Cervinia Valtournenche — Attraction in Zermatt

I have been skiing all my life in Europe and North America, been to dozens of ski resorts, and can honestly say Cervinia is the worst resort I have been to.

Some good:

1- The village and landscapes are pretty, surrounded by very high peaks (including the Matterhorn) 2- Lots of restaurants and bars and a friendly village 3- Altitude is high (2000m - 3500m), that definitely helps with snow conditions and also some long runs.

A lot of bad:

1- Ski run quality: if you are anything above a medium skier, Skiing in Cervinia will be boring to you. There are no black runs in the entire mountain (actually it is not true, there is a small piece of a red called black on the Itialian side). There are even very few true red runs. Most runs are tagged 'red', but should be all blue in an international classification. In practice: All you do is ski on large, flat blues all day.

2- Lift infrastructure: is ridiculously bad! The entire main village has only ONE chair to go up. As you can imagine, on a busy day, it can take up to an hour to go up (see pciture). There is a gondola on the other side of the village (Valtournenche), if you like to hike 15 minutes with your skis. Additionally, the resort is quite spread (and hilly), but there are NO public shuttles. Any mid to large size resort has public shuttles, but not Cervinia.

3- Orientation and navigation. There is actually not one part of Cervinia 'Ski Paradise' skiing resort , but at least 3 parts, and 2 just on the Italian side - the Cervinia/Breuil (main village) side and the Valtournenche side. But there are very few places where to connect between the two parts (or the 3 parts with Switzerland), so getting around is super hard and time consuming. Combine that with the fact that there are NO signs on the slopes. Ok maybe there are 2 in the entire mountain. If you miss a turn, that may mean you are going to the wrong side of the mountain and need to take multiple lifts to go back to where you need to be. Which, when it is the end of the day, can be a costly mistake. You can find yourself at the bottom very far form your hotel or place you stay. Hope you dont mind spending 45 min to go back to the turn you missed, or walk with your skis 20+ minutes if the lifts are closed when you reach the bottom...and there are no shuttles to take you around at the bottom of the resort? :)

4- Snow condition: While being high altitude means better snow coverage in general, the resort is also known to be very windy, which means new snow gets wiped iff and conditions become very icy overall. With wind, big parts of the mountain close quickly. Maintenance seem also very poor on the slopes. If it snows, most runs wont open until 11 or 12 the next day....While everyone is coming to enjoy the fresh snow!

5- Lodging - I reserved quite late for my week trip, so I probably did not have all the best choices. But lodging was very expensive and the quality/price was very off. Many buildings seem to have been built in the 1960s or 1970s and are lacking basic comfort and facilities. There were a few 1000$ a night nice hotels, but that may not be for everyone

6- Non ski activities: Have kids or family members that don't ski? Youa re out of luck! Never seen a resort with ZERO options for hiking, snow rackets, kids activities...

In conclusion:

Cervinia 'Ski Paradise' is closer to helll :). It is worse for skiing than any mid size French or Swiss Alps resorts. Despite all the above, the lift tickets are 20% more expensive than a top resort in France, that includes: Many lifts to take you up the mountains, varied terrain including many true black runs, signs ont the slopes so you actually know where you are going, a shuttle bus to take you around at the base of the resort, good lodging (comparatively) and extra activity options.

In short, Cervinia built a reputation as a top resort. It just seems to have been stuck in the 1930s-70s where it started. Go there if you want to take a nice selfie at the bar with the Matterhorn. To ski, there are many, many better and...

The justification for my review is explained in depth below. The short version is that if you are anything beyond a novice skier, this is not the resort for you. If you are in the process of picking a resort for an upcoming ski trip, you will find far better places for the same cost.

Hugely disappointed with Cervinia. Having skied a significant number of resorts across France, Switzerland, Austria etc. never have I been quite so frustrated.

Given the location and access to Zermatt, this should be a gem, however even when conditions at the highest lifts in Cervinia were fantastic (blue sky and absent wind), the Zermatt links were still not opened. On the one day when the Zermatt link was opened, there was clearly no rush and it took until 10:30am to open it all. This reflects the general attitude of the resort staff. Lifts advertised as opening at 8:20 or 8:30 were often not open until well after 9am. Some days upper lifts were closed until gone 10am. Lifts were even closed earlier than advertised with staff clearly just wanting to leave as soon as possible. Even the piste bashing seemed half-hearted, for whatever reason they just were not of a quality found in other resorts. Staff in the ticket office all seemed unable to give the same figures for what the unnecessarily confusing pricing system was and misled us to our financial detriment. When confronted they were extremely rude.

Advertising the resort as a truly linked ski area with Zermatt is almost misleading- the odds of getting across the border are low.

The lift pass for just the Cervinia side is massively overpriced. Having spent the previous week in Ischgl, the lift passes are basically the same cost for 6 days. However at Ischgl you get a hugely extensive well kept resort, extremely modern and efficient lift system, polite and hardworking staff, beautiful surroundings and town. Indeed the pass was comparitively expensive compared with many resorts I have visited recently including St Anton, Val D'isere, L2A.

The pistes themselves are fabulous for total beginners but even intermediate skiers will become bored quickly. Black slopes are very straight forward, the reds that proliferate the resort would in many cases be blue elsewhere. The terrain is such that runs are mainly long flat sections interspersed with the odd downhill. This combined with the slow, exposed lifts makes for sheer tedium.

The lift system is by far the worst I have experienced anywhere in a major European resort. As other reviews have noted, the lift buildings in some cases look like something from war torn Aleppo. The lifts are excrutiatingly slow, often without covers despite being exposed. Gondolas are slow and outdated, sometimes without proper seats. To get to the top of the resort/to Zermatt requires either 3 separate gondolas or a gondola and three separate chairs. In any modern resort the top would be reached by one or at the...

I've mixed feelings about the Cervino ski area. On the plus the apres ski is ok and prices are not excessive, and when we wanted the toilet we could easily find one. If the weather is good, and there's not loads of people this area has some nice runs and great views. There are many flat areas so it's not very snowboard friendly unless you are an intermediate/advanced rider. If you are like me and plan to access Switzerland from Italy think again. Due to the amount of people (we came in March) it took us from 8:30am until 1pm to get to the viewing platform at the Matterhorn Glacier Paradise and we didn't have enough time to ski to Zermat and queue again to get back to Italy, so we abandoned the idea of skiing in Switzerland. During our 7 day stay the Swiss slopes were open just once, and the whole area was closed for a full day due to the weather. This resort suffers from wind and a clear day can turn into a white out in a matter of minutes, as we discovered, twice. At the base of Cervinia we queued for the Plan Maison cable car with around 200 other people and there is a serious crush risk. My group of 6 were all crushed by the rush of everyone pushing to get on the cable car. It is dangerous. When we got there, the queue for Plan Rosa cable car was huge, roughly 2 hours, so we took the gondola back down and found an alternative route via 3 different chair lifts. The lifts and gondolas here are old and unlike other resorts, no-one bothers to dust the snow off them. The gondolas are from the 80's so they either don't have seats or are so small it's a real squeeze, a pair of skis won't stand up inside. We were also told by lift staff the lifts are one way only. A couple of days we had a total white out and when we asked we were refused the chair down. The parking is very badly organised. You need to tap your payment card to enter the carpark, but you still need to queue at the machine to pay €10 at the end of the day. (At the time of writing the Valtournenche car park was free). We would have preferred to use a ski-bus but the ski bus service is poor. We were only staying 10 minutes from Valtournenche, but there were no ski buses. My final gripe is you need to pay for the ski pass card, but they won't refund you for it. Even though there are only 4 lifts, Valtournenche provides great value for money and we found some good runs on and off piste. If you get lucky with the weather you'll have...