ALPINE skiers tired of fighting for space on the slopes and queuing for lifts may envy Lee Kun-Hee, chairman of the Samsung electronics firm, who starts his holiday at Courchevel today.

In the first such deal in France, the South Korean multimillionaire is paying for private use of three pistes in the celebrated Three Valleys area so that he can take lessons free from the schussing crowds.

Mr Lee is being charged £1,000 an hour for the green, or gentle, runs to be fenced off from the masses as he learns from a hand-picked group of instructors how to do the snowplough turn. He has been told, however, that people might watch his skiing exploits from behind the barrier.

As well as wishing to distance himself from other skiers, Mr Lee will eschew proletarian ski-lifts and tows. He will be ferried uphill by a fleet of snowmobiles and escorted to and from the Anapurna, his hotel, by a municipal snowmobile mounted with a flashing blue police light.

The Samsung boss’s entourage has set strict requirements for the instructors from L’Ecole de Ski Française. They must be “neither too young, nor too old; they must be locals, but not too rustic, and speak perfect English”.

Courchevel and the Three Valleys Company (S3V), which runs the world’s biggest ski area, went on the defensive yesterday as the grumbles mounted among the public about the rich chasing them off the slopes, even if the public at the grand Savoy resort are hardly hoi polloi.

Claude Faure, director of S3V, said that the company had hesitated before agreeing to Samsung’s “rather special requirements”.

“He is afraid of falling and being run into,” M Faure said. “His runs had to be less than 12 per cent gradients.

“This was an unprecedented situation and gradually we found a solution with three strips that will be used successively . . . I do not worry that this will often be repeated.” He added that he hoped that Mr Lee’s holiday would bring more Korean customers to the region.

Gilbert Blanc-Tailleur, the Mayor of Courchevel, said that his council had approved the piste rental, which will last for three hours a day, after being convinced that it would not interfere with skiing in the area. Pistes were often closed for competitions and other purposes.

Not all his townspeople agreed. Jean-Jack Bertrand, who owns a restaurant in Courchavel, said: “This caprice is ridiculous and out of place. I am shocked because a lot of other VIPs, emirs, princes and corporate bosses come to Courchevel and nobody notices them.

“If Mr Samsung wants to rent pistes, let him go and do that in the United States, where they have private resorts.”

An employee with Samsung in Paris, who declined to give his name, said that he was surprised that the chairman was going to such lengths because he lived in relatively modest surroundings in South Korea.

“But if it opens the French ski market to Koreans, why not? That is better than seeing them queuing up at the Louis Vuitton shop,” he said.

BIG SPENDERS TAKE A BREAK

• In 2001, the Californian businessman Dennis Tito became the first paying passenger to go into space. The eight-day trip is thought to have cost him $20 million

• The steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal hired the Palace of Versailles in May 2004 for his daughter’s wedding reception

• Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin had perfect weather and a guaranteed catch on his 1997 holiday. Clouds were seeded to prevent rain and the lake stocked with 10,000 extra fish

• King Fahd of Saudi Arabia needed five jumbo jets to carry his 200,000kg of luggage when he holidayed in Marbella in 1999. His 400-strong entourage were split between his private palace and a five-star hotel

• The billionnaire publisher Malcolm Forbes hired a Concorde and a jumbo jet to fly hundreds of friends to his 70th birthday party in Morocco in 1989

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