1. New flights
Many skiers will see travelling time slashed, with more than 50 new services from regional airports from the six big package operators alone.
The biggest boost is for skiers outside the South East. Inghams and Thomson are both introducing flights from Manchester to Sion - for Zermatt and Saas Fee that's 1.5 hours off the transfer time from Geneva, and Crans Montana is just a 45-minute hop, instead of 2.5 hours. Inghams has also added Bern from Manchester and Birmingham - 1.5 hours from Wengen and Mürren, instead of 3 hours from Geneva.
New, too, are Birmingham-Chambéry (Thomson), Belfast-Salzburg (First Choice), and Cardiff-Geneva, East Midlands-Geneva, Birmingham-Innsbruck and Bristol-Turin (Airtours); all three operators are adding Southampton-Geneva. There's a host of new flights to Toulouse for Andorra and a handful each from East Midlands and Newcastle. Scotland does best of all, with new Glasgow-Innsbruck flights from Crystal, Airtours and Thomson. Airtours is also adding Glasgow to Salzburg, Lyon and Turin, as well as Edinburgh-Lyon.
Scandinavia is booming, with a new Neilson charter from Gatwick to Östersund in Sweden - for Åre, the largest ski resort in Scandinavia, as well as a new exclusive, the family resort of Vemdalen. Newcastle gets new flights to Dagali for Geilo and Hemsedal (Crystal and Thomson).
Inghams has had the bright idea of flying from Gatwick to Friedrichshafen in Germany - for Davos, for example, it lops an hour off the transfer time from Geneva.
2. Andorra's arrival
The rise and rise of the principality in the Pyrenees seems unstoppable. Even last season, when many Alpine resorts were scraping by on the worst snow for nearly 40 years, the conditions here were excellent.
Nearly one in eight British skiers chose to visit Andorra last winter - more than Switzerland, Canada and the US combined. It narrowly beat Italy as our third favourite destination, after France and Austria. This season will be livelier than ever, with 12 new weekly charters into Toulouse from Crystal, Inghams, Airtours and Thomson alone.
Long famous for its bargain partying on duty-free booze, Andorra has now set its sights upmarket, investing heavily in new lifts and piste-grooming equipment, as well as upgrading its accommodation, and introducing some luxury hotels, especially in Soldeu. Hopping around between the four resorts is easier, too, with an integrated ticket system. The tuition, using mainly native English-speaking instructors, is among the best in Europe. Andorra remains superb value, though, and if you buy new ski kit locally duty-free, you stand to offset much of the cost of your holiday.
3. Cutting edge kit
How to look 'with it' this winter? For starters, it's time to ditch any hang-ups about having to go down the mountain forwards. Twin-tipped skis like the Line Maverick are the rage for 'new school' skiing - doing the things that snowboarders get up to, like throwing themselves at half-pipes, table tops and going fakie, ie backwards.
Also storming the shops are models born of the craze for skiercross: skiers racing each other rather than the clock. These short, nippy numbers with a deep sidecut - like Salomon's Crossmax 8 Pilot - are also great fun on the piste; on the wider models, you can glide off-piste in big curves. Gone are the days when the only technique for powder was to bounce your way down in a series of short turns. New integrated bindings allow the ski to flex along its entire length, impossible with traditional, drill-mounted bindings. New 'soft' ski boots such as Rossignol's Soft 3 offer a mix of hard plastic for safety and support and snowboard-style softness for comfort.
When it comes to clothing, Prada may be making ski jackets of denim, but most manufacturers are going for hi-tech gadgetry. Hottest property this year are battery-warmed gloves from Zanier, and jackets you can part inflate via a nozzle for extra warmth - try Peak Performance's 'Personal Climate Control' gilet. All available from Snow + Rock.
4. Moving around the mountains
Zermatt may be the most scenic resort in the world, but fans will be relieved that they no longer have to spend so much of a holiday admiring the sensational mountain landscapes as they shuffle along the notorious lift queues. A new eight-seater gondola will whisk skiers up to Schwarzsee at the foot of the Matterhorn in just 10 minutes, doing away with the unseemly but immaculately dressed scrums around the old gondola up to Furi and the cable-car connection beyond. Up on the Theodul, they're also installing Switzerland's first glacier chairlift, a six-seater.
With the reopening of the Mont Blanc tunnel, which closed in March 1999 after a fire, skiers can once again travel to resorts in the Aosta valley by flying into Geneva - the best airport for no-frills flights, with a busy service from EasyJet. The tunnel also restores foodie mecca Courmayeur as a popular day-trip from Chamonix.
Closer to home, the Arctic facial scrubs that were so much part of the Cairngorm experience have become frightfully passé, after the opening last season of the UK's first high-speed funicular. Now skiers glide up to the top of the mountain on rails in just five minutes, removing the need for a 25-minute chairlift ride in icy winds.
5. Winter wonderlands
For cross-country aficionados, Headwater is introducing Funäsdalen in Sweden, home to the national ski team, which claims to be the world's largest cross-country ski area, with 300km of prepared trails. Guests will stay in cottages with turf roofs built around a former hunting lodge.
Waymark has a handful of new cross-country centres in the South Tyrol and Norway, as well as the Ötztal in Austria, once home to Ötzi the frozen Stone Age hunter.
Inntravel has a long tradition of conjuring up snowy getaways far from the busy resorts. New this season, and typically enticing, is a break to Kuhmo in Finland, near the Russian border, where guests can try their (warmly gloved) hands at ice-sculpting; plus other new, remote getaways, in Austria, Italy and France.
Arctic Experience is offering guests at the popular Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi in Sweden seats at the first ever Ice Globe Theatre, a replica of Shakespeare's Globe in London. Hottest tickets for the inaugural season under the shimmering Northern Lights are for a chilling performance of Hamlet in Sami.
6. More for families
Ski-mad families will be thrilled to find the tour operators fighting for their custom - after years of neglect.
Thomson leads the pack of the big operators, introducing its first all-day crèches - in Villars, Alpe d'Huez and La Rosière - for children aged from six months to four years. It has laid on more free children's places, including school holiday weeks, and come up with some neat deals: free helmets for children prebooking skis and boots; and offers of free equipment hire or lift passes for children when parents prebook their own.
The most impressive choice, however, comes from Esprit Ski, under new ownership and now offering 14 types of childcare for children aged from four months to 15 years. New this year is a 'Free Ride Team' for 13- to 15-year-olds with an evening activity programme, and an all-day ski class for beginner children of eight and older, plus daily supervised lunches for all children. It has added its first Scottish charter - from Edinburgh - as well as a new Birmingham flight, and four new resorts including Killington, Val Gardena and Kaprun.
Parents with small children but big ski ambitions can now enjoy Alpe d'Huez, a new resort for Mark Warner, which is offering a chalet hotel beside the Telecentre lift.
7. Tempting tuition packages
Buzzword on the training front this season is biomechanics. Forget muscling yourself round those turns with a mix of willpower and brawn - it's all in the balance. Position the limbs and joints of your body correctly and you'll ski like a pro.
Neilson has teamed up with Dr Matthew Bennett, chiropractor to the British ski team, to offer guests an individual ergonomics analysis. The sessions, available at Les Deux Alpes, in the week starting 11 January, cost £50 a shot.
On the same dates Skiworld is running a Ski Form Week in Val Thorens, making use of technology pioneered in Whistler. Sensors in an electronic footpad measure precisely how a skier applies pressure to different parts of the foot while making turns. Back at base, you watch a video of your skiing on a split screen that simultaneously displays the measurements.
Also new this season are some wacky training camps from the Ski Club of Great Britain, including a 'steep and deep' camp in Jackson Hole; a course with freeski legend Warren Smith in Verbier, taking in steeps, powder, moguls and carving, accompanied by freestyle champ Andy David who will pass on the latest twin-tip tricks.
The Ski Company is a network of top British instructors which runs courses and clinics at various resorts. New this season is an off-piste course in St Anton, and a series of 'Off the Wall' training weeks, including an off-piste circuit by ski and lift around the Monte Rosa massif, taking in Zermatt, Cervinia, Alagna and Saas Fee, staying in a mix of mountain huts and three-star hotels.
8. Luxurious chalets
Recession or no, glamour goes high-altitude in the Alps this season. The Ski Company has moved into Zermatt for the first time, with a stylish, ultra-modern penthouse, Haus Matt, all steel and glass overlooking the wooden chalets of the old town; plus two newly built chalets each with a 'wellness suite' comprising sauna, steam bath and hot tub with views of the Matterhorn.
Erna Low is busy reinventing the concept of apartment holidays with the opulent MGM residences. New this season are 67 apartments in a pair of chalet-style buildings in Les Carroz d'Araches, with private indoor pool with sauna, hammam (steam-room) and gym.
Scott Dunn has new chalets, too, in Val, and has introduced transfers by helicopter or light aircraft to each of its resorts, as well as beauty therapists to pamper you when you get there. Le Ski has swapped to Sunday flights to Chambéry, in a pair of leather-seated aircraft flying out of Gatwick and Manchester, while Handmade Holidays is offering Chalet Chez Bear in the mountains above Briançon, run by a former chef to stars such as Sting.
9. New brochures
A new France specialist has brought a breath of fresh mountain air into the market with a programme that steers well clear of the familiar purpose-built resorts and focuses on smaller, characterful villages. Peak Retreats says it aims to attract francophile guests for whom skiing is not the be-all and end-all of a holiday. Several of the resorts are on the edge of large ski areas: Morillon and Samoëns, for example, link into Flaine, the fourth largest in France. Others, such as La Giettaz and Albiez-Montrond, have small but picturesque ski areas that could suit a beginner family.
Featuring just about everything except Alpine skiing, adventure specialist Exodus launches its first dedicated snow brochure. New holidays include snowshoeing in Greenland or Romania; a traverse of the vast Vatnajökull glacier, the kilometre-thick ice-cap that covers much of Iceland; and, wackiest of all, cycling on snow, along snowmobile trails in Finland.
Other new tours include winter walking in the Austrian Tyrol, on hikes to frozen lakes and waterfalls, stopping in traditional villages for Apfelstrudel or Glühwein; Munro-bagging in Iceland; cross-country skiing in Yellowstone or Quebec; and ski-tours in the Pyrenees and Spitsbergen.
10. Snowboarding stateside
Terrain park mania is gripping the mountains, nowhere more than in the United States: in California, Mammoth Mountain is set to live up to its name by building a Super-Duper pipe this winter - nearly seven metres high.
The most surprising newcomer to the boarding fold, however, is Hollywood-on-High - aka Aspen, which, until last season, banned snowboarders from one of its four mountains. Since then, it has embraced the sport with all the passion of a late convert. Last winter, it built the world's longest continuous terrain park - Crazy T'rain, two miles long, with dozens of jumps, more than 30 rails, a boardercross course and a 120-metre long half-pipe. This season, it will be one of the liveliest venues on the circuit when it hosts the world's top riders for the Winter X games (30 January-2 February).
Aspen is so keen to attract new riders, as well as skiers, that it is offering day trips from Denver for a silly $99 (£65), including return flight from Denver, transfer to the slopes and a lift pass to cover all four mountains. Flight times are such that riders are on the mountain by 10am, and can set off for Denver as late as 7pm. You can also do it in a day from other Colorado resorts such as Winter Park, 90 minutes' drive from the city.
