe wide mid terms) then queues are rarely that big a problem. However I will acknowledge if you've got kids this isn't always possible.
The idea of heading to Japan to go skiing cause you're suspicious of the French attitude is possibly the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. So fly half way around the world in a journey that'll basically take 1.5-2 days each way. Just because you're suspicious, really?
As to North America. Yes they speak English, Yes they're unbearably pleasant and nice all the time, Yes they help you load your skis on to the gondola or whatever it is. However skiing on the East coast in nth America is a joke. To get to the Rockies takes a solid days travel from Europe then you have to deal with jet lag. The flights are multiples the price of what it is to get to France/continental Europe. It's is more expensive. The mountains are smaller. You can't go off piste. The time and jetlag involved in getting there mean that it's not worth going unless you can manage 2 weeks skiing. Basically if you want to ski in Nth America because you believe the snow is better, you just want to see somewhere different or you just prefer to be spoken to in English that's fine though most of the reasons people give for going there don't actually stack up and just support their own prejudices. Plus the differences in flight costs easily cover a lot of those extra expenses you'd spend in Europe.
Skiing in Austria is generally not as snow sure as the western alps as the peaks are smaller and the ski areas are at significantly lower altitudes. Plus the food is definitely not as good as in France.
Switzerland is more expensive, than well pretty much everywhere.
Italy, I haven't been, so can't comment.
Basically a lot of the comments being levelled don't stand up to close scrutiny and are really just people's preferences and biases as opposed to anything else.