Many of the world’s leaders and thousands of related BGO and other parties are gathering ion the Swiss ski resort of Davos for the annual World Economic Forum. The event is ranked second only to the G8 meetings for world political significance and this year’s is being staged at a crucial time for the world economy.

Over 40 political leaders and 35 finance ministers and central bankers and other corporate leaders will attend the Forum and look for collective strategies to tackle the global downturn.

Leaders from Britain, Germany, Japan, Russia and China will attend, although the new US president will not.

The Kinderhotels chain has launched a range of fully equipped ski schools in its ski centre resort hotels, mostly in Austria.

Smiley’s Tiny Tots Ski School accepts children from the age two and provides supervision of children from two years of age in small groups (maximum five children per group), either at the hotel or quite close by (up to a maximum of 300m from the hotel).

The schools employ qualified ski instructors, have easy to use “magic carpet” conveyor lifts to help children up the slope, a fun ski slope with pipes, mogul piste and so on, special smallest style skis and boots available for hire in the hotel or close by, at least one taster day to see if the child likes it and a snow guarantee.

The Smiley Tiny Tots Ski Schools even offer their own specially developed concepts for teaching the very smallest children. The ski school is part of a wider family-centre complete holiday package.

www.kinderhotels.co.uk

Visitors in the Kitzbühel region this winter can ski further than ever before thanks to both new lifts, and a new ski ticket which covers 1,000km of piste from the Tirol to Salzburg regions.

The stats for the new Kitzbüheler Alpen AllStarCard are impressive with 357 cable cars and lifts included covering 1,081 kilometres (670 miles) of piste, 762km of them with artificial snow cover. There are also 83km of marked ski trails, the runs total 90,820 vertical metres between 800 and 3200m high, and there are 256 mountain restaurants to visit and 70 ski schools to teach you!

The pass includes the Kitzbühel and SkiWelt Wilder Kaiser-Brixental regions which are now lift-linked thanks to new lifts at Westendorf creating an area of more than 400km (250 miles) of piste. The Schneewinkel region by st Johann is also on the pass as is the Hochtal Wildschönau, Alpbachtal, Skicircus Saalbach Hinterglemm Leogang and Zell am See-Kaprun regions including the Kitzsteinhorn glacier to 3,203m. A free ski bus is available for use with the All Star Card according to the terms for the relevant ski region.

Passes are available from one day (Adults cost 43 Euros) to 14 days. A six day pass costs 204 Euros.

www.kitzalps.com