Relais des Alpes

This hotel is handy for the slopes, but has little else to recommend it. I booked with Crystal, and their website promises - hot and cold buffet breakfast - afternoon tea and coffee - 4-course buffet evening meal with a choice of menu, and salad and dessert buffets · The food in the hotel is basically inedible. The 'hot breakfast' was cold, so rather than fill up and come back to the hotel for afternoon tea and then dinner, we had to eat out every day costing us hundreds of pounds. Breakfast. The website description is simply a lie. The only thing really acceptable was the hot drinks and pastries. The 'cooked' breakfast was simply inedible. The baked beans and sausages were always cold, the bacon was only ever cooked on one side, and the scrambled egg swam in some fizzy scum (see photos). I spoke to the rep who promised to speak to the kitchen, but it was the same next day. I'm also fairly sure the 'cooked' sausage I had from there is what caused me to have horrific diarrhea and vomiting, because none of my friends had a problem and that's really the only thing I ate that that didn't. Dinner. We ate in the restaurant once, and because the food was so awful we didn't go again, hence I sent Crystal a demand for compensation as we ate out five times. There was no 'four course menu'. The only time we ate there were chips, pizza, some meat and some soup. No matter what order you eat that in, a four course menu it is not. Noise One thing the crystal website does mention is the pub downstairs. But there is precisely no warning that the noise of the music in there can be heard 100 yards away until 1am. We were in room 104 and could hear every word of karaoke night. And having been kept up by the music, we are woken every morning around 6am by the refuse truck loudly emptying multiple dumpsters filled with hundreds of bottles. Again, there is no mention of this on the website. So that's a maximum of 5 peaceful hours for sleep, but the beds were almost as hard as the floor so in reality none of us had a single good night's sleep all week. The spa. The website says 'true toastiness can be found in the hotel’s spa'. Another lie. Neither of the hot tubs were hot. One was warm at best, the other tepid. I mentioned this to reception but there was no change throughout the week. Crystal have refused all requests for compensation, so all I can say is if you go here be warned - it will not be relaxing in any way at all and you'll need to eat out.

We booked this holiday through Crystal Ski. For anyone else who does this, just be aware that the coach drops everyone in town and you need to walk 5-10 minutes up a steep hill to the hotel. A van brings your luggage 60-90 minutes later. The good parts: ＞ Hotel is warm and clean ＞ Restaurant waiting-on staff are nice and friendly ＞ We were allocated a restaurant table on the first night and kept it for the week which was helpful. ＞ After leaving feedback following check-in, they brought us some softer pillows. ＞ The restaurant food had a decent selection each night and was of generally acceptable to decent quality ＞ The British style pub downstairs was convenient and not too expensive. Had a dart board and pool table, and showed football/rugby events. ＞ The sauna was great (see below ref spa) The negatives: ＞ Cleaning staff were very miserable and made you feel like an inconvenience when encountered. ＞ One of the cleaning ladies also serves in the restaurant and brought the same negative attitude and contempt. ＞ The ‘picky’ starters in the restaurant were gone within 3 minutes of the restaurant opening and were hardly refilled, if at all. The other guests who knew this made sure they arrived at 7:30pm knowing they’d be gone soon after. ＞ The coffee and water machines that were available for breakfast, were covered over at tea time meaning you had to buy bottles of water to go with your dinner. There was also no wine, had to buy this as extra. ＞ Cooked breakfast wasn’t great. Continentals always struggle with bacon but it was consistently burnt and raw in the same rasher. ＞ Breakfast cold items were rarely refilled so croissants and cereal ran out quickly. ＞ The milk jugs for cereal and tea/coffee weren’t refrigerated - tepid milk on cereal 🤮 ＞ The room had a very hard bed, like really hard. Everyone in our party was complaining of aching hips and shoulders. ＞ The room on had only 1 proper electrical socket so had to unplug the kettle to charge my phone, lucky we had a double adapter so we could charge 2 at a time. ＞ There was no fridge in the room. ＞ The shower is really small and at busy times the hot water fluctuated a lot. ＞ The rooms have paper thin walls so there is a lot of noise from other rooms and the corridors. ＞ On the final day, we had to vacate our room by 9:30am - THIS IS NOT OK. In which universe do hotels hoof you out of your room this early? Added to this, the cleaners made a point of rattling laundry cages down the corridor at 5:30am on our final day - presumably as a tactic to wake everyone up so they were out on time. ＞ The hotel is quite a long way from the nearest ski lift. Not only is it a bit of a walk, it’s up a pretty steep incline, really hard work in and with ski gear. Worth investing in a heated locker at the lift - at a cost of €50 for the week. Note: the Gruppo ABC office is half way up the hill between the hotel and the lift. ＞ There is an extra charge of €10 for a robe for the spa which they are pre

Let’s get one straight first of all before the remainder of this review is written. This hotel is NOT 4 star. I am not sure how the ratings are worked out in Italy but this hotel is at best 3 star. I will explain why. We stayed here for a week as we were on a skiing holiday. The location is in the centre of the town and adjacent to a lot of bars, shops and other outlets which are handy. There is a large car park in front of the hotel which is noisy and lot of the time. The walk up the hill to the nearest ski lift took about 10 minutes at a leisurely pace . . . .but it is uphill and when you are carrying skis and in ski boots can take longer. There is a ski locker at the hotel but it is best to get the ski lockers at the Clothes chairlift which are very handy, heated and worth every euro! The staff throughout the hotel are great. Very friendly and courteous at all times. This was a high point - there were not many! The rooms were a bit dated. Small and in need for refurbishment. Remember this was supposed to be a 4 star hotel!. The shower was tiny and if you were of a certain size you would have struggled to fit in it!! Very basic but it served its purpose. However our room was on the first floor directly above the entrance to the hotel which looked out over the car park. The biggest gripe I had with this hotel was that the noise around it and inside it was horrendous. The walls were so thin you could hear everything that was going on outside in the corridors, above you and in the other guests rooms. The noise outside was even worse. Every night drunken ****** would be shouting at the top of their voices coming in or leaving the hotel bar. If you want a quiet nights sleep this is not the hotel for you. The noise overs all around this hotel ruined the week for me. The food was not 4 star standard. It was all buffet service which is fine but I would have liked to been able to serve myself at evening meals instead of getting it given to me at the hot plate like a school dinner. Some times the quality of the food was good but on our last night it was terrible. And as for breakfast . . . . .it was beans, bacon something that resemble scrambled egg . .and if you wanted a freshly cooked omelette you had to wait about 10 to 15 minutes for it as the chef making them only had one gas ring and took forever to make 1 omelette. They need an extra gas ring or even have 3 on the go so that these items can be produced a lot quicker. People were getting annoyed having to wait for ages to get one. There is a small spa - which may mean why this hotel has a 4 star rating - couple of jacuzzi’s and a sauna. Also a massage room which you have to pay extra for - but worth it after a hard days skiing. Costs you 10 euros to use the spa for the week and they give you a robe and some slippers! Wooh!! Overall I was disappointed with my week’s stay at the hotel and mainly due to the standard of food at times and the noise. It really was seriously annoying. I wont be