What is your time worth?

A simple Question... "What value do I place on an hour of my time?"

This is a great question to hold in your mind when considering the value of a full-service catered lodging package. People often ask us "It sounds great, but how can I justify adding the cost of this full-service catered package to my vacation?"

Beyond the obvious ways that we can answer that question - "Because you deserve it!", "Because we all enjoy vacations where you don't have to work...", we are closer to finding the answer when we respond "Because it is not as expensive as you think."

Ski vacations frequently involve the exercise of trying to squeeze a number of items into the bulging vacation budget - lodging, airfare, airport transfers or vehicle rental, food, drinks, snacks, housekeeping and so on. Frequently missing from the spreadsheet (if that is how your group plans its ski vacation) is a value on the time that you expend in order to keep the vacation within the scripted budget. By our analysis you are not saving much money doing this yourselves and yet you are wasting a lot of precious vacation time.

We looked at a group of 14 guests staying at our 6 bedroom Moving Mountains Chalet in regular season (mid-February - end of March) working from known costs.

Comparison:	7 Nights lodging with full-service catered package	7 Nights Lodging without staff or meal service
Lodging	$12,593	$12,593
Full-service Catered Package for 14	$10,703	-
Rental of 2 Suburbans incl. airport fees	included	$2,200
Gas (1 tank per vehicle)	included	$200
Quality meals / snacks / soft drinks *	included	$2,450
Daily Housekeeping	included	$500
Gratuity (15%)	$1,605	-
Totals	$24,901	$17,943
Difference	-	$6,958

For a per person cost of $497 ($71/night) hundreds of guests have already decided that this is a great deal for meals prepared by your personal chef including all grocery shopping, private airport pickup and private local area shuttle service in a 4WD fully winterized Suburban driven by experienced staff, daily housekeeping and personal concierge services.

If you are still unconvinced, then here's the kicker. By our estimates the full-service catered package will save your group at least 310 hours of individual personal time.

Time Value	# Hours	# people	Total Hours
Airport Shuttle (both ways)	4	14	56
Shopping	3	3	9
Check-in	1	14	14
Daily private shuttle	6	14	14
Meal prep / clean up: brkfast	12	3	36
Meal prep / clean up: lunch	12	3	36
Meal prep / clean up: dinner	15	3	60
Housekeeping	15	1	15
Total			310

Going back to our question at the beginning of this story...what was that hourly rate? At $20 / hour this totals $6,200. At $40 hour that's $12,400 and you are well ahead! If you are lawyer we should be charging you more!

We know that there are many ways you can challenge our logic. All we are trying to say is - there is a value on your time. Full-service catered lodging offers you the possibility that every hour of every day of your vacation could be stress free vacation time. No shopping, cooking, dish washing, driving and organizing.

Sound good?

* We provide espresso machines with catered packages - think about what you will save at Starbucks in a week!