Alpe d'Huez France

Pros

Good food. Nice drinks, Friendly service., Swimming pool. Kids club for children under 11 is great addition as they get kids ready for ski school. Ski in and ski out. Rooms are nice. Price includes lift passes and ski lessons and all food and drink. Fire works on Saturday nights at 9.45pm.

Cons

Hotel is huge so a long walk to anywhere. Nasty smell in main stair well near restaurant. Loud dance music played almost everywhere which if you like the Buzz of apre ski might be a plus but this is lively hotel and not for everybody…. If you like peace and quiet this hotel isn’t for you, this is party hotel! Shower is over the bath type which for a hotel of this price point isn’t great. Food is buffet only, well there is one other gourmet restaurant however the menu is the same all week, so we only used the gourmet restaurant once. Cant check in until 2pm and rooms might not be ready until 8pm….

On arrival is disappointing that our room wasn’t ready but in fairness I had ready online that rooms might not be ready until 8pm! We got our room about 4pm ( after arriving at 2pm). If you arrive before 2pm you have to pay extra for lunch at the hotel. So worth planning your arrival after 2pm.

Worth requesting a room near block B, ( we were block E) and this is a long walk to anywhere, block B is the place to book.

Teenagers have to ski with the other teenages, our 11 and 14 year old were not allowed to ski with the adult lessons. Ski lessons are with ESF.

On site ski rental looked modern with good skis.

Mini club for children under 11 is a nice touch you just drop you kids off and they will get them to their lessons. Note on the first morning it’s a fight! Arrive 45 minutes early on the first day, I,e if you have 9am children’s lessons drop kids off at 8.15pm….( they said 8.30 but the queue is already massive at 8.30am) its fine the rest of the week just the first day you need to arrive mega early for lessons/mini club drop off and expect to queue for 30 minutes. ( 5 minute queue for rest of the week).

Gym and fitness classes are great. Spin class in particular was very good as are the spin bikes.

Ive ready lots of bad reviews from people saying that things haven’t improved since last year…. Well lets be honest if it was bad customers wouldn’t rebook…. The club med chain has a large number of repeat guests.

The clientele is mainly middle class parents aged 40 to 55, well I say mainly I mean almost exclusively. So everybody is about the same age with kids at a nice prep school. There are also older teenagers however all well behaved. If you don’t have kids then don’t book this hotel…. If you don’t ;ike loud apre ski dance music again don’t book it.

1 minute ski down to marmots lift or a 5 minute walk and you have access to the marmots lift which takes you up to the folice Douce… Some of the best Apre ski ive ever seen. Well worth a visit to Folie douce 3pm to 4.30pm ( leave kids in the kids club until 5pm). Review of the food in the Folice Douce are mixed but we had good food and service.

Overall, the hotel was excellent, but I left an item there and have been trying to contact the hotel since. Over a week has passed and they do not answer their phone or emails and Club Med UK's 3 attempts have not yielded a response. I left a valuable jacket and all someone needs to do is check lost property to confirm if it was handed in, but 8 attempts at contact have all been ignored.

Great location for slopes, lovely wide balcony for apres ski, excellent food. Modern rooms, with plenty of space. Service patchy but good overall.

Club Med Alpe d'Huez was brilliant from start to finish. Lovely hotel and staff, great food, ESF were really good and was a super weeks skiing.