Short answer: This winter, expect a gross monthly wage of roughly €2,000–2,700 for entry-level roles (housekeeping, reception) and €2,000–4,900 for waiting and cooking roles in Austria, with France and Italy landing in similar but slightly lower ranges once you strip out Austria's mandatory 13th and 14th salary. Almost everywhere, free staff accommodation and meals come with the job — and that's worth more to your real income than the number at the top of the offer.
That's the headline. Here's the full picture by country and role, so you know what to expect before you sign anything. The figures below are drawn from a review of live seasonal job listings across Austria, France and Italy, compiled by the Slovenian business outlet Finance.si in August 2026, cross-checked against SeasonHop's own listings and Slovenia's national wage statistics.
Where the winter jobs actually are
Right now, the heaviest hiring for this winter is in Austria, France, Finland, Norway and Italy, with smaller volumes in Switzerland and Spain. Most postings ask for EU citizenship (or a valid work permit) and at least one prior season of experience, plus a driving licence in many cases. Guest-facing roles need working English almost everywhere — add German for Austria, French for France, Italian for Italy. Norway and Finland are often the most English-friendly; some French resorts also value Turkish or Russian for their international guest mix.
Expect a six-day week, shift or peak-hour rotation, and mandatory presence over Christmas, New Year and Easter — the weeks nobody gets to take off.
Austria: the highest ceilings, thanks to 13th/14th salary
Austria sets statutory minimum gross wages for most tourism roles, and seasonal staff are usually paid a pro-rata 13th and 14th salary on top of the monthly figure. Accommodation and meals are free almost everywhere. Basic German is the norm.
- Waiter: €2,100–3,500 gross. Tirol resorts pay around €2,000–2,300; a slope-side bar in Obertauern offers €2,100 net for breakfast service (roughly €3,000 gross) and about €100 more for evening shifts; ski-bar service elsewhere reaches €2,500 net (~€3,500 gross) before tips. A head waiter in a Salzburg hotel can reach €3,500 gross before tips.
- Cook: €2,100–4,900 gross, the widest range of any role. Tirol: €2,165–3,300 gross. Kitzbühel: around €2,900 net (~€4,200 gross). Ischgl: €2,700–3,200 net (up to ~€4,900 gross). Zell am See (Salzburg region): around €2,400 net.
- Receptionist: €2,200–3,000 gross, with Ischgl listings reaching €3,000 gross. German and English are both expected.
- Housekeeper: €2,000–2,700 gross. The statutory minimum sits at €2,026 gross; Salzburg and Tirol listings we found offered €1,900–2,050 net.
- Childcare/nanny: €20–30/hour through agencies, or around €2,000 net (~€2,800 gross) for a live-in hotel role in Vorarlberg.
- Ski instructor: €1,850–3,000 gross plus tips, for roughly 125 working hours a month. Katschberg starts from €1,850 gross; Brandnertal pays €2,750–3,000 gross.
France: overtime is paid, and tips add up
French seasonal contracts are legally capped at 39 hours a week before overtime kicks in (up to 46 hours in defined periods), with a 20–50% premium — usually settled at the end of the season.
- Waiter: €2,000–3,000 gross plus tips. Megève: €2,200–2,250 gross with free housing and meals. A head waiter in one hotel group: €2,350–2,450 gross. Forum reports put monthly tips at €800–2,000. A restaurant manager role in Les Menuires reached €4,200–4,500 gross, English required.
- Cook: €2,300–3,500 gross — restaurants and pizzerias around €2,300–2,500, hotels up to €2,700. A head chef running a kitchen serving up to 1,000 covers a day can reach €3,100 gross.
- Receptionist: €2,000–2,500 gross. Deux Alpes: €2,000–2,300 gross with free housing and meals; French is mandatory alongside English.
- Housekeeper: €1,950–2,200 gross depending on the employer and French fluency; a head housekeeper managing 30–50 staff can reach €2,450–2,542 gross.
- Childcare/nanny: €25–40/hour, or around €2,500 gross/month if directly employed — up to €2,600 gross for infants, closer to €2,100 gross for older children. Housing, food and transport are employer-covered.
- Chalet host: from €2,167 gross, which after overtime and deductions often nets around €1,500. Covers hosting, cooking and cleaning for up to 15 guests.
- Ski instructor: €55–80/hour, mostly self-employed (€9,000–20,000 for the season). If directly employed, expect around €2,800 gross plus a mentoring bonus, with free accommodation.
Italy: quoted in net, topped up with bonuses
Italian listings usually quote net pay rather than gross, and many employers add a results-based bonus at the end of the season. Housing, meals, and sometimes transport are typically included.
- Waiter/bartender: €2,000–3,600 gross plus tips. Livigno bartender roles start around €2,000–2,300 gross. A hotel in Colfosco pays experienced, Italian- and English-speaking waiters €2,900–3,600 gross with accommodation (a sommelier role at the same hotel: €3,400–4,000 gross). Near Toblach, a winter waiter role pays €1,800 net (~€2,800 gross); forum estimates put tips around €400/month.
- Cook: €2,500–3,500 gross. A mountain hut in Corvara offers a head chef with 5+ years' experience from €3,500 gross, plus housing, food and a single-shift day. A sous-chef role near Cortina d'Ampezzo: €2,800–3,000 gross.
- Receptionist: €2,000–3,000. Near Cortina d'Ampezzo, expect €1,500–1,800 net (up to ~€2,800 gross) with free housing. Livigno's Bivio resort seeks receptionists with 4+ years' experience from €1,800 net. Italian and English are required; German and Russian are a plus.
- Housekeeper: €1,500–2,100 gross under the sector's collective agreement; Livigno-area listings run €1,800–2,100 gross. Italian is required.
- Ski instructor: €1,500–4,000/month, mostly paid per lesson as self-employed, so earnings scale with how many hours you actually teach.
The number on the offer isn't your real income
Compare countries by gross salary alone and Austria looks like the clear winner — but that ignores three things that change your actual take-home reality:
- Accommodation and meals. Almost every role above includes free staff housing and food. That single line item is worth several hundred euros a month, and it's the difference between a season that pays for itself and one that doesn't.
- 13th and 14th salary. Austria pays these pro-rata even on short seasonal contracts — effectively a built-in bonus that France and Italy don't have as standard. We cover exactly how this works in Understanding the 13th and 14th Salary in Austria.
- Tips. In guest-facing roles, tips can add hundreds of euros a month on top of the base wage — but they're rarely guaranteed and almost never written into the contract, so treat forum estimates as a bonus, not a promise.
How does this compare to Slovenia?
Slovenian job ads for tourism roles rarely publish a salary at all, which makes direct comparison hard. Statistični urad RS's occupational wage data puts the average monthly gross pay at roughly €1,505 for housekeepers, €1,619 for waiters, €1,786 for cooks, €2,056 for receptionists and €2,103 for childcare workers — all below what the same roles pay abroad this winter, even before accounting for free housing, meals and Austria's 13th/14th salary.
FAQ
Are these figures gross or net? Both appear in the market — Austrian and French listings are usually quoted gross, Italian listings more often net. We've labelled each figure above; when comparing offers, always ask the employer to confirm which one you're being shown, and what (if anything) gets deducted for accommodation.
Do tips count as part of my income? They can add meaningfully to guest-facing roles, but they're rarely guaranteed. Treat the base wage as the number you can plan around, and tips as a bonus on top.
Is Austria really the best-paid option? For most roles, yes — largely because of the mandatory 13th and 14th salary, not because the base monthly figure is dramatically higher. Once you factor in France's overtime pay and tip culture, or Italy's end-of-season bonuses, the gap narrows for some roles.
Do I need to speak the local language to get hired? Basic German, French or Italian is expected for guest-facing roles in each respective country, though English-only postings do exist, especially in Norway and Finland. Being upfront about your level in the application is better than hoping it won't come up.
Before you accept an offer
A good salary on paper is only half the picture — the details of housing, hours and what's actually deducted from your pay matter just as much. If you want to see what's currently on offer and compare real listings rather than averages, browse open seasonal roles at seasonhop.com/jobs, or dig into our worker research at seasonhop.com/en/research.