Alpenhotel St.Christoph

Such a great hotel in great location (St Christoph) if you are happy being outside the noisier St Anton. Having said that, it is but 10mins away on the bus or taxi so you can enjoy the best of both worlds. Hotel is ski in/out which is great. Within the hotel, be prepared to feel like you've arrived in a friend's fine country house and they are serving you the most delicious 5 course meals every evening. Everyone was so friendly. Skis can be hired from a short walk away (Alber Sport) and they have an arrangement for return such that you only have to leave them in the boot room by the stairs. There a spa downstairs where you can rest your weary limbs. A great option for long weekend or week (or more) skiing.

We had a large comfortable room with beautiful views across St Christophe from the front. Bathroom was dated but large and functional. Overall we felt the room was good value. We ventured to the steam room in the spa area a few times which was nice. The ski room has lockable ski lockers (opened with your key card), though can be a cramped area when everyone is trying to put boots on. It is ski out and sort of ski in, though you have to push from the last run on a flat area and then walk the last part - but that is splitting hairs. Beware though that if you pick up from the ski school then you either have to head back up the chairlift to get back to ski to the hotel or face a good 10 or 15 minute uphill walk back to the hotel. Wi-fi is quite variable, with very slow or no internet in the evening, though no doubt the number of tweens and teens meant a lot of bandwidth was in demand during the NYE week. The restaurant is spacious yet cosy and a lot of aesthetic effort has gone in to how it is presented. Food quality was consistently very high. The downside to the restaurant was the sometimes very lengthy wait times at dinner. As you place your orders at breakfast for the coming evening, this should not really be the case. For families with younger children it can mean keeping them entertained at the table when they really need to be in bed ready for skiing the next day. We often ended up with our son in bed much later than we wanted, with a knock on effect the next day. A low point for us was the New Year’s Eve gala dinner. This went on far too long with huge gaps between the courses. The table next to us gave up half way through the dinner. After an hour, we had to ask for our son’s main course - he’s only 10 and had been skiing all day and really needed to get some food into him. Initially I was told it would still be a long time because of the number of covers they had in. I had to insist he got his main course, and they were pretty grumpy about me doing that. When the dish came I wondered if it was deliberate that it was very inadequate in size - more suited to a five year old. Indeed we saw those children at other tables who waited out the two hours for their main courses got a superior meal than he did. I ended up giving him my steak when that eventually arrived, about three hours after we had originally st down, and not having a main course myself. The restaurant and head waiter did however make this up to my son on the two subsequent nights. He received decent portion perfectly cooked meals, including a large superb fillet steak on one evening, and the service on our last night was prompt. So perhaps the slow service was a Christmas period issue. We were feeling pretty positive overall, putting the NYE experience aside, until our final bill experience. I don’t want to overplay this, but it was upsetting at the time. A couple of days into our stay we had been given to sign one breakfast a small