This year’s Varsity trip was blighted by a host of problems with transport, accommodation and social events.
Some coaches en route to the destination in the Alpine resort of Tignes reportedly ended up at the wrong town, while other buses missed their ferry and had to wait in Dover.
Once in the resort, students reported problems with rooms, cloakrooms running out of space, sporadic hot water, and the cancelling of shopping trips.
The travel agency organising the trip told 180 students that they would not be able to access their rooms due to ‘refurbishment’. They were eventually put in new rooms, often without the friends they had arranged to stay with, some of which were located across town from the rest of the Oxbridge group.
One St Hilda’s student claimed that “we didn’t get into our room for six hours” and that they did not know what was happening. They said that “the committee were apologetic, but they didn’t know what to do.”
Several of the coaches making the half-day road trip from London arrived in the wrong town, due to a driver typing the wrong place name into his satellite navigation system. Instead of travelling via Bourg-Saint-Maurice, on the intended route to Tignes, several coaches arrived at Bourg-en-Bresse, a town almost 300 kilometres away.
Three coaches from London missed their ferry crossing to France, meaning students had to wait in Dover.
One Oriel student reported that “the coat check was shut down at the opening night,” which was “a big risk in terms of safety as a lot of people … came without jackets.” He said that trip organisers constantly stress the importance of taking jackets after a student died on a similar ski trip two years ago.
Sam Kirsop, Logistics Director of the trip, said that while although the problems with accommodation were unfortunate, they were not the trip committee’s fault.
“Unfortunately a French accommodation agency cancelled 25 rooms at the eleventh hour, completely out of the control of the Varsity Trip Committee and Event Travel Company. The vast majority of our 2,500 participants remained unaffected. Whilst this was frustrating for those involved, we had made it clear in all previous communication with participants that room allocations were provisional,” Kirsop said.
“The committee phoned all those rooms affected by the changes to inform participants and find out their preferences for reallocation. Moreover, all participants were reallocated with room mates from their initial allocation and within the small resort of Tignes Val Claret, no more than a 3 minute walk to the slopes from any apartment block,” the Director said.
Laura Abram, from the ski committee, told the Cambridge Tab newspaper that “Everyone on the committee worked very hard to sort the problem out.”
2,500 people from Oxford and Cambridge attended the 87th Varsity Trip this year, making it the world’s largest student snow sports trip. Most of these people paid £329 for the 7 day package, not including extras such as ski hire or lessons.
