Snow-loving students joining their university ski clubs in the next few weeks will find their budgets stretch further this term, thanks to season workers’ website Natives.

As the popularity of winter sports continues to grow, many student skiers and boarders are finding it difficult to finance what can become a very expensive hobby.

Now Natives, Europe’s No 1 website for finding ski and snowboard jobs, has set up a number of ways for cash-strapped students to stretch their funds further.

These include negotiating special student discounts at ski shows as well as providing free text messages and web hosting facilities for university snowsport clubs.

Iain Martin, Natives’ Managing Director, explained: “We have always been a big supporter of student skiing and snowboarding. I was very surprised when I noticed that none of the major winter sports shows in the UK offered a student discount. Thanks to our contacts in the industry I was able to make a few phone calls and set up reduced admission prices.”

Students will now be able to get into the British Ski Show at the Birmingham NEC next month (October 10-12) for just £2.50 on Friday 11th only, instead of the usual price of £9.50. At the Daily Mail Ski Show at Olympia (October 25 – November 3) there will be a 50% discount on mid-week admission, saving £4 per person.

Natives will also be helping students this season by directly sponsoring a number of snowsports clubs. This support will include providing free text messages, website hosting and domain names.

“We know that securing website hosting space and buying domain names can be expensive and confusing. Natives has its own server with spare capacity and so we are able to offer free web space to clubs. We hope this will help student clubs stretch their limited budgets further and simplify the whole process,” said Iain.

Thousands of free text messages will also be supplied to student snow sport clubs for them to send to their members.

“Text messaging continues to flourish and we know it can be a very useful way for clubs to communicate with their members. This year we will be providing thousands of messages to each club free of charge, sending them out using our new ALPtxt messaging system,” added Iain.

As well as supporting individual clubs across the country, Natives is a major sponsor of the British Universities Ski Championships (BUSC), which next March will see 2000 students heading to Les Deux Alpes.
Dan Craig, chairman for BUSC 2003, said, “I am delighted that Natives and BUSC are continuing their existing successful relationship and we look forward to working with Natives during the next year”
Natives will also be backing a number of student race events during the season and is a sponsor of HUSKIS – a dry slope race series for universities in the south of the UK – as well as Kings Ski Club, which hosts the biggest and most popular student dry slope race series.

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