If you’re like most Americans, you don’t associate the all-inclusive vacation with skiing. Mexico and Caribbean, with sandy beaches and swim-up bars? Sure. But the best most of us can hope to do on a ski vacation is a complimentary breakfast buffet at the hotel.
Little-known fact: Club Med operated two North American ski locations, bringing the all-inclusive ski vacation concept to American skiers from from the early 1980s to the mid-2000s. The first one opened in 1981 at Copper Mountain, Colo., and was joined by the Club Med Crested Butte in 2000. By 2006, both were shuttered, proving that North American would not be the cash cow for Club Med that its nearly 20 Alps locations would grow to become.
But this winter, the Paris-based brand returns to North America, debuting its first Canadian resort, Club Med Québec, scheduled to open on Dec. 3. (The country reopened to full-vaccinated Americans on August 9.) The 300-room all-inclusive, four-season mountain resort will be slopeside at the province’s Le Massif ski resort, a small but surprisingly challenging area offering the most vertical feet east of the Canadian Rockies.
