Across the Alps, a new crop of small, intimate mountain lodges have opened in recent years, promising to redefine the European ski experience. Old-guard luxury hotels \u2014 with their capacious dining rooms and cigar lounges draped in faux furs \u2014 still cater to European families who come year after year, and tend to spend all day on the slopes, from first tracks to the last lift. But propelled, in part, by the growing number of overseas visitors to Europe in winter, these new properties are looking to entice a more varied crowd, including those who appreciate good food, idiosyncratic design and cosseting spas just as much as, if not more than, they do skiing. Of the five notable newcomers listed here, some are adults-only and some all-inclusive; others are ski-in, ski-out properties or boutique spinoffs of lavish palace hotels. All have fewer than 30 rooms, which only makes the surrounding mountains appear all the more majestic. <\/p>\n
The BreconAdelboden, Switzerland<\/p>\n
Adelboden, a picturesque Swiss village in the canton of Bern, is full of chocolate-box wooden chalets, among them the Brecon, formerly the Huldi Hotel, which emerged two summers ago after an extensive renovation by its new owners, the Welshman Grant Maunder and his American wife, the artist Andr\u00e8a Anderson, and the Dutch design studio Nicemakers. They filled the hotel and its 22 guest rooms with a cheery, eclectic mix of furniture and d\u00e9cor: earthy jute rugs, vintage alpine maps, rattan wall sconces and pastel pottery made by Anderson. Like Eriro (see below), the Brecon is geared toward adults \u2014 guests must be at least 18 \u2014 and all meals, including the four-course dinners (mushroom risotto and a fig and ricotta salad were recent highlights), are covered by the rate. After a day skiing on the Adelboden-Lenk region\u2019s 124 miles of piste, guests can retreat to the spa\u2019s steam room or sauna, or soak in the outdoor thermal pool to watch the alpenglow ignite the tips of the surrounding Wildstrubel massif. From about $775 per night, all-inclusive, thebrecon.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n H\u00f4tel Saint GeorgesMeg\u00e8ve, France<\/p>\n Scheduled to open this month, the H\u00f4tel Saint-Georges is the latest from the hospitality group Chapitre Six, which operates nine boutique hotels across France. Designed by the British artist Luke Edward Hall, who refurbished the former property\u2019s interiors by adding floral carpets, vintage wallpaper and twee bed skirts depicting woodland creatures and skiers zooming downhill. The makeover brought a whimsical quality to each of the 24 rooms, no two of which are alike. The spa has hot and cold pools and a sauna, while a game room and library offer additional rainy-day alternatives to skiing. Le Trappeur, the hotel\u2019s cozy, wood-paneled restaurant, serves bistro classics on checkered tablecloths, and a lively piano bar aims to get things rollicking in the evenings. From about $350 a night, hotelsaintgeorges-megeve.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n Badrutt\u2019s Palace Hotel, Serlas WingSt. Moritz, Switzerland<\/p>\n Between its Gothic Revival arches, castle-like turrets and the harpist stationed near the champagne bucket during breakfast service, Badrutt\u2019s Palace Hotel is still one of St. Moritz\u2019s most glamorous time warps. But earlier this year, the Swiss grande dame opened the unapologetically modern Serlas Wing, designed by the Milan-based firm ACPV Architects Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel. A squat building with a flat granite facade that sits across the street from the far more ornate mothership, it holds just 25 guest rooms \u2014 the smallest of which measure 440 square feet \u2014 each featuring wood flooring and wool-covered walls, B&B Italia sofas and fabrics by Loro Piana. An underground tunnel that connects the wing to Badrutt\u2019s main building is lined with entrances to designer boutiques and a Hauser & Wirth gallery, and guests have access to the amenities on offer at the larger hotel, including ski butlers, a spa and outdoor thermal pool and, perhaps most crucially, a fondue restaurant.<\/a> From about $1,600 a night, badruttspalace.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n Eriro Alpine HideEhrwald, Austria<\/p>\n The journey to this nine-room hotel in the Ehrwalder Alm ski area<\/a> on the Germany-Austria border is a big part of the appeal. You\u2019ll first need to take the Ehrwalder Almbahn cable car for a 5,000-foot climb to the mountain station before being picked up in a snowmobile for a 10-minute ride to the ski-in, ski-out chalet. Opened last year, Eriro Alpine Hide is a distinctly grown-up hideaway (guests must be ages 16 or up), where the on-site restaurant, overseen by the chef Alexander Thoss, originally from Berlin, specializes in wild and foraged cuisine like tender chamois (an alpine goat), smoked celeriac pur\u00e9e, fermented herbs and tiny candied pine cones. Room rates include those meals, as well as drinks (local wines and schnapps feature prominently on the menu), ski passes and less-common amenities like snowshoes, high\u2013tech avalanche kits and Swarovski binoculars for spotting local wildlife. The rooms have ceilings made of salvaged wood and sprawling balconies with stellar views of the Bavarian and Tyrolean Alps. There\u2019s also a large spa with three onsen-like pools, including a darkened meditation bath, and a lounge-cum-cinema with walls made of fragrant hay. From about $1,800 a night, all-inclusive, eriro.at<\/a>.<\/p>\n Maya Hotel Courchevel 1850Courchevel 1850, France<\/p>\n At first glance, Maya Hotel, which opened this month in the French ski resort of Courchevel, resembles an advent calendar, owing to its tidy rows of boxy balconies set against a wood-and-stone frame. Inside, the 14 guest rooms, with nary an antler in sight, seem to take their design cues from penthouse apartments in Manhattan or Singapore. The d\u00e9cor features bright splashes of red and orange, along with wood-lattice panels, sofas in saffron or heather gray and subtle touches of Chinoiserie. Custom-designed Lalique crystal pieces, including a chandelier composed of 39 gold-lustered crystal anemones, are found throughout the property. Breaking from the heavy potato and melted cheese staples of the area, the hotel\u2019s Thai-Japanese restaurant, Mayabay, serves up Wagyu and tuna sashimi and warming bowls of tom yum kung soups. A second restaurant, Maya Altitude, is a color-saturated brasserie that hosts apr\u00e8s-ski DJ sets. From about $915 a night with a two-night minimum, maya-hotel.fr<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Across the Alps, a new crop of small, intimate mountain lodges have opened in recent years, promising to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[1822,50,18086,32759,26809,32760],"class_list":{"0":"post-58899","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-alps","8":"tag-alpine-skiing","9":"tag-alps","10":"tag-alps-mountains","11":"tag-aroundtheworld25","12":"tag-hotels-and-travel-lodgings","13":"tag-winter-season"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116501824486370426","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}