mangoMan

I am planning my first ever Alps ski vacation for my wife and I, which has been on my bucket list for some time. We are targeting Austria. I have a number of questions that hopefully folks with more experience planning this type of trip can answer:

1) We are planning on a week long trip. We are in our mid-50s so it's not like we'll be going clubbing or anything, but a fun but laid-back apres-ski environment would be nice. We prefer to ski black and red (using European color codes) level of terrain. I was thinking Lech might be a good choice - should I consider others? We are flying into Innsbruck where we plan to stay a couple nights to recover from jet-lag and then take a train to a resort. After the ski week we will take a train into Germany where we will stay further and visit family and friends.

2) We are looking at the first week in March 2023 - I hope the snow will still be good then but I realize that's next to impossible to predict. Any thoughts/comments would be appreciated however.

3) For booking accommodations, is a site like Booking.com recommended? Or are there other agencies that I should know about that can find us a better price or have better availability? We are targeting a Fri-Fri 7 night stay. Would a Sat-Sat stay potentially result in better choices?

4) Is it worth it bringing our own equipment? We are flying SFO-FRA-VIE-INN in Business on LH and OS so I think we'll be able to check the equipment for free (and hope it doesn't get lost). What are typical equipment rental rates (I'd guess we'd rent for the entire week even though we may only ski 5 of the 7 days - TBD).

5) I took a quick look at accommodations in Lech on booking.com. A number of places claim "ski in-ski out" yet appear to be a few hundred meters from the nearest lift. Any comments on getting to/from the lifts would be appreciated. We don't want to have to walk hundreds of meters lugging all our gear to get to the lifts.

thanks!