This hotel was a disaster from beginning to end! The beginning - we are shown to our room where there was no tv, it had had a lick of paint but the bathroom was straight from the 70s except that the 70s lino had clearly recently been scraped off the floor leaving lots of fluff/dust stuck to the floor, there were two very dim bedside lights and that was it for lighting (we could hardly see), the bare wires for the phone were sticking out of the phone and out of the wall but no socket on the wall or plug on the end of the phone wires and to top it all off the room stank of stale tobacco. The hotel sorted things out - sprayed all sorts of chemicals to remove the smell, by the evening provided a television and another small light after been prompted twice and two days later the phone was connected.
Not a good start and it got worse... we had been told that the smell of tobacco was due to a family who had been staying at the hotel the week before - not so, every night we had to keep the window open (bear in mind it was cold in the Alps!) to get rid of the smell of cigarettes and cigars wafting through the door from the bar and seating area outside our room. We mentioned this to the hotel and they did nothing to sort it out and we later found out they have had the same complaint before us.
On top of this, forget restful sleep to prepare for skiing - we were constantly kept awake by noise from the bar and seating area (both talking and music) and once this stopped the noise from the emptying of the nightclub opposite the hotel started so any sleep before about 3 or 4 in the morning was impossible.
So we hoped that breakfast would set us up for the day as sleep hadn't. But, although breakfast was billed to run until 9h30 if you got there later than 8h50 you were going to have a very restricted choice for breakfast. In fact, on our last day we ended up not having breakfast as there was only baguette left (unless you count cold meat and yogurt for breakfast). Not to mention the continued passive smoking due to other guests smoking at breakfast.
And the smaller gripes but ones I feel that make this hotel not a 4 star - the words that springs to mind are "tight" and "inconsistent" - tight with the toiletries: 1 pack tissues, 1 shampoo, 1 shower gel and 1 soap. Shampoo and shower gel were only replaced when absolutely empty and there seemed to be a policy not to replace the soap or tissues! Slippers suddenly turned up on day 3 as did a bottle water on another day but the water was never replaced. The place is not organised re info on arrival (e.g we weren't told that there was a code to get in after 22h and got locked out at 21h(sic.) and had to ask re time of dinner. The ski room was a mess and boot rack was not always heated at night.
Only one good thing about the place - the restaurant is great in the evening and the bottle of genepi given to guests when they leave. But in the future I will go back to staying 3* in Tignes (my experience of such hotels in Tignes over the years is that they are are better than this hotel) and will simply dine at the hotel one evening.









