Famille Plus Mountain Resorts: France's Family Ski Label Decoded

Famille Plus is a national label run with the support of the association of French mountain-resort mayors and the national family-tourism network, and recognised by the ministry responsible for tourism. It is awarded to a commune, the town or resort itself, not to a single hotel or tour operator. That distinction matters: when a ski resort is labelled, the whole destination has been assessed, from the tourist office to the ski school to the shops.

• National, not regional: the same standard applies whether the resort is in the Alps, the Pyrenees, or the Vosges.
• Audited, not self-declared: an external assessment checks the criteria on the ground.
• Time-limited: the label is granted for three years and renewal is never automatic.
• Multi-sector: over 100 destinations across mountain, sea, countryside, and city hold it, with around 40-plus being ski resorts.

Every Famille Plus destination signs up to six public commitments. They sound soft until you translate them into what they mean on a Tuesday morning with a four-year-old in ski boots.

• A personalised welcome for families: staff trained to handle family arrivals, clear information, family-oriented services at the tourist office.
• Activities suited to every age: programming for toddlers, children, teenagers, and adults, not just one age band.
• A fair price for everyone, smallest to largest: child and family rates on passes, lessons, and activities, designed to keep the budget in check.
• Things to do together or separately: options for the whole family at once and options that let parents and teens split off.
• Shops and services within reach: doctor, pharmacy, supermarket, laundry, play areas, restaurants, all genuinely accessible.
• Children cared for by professionals: qualified staff in nurseries, snow gardens, and kids' clubs.

Read together, the six commitments describe a resort that has thought about the whole day, not just the slopes. That is the real value of the label as a shortcut.

Earning Famille Plus is not a form-filling exercise. A candidate resort is assessed against around 100 to 110 precise criteria mapped to the six commitments, and the assessment is carried out by an external party rather than the resort grading itself.

• The audit: roughly 100-110 criteria are checked across the tourist office, accommodation, ski school, childcare, shops, and signage.
• The term: the label is awarded for three years.
• The renewal: it is re-assessed at the end of the term and is never granted automatically, so a resort that lets standards slip can lose it.
• The unit: it is the resort or commune that holds the label, which is why some large areas are labelled at village level rather than as a whole, more on that below.

The three-year renewal is the part most parents miss. It means the logo is a live commitment, not a one-off award from a decade ago.

Here is a detail that catches families out. Some big French ski areas are not labelled as a single station. Instead, specific villages within them hold the label. La Plagne is the clearest example: the label belongs to the villages of Montchavin-les-Coches and Plagne Montalbert (Montalbert joined in 2022), not to the whole of La Plagne.

The practical lesson: do not assume that because a famous resort name appears in a family article, the exact village you are booking is the labelled one. Check the village, not just the brand. If the label is part of why you are choosing a place, confirm it for your specific accommodation village on the resort's own Famille Plus page or on familleplus.fr.

The label is a strong yes-or-no filter on family infrastructure. It is a poor filter on the things that actually decide a ski week. Treat it as the floor, not the verdict.

• It says nothing about snow: a labelled low-altitude resort can still have thin cover in a warm March. Altitude and snowmaking are separate questions.
• It says nothing about size or terrain: a tiny resort and a giant linked area can both be labelled, so it will not tell you if mixed-ability skiers will be happy.
• It certifies fair pricing, not a low total: family rates exist, but a labelled resort in a peak school-holiday week is still expensive.
• It can be village-specific: the brand may be labelled at one village and not another.
• It is not the only sign of a family resort: excellent family resorts exist without the label, and a missing logo is not a red flag.

Use the label to build a shortlist of resorts that have genuinely done the family groundwork. Then decide between them on snow, terrain, travel, and budget, the way you would anywhere.