value season

Special four-day and five-day packages are available at selected properties during value season only.

Value season rates range from $500 to $798 a person for a week, double occupancy.

A six-out-of-seven-day lift ticket costs $216, or $204 if purchased in advance for the value season, which is the same price as last year.

A six-day lift ticket costs $168 during value season, $180 during regular season.

The American Express lift and lodging packages start at $44 a person, double occupancy, a day during the "value seasons" from opening day to Dec. 20, and April 5-27.

The club's rates begin at about $150 a night in value season and $225 in peak season and include two to six free lift tickets per day, depending on the number of bedrooms in the unit.

The best way to ski for less in Aspen is to vacation during the "value season," which occupies a full 50 percent of the ski year - the weeks before Christmas, the month of January and April.

During the value season, generally from the end of August to the end of January, rates are about $150 less; and in peak season (mid-March to mid-April and the first two weeks in December), they are $170 more.

Figures from Helen N. Marano, director of tourism development in the Tourism Industries office of the United States Department of Commerce, show that an increasing proportion of Americans are indulging their sweet tooth for Europe in the period the tour operators like to call "the value season."