CGH Résidences & Spas - Le Kalinda

The layout is excellent, 3 bathrooms! The heating is electric, dries the air. There was a problem with parking the car: the height of the parking lot does not allow check-in. You can't stand anywhere on the street! But this is not a hotel idea.

For a self catering apartment we can’t fault it relative to other places in the Alps. You pay a lower price to accept being a bit out of the action of the main resort, which is fine. We had plenty of space for the 4 of us. Well stocked Spar on the doorstep and also ski hire. We came as a family, the pool was very popular. Actually, my only ask would be that the WiFi is upgraded to embrace the modern era. Logging in via a website, every time you want to engage with WiFi, is vintage stuff. I appreciate that cables in the mountains aren’t going to be great. However, Starlink avoids any of these issues so that isn’t really an excuse for a substantial modern establishment. Something to consider.

The hotel is just what we wanted: close to the slopes, self catering, with swimming pool. It ticked all those boxes. The apartment itself was the 4-6 person one. There were 4 of us and I wouldn’t have wanted any more people in there! There were 6 chairs around the dining table but this left no space at all for cooking- so we moved two of the chairs elsewhere. You need to use the table as work surface as there is about 20cm of workspace on the actual kitchen worktop! Other than that it was perfectly comfortable. There was a (very narrow) bath, a shower, a large outdoor terrace area just for us, comfortable beds, and good control of the temperature. We did have a couple of issues with the oven and a couple of items missing, but they were sorted promptly with no hassle. The oven even got replaced with a new one whilst we were skiing on the first day. The lift takes you down to your large ski locker cupboard in the basement, which also has boot heaters. From there can walk through the underground carpark and take another lift up to within about 20m of the slopes. There’s a beginner area immediately outside with magic carpets and from the bottom of that you have gondolas up and down the mountain. You can also jump onto the free bus which literally leaves from outside the reception of the hotel, and takes you to Val D’Isere, Tignes 2100, Les Brevieres etc. so if you just want to go to those villages quickly without taking several gondolas, you can. We didn’t bother! The ski hire shop is basically in the hotel. The lift pass shop is right there too, about a minute’s walk away. There’s also a Spar which sells most essentials, right next to the hotel, in the same building. The pools, saunas and steam rooms are top notch. The jacuzzis are nice but could be warmer. In terms of facilities, the only downside is that there isn’t a bar, as such. There is a large lounge at reception which you can sit in and drink your own drinks, but no bar (though they do sell bottles of wine). I wouldn’t say it was somewhere to stay if you want the most sociable holiday as it wasn’t hugely easy to meet other people. Negatives: They say they give you dishwasher tablets, which they do, but we only got 6 for a 7 day stay. We asked for more and we’re told we were lucky to have got more than 1! They only give you two loo rolls. They give you two absolutely tiny bottles of washing up liquid, one sponge and one cloth. And no coffee filters for the machine. If you want to buy these things from the shop they’re expensive, so try to take your own. The biggest negative is the WiFi. It’s absolutely unusable: slow and it cuts out all the time anyway. Make sure you have plenty of data on your phones. Luckily the mobile reception is good. However, were it not for the rubbish WiFi, I’d have given five stars. But… it was very good overall. Extremely friendly staff, super location for the slopes, the bus stop, the ski hire and the shop. Plenty of snow in late March, too.