Alps

It's pretty easy to just do it yourself, and it's pretty easy to get in under budget on what you'd spend with a company.

First off though:

Avoid Alpine Elements. They're not terrible, but unless things have changed in the last few years, they're there for the money, not the customer. The staff may be, but the company itself, not so much. Plus if you're after biking, there's a good chance your chalet host will not be a biker, so not know anything about the area you're in.

Trail Addiction, Bike Morzine, Riders Refuge are all supposedly pretty good. The last two are self-catered and in Morzine, so that may not be your cup of tea. Trail Addiction cover other resorts and seem to do a full package.

That said, if you look, it's fairly easy to get yourself sorted, as none of the comapnies include flights.

My recommendation would be to get on to HomeAway or HolidayLets and check out summer apartments in Tignes. Prices over summer are dirt cheap, it has a smaller network than Morzine and the Portes Du Soleil, but still claim to have 30+ trails, so perfect for a long weekend. Bonus is the lifts are all completely free to use, liftpass being one of the major costs out there, and will likely make up for the longer transfer time.

In all though, unless you're planning to go somewhere with only a few trails, I'd advise against a long weekend and go for a minimum of a week. What with distances and all that, especially if you're driving. Also, most rental and holiday companies tend to do a minimum of a week, saturday - saturday, so you may end up paying hte equivalent of a week for 3 days actual holiday...

Yeah, there' ll be a reason for the terrible food and poor guiding.

For starters, when I worked for them, cooking ability was not a requirement of chalet hosting. In fact, beyond a chat with the area manager, and a cursory phone-interview, there weren't many requirements. Although I had cooking experience, I was never required to prove it, so it's entirely possible to get into chalet hosting by just lying through the interview. Or it was, don't know if it still is.

Anyway, the chalets all have the same menu, pre-set, so every friday meal is the same, every tuesdays meal is the same. unfortunately, they didn't change the menu between summer and winter, so with 35 degree temperatures outside, you were serving guests Winter Vegetable Broth.

The other thing was that the food is delivered once a week to the chalet, in theory the quantities required for the number of guests based on the recipes. However, even sticking exactly to the recipes, I found myself having to go out and buy additional ingredients myself frequently. At least I got reimbursed for them.

So the reasons you got crap food will be no requirement to cook as part of the job, or at least to prove you can, combined with inaccurate ordering by the management.

As for guiding, they don't do that any more, as you need qualifications. And people with qualifications need to be paid more.