Le Menuire Chalet Hôtel & Spa — Hotel in Albertville

My first alpine skiing holiday with a mixed group of 5. |Short review: |Wonderful hotel atmosphere, peerless staff, good food and well- located for the ski-lifts. |Review in detail: |The Gatwick to Grenoble flight is followed by a 1.45 hour coach transfer to the hotel. The transfer was seemless with our wonderful Neilson representative Cara meeting us in arrivals and escorting the us reminder of the way. The Manchester to Grenobe option is handled separately to the Gatwick flight so no waiting around. |The hotel is situated in the Les Menuire sub-division of Preyerand, 5 minutes walk west of its lively neighbour Croisette where most action happens including the ski-pass issuing office and start of the main ski-lifts. The 5 Les Menuire sub-districts Preyerand, Croisette, Bruyères, Reberty and Fontanette are all linked by a frequent bus service. If you have an hour to spare I'd recommend staying on the bus and doing the Reberty (red) bus circuit starting and stopping at the hotel - great views and lovely chalets at the Keya part of the route.|Rooms; decoration of the hotel is rudimentary but clean and the overall atmosphere is of a large chalet. 2 of us shared a room with 2x bunks plus a double bed and this room was just enough for two adults - would not suggest 4 adults. |Food was good and occasionally great especially soups. Afternoon tea at 1630 is a feast. |The boot room; others have mentioned competition for boot drying stations but there was no evidence of this and ski lockers are plentiful in the basement alongside the boot room. |Ski-hire; many reports of renters receiving sub-par equipment and being asked to pay additional fees on collection from the likes of Inter-sport. After looking at all reviews, Skemium at 73440 Saint Jean De Belleville, Les Menuire, a 5 minute walk from the hotel provided me with 2024 model skis immaculately prepared as part of their standard range and price-matched to the competition. |The pool: Staff will open at any time despite the advertised hours and I took advantage at 6am. |The staff: Just exceptionanal across the board. Dimitri, Cara and Alex are the three more senior front-of-house and looked at every turn to provide the best experience for customers without being prompted and we soon felt like one large family. Waiting staff, cleaners, reception staff were universally fantastic. |I would recommend without hesitation -...

Visited as part of a Nielson holiday.

Tldr: good/fine for the most part, but let down in places by the buildings design.

Location: almost ski in/out if you ski on the maintained (snowy) footpaths. A free bus stops directly outside to take you to/from the lifts if that doesn't work for you. Good views in general as it's built onto a hillside, the roadside rooms get a great view of the... Coach park though.

Common areas: the bar is way too small for the size of hotel. It does have a fireplace which is nice. Often dead by 10 though in our experience. The restaurant area is fine, but the area for the breakfast buffet is too small and resulted in everyone getting in everyone's way.

Rooms: generally good and functional. Ideally the rooms need more hanging space to dry wet ski gear. Toilet is separate to bathroom/sink (could be a pro or a con I guess) but the doors don't lock properly on them and can be tight to get in/out of due to the doors clashing. In our room there was a large draft through the balcony door that also let in road noise from the snowploughs etc in the mornings.

Food: breakfast could be a little disappointing (there is a hot breakfast option every day you have to ask for), but dinner generally had a good choice and of a good quality & quantity (remember to order sides, you can order extra main courses too if you need them)

Spa: meh. Sauna is large, but with as many people as there are always has people entering/leaving and cooling it down. Requires staff to turn it on again every few hours. The pool is merged with the 'hot tub' style jets etc. the pool is normally swimming pool temp, so there isn't actually a proper hot tub area. Anicdotally, the spa had less people using...

The staff and hotel were fantastic. Nothing was too much trouble. They were cheerful and helpful at all times and worked hard to make sure our needs were catered to. The room was spacious, comfortable and cosy. The hotel bar although compact and not really enough seating, had the advantage of making sure guests mixed as they were seated together. There was a variety of board games and the quiz and disco bingo were well attended and good fun.The pool area was large enough with loungers dotted around and although we didn’t use the sauna it looked very nice and had a great view. Boot room was conveniently located and the local free shuttle bus stopped right outside the hotel with a regular service. The only issue we could comment on was beyond the hotel’s control, namely the infrequent free bus service to the linked Val Thorens ski area( not part of the local Les Menuires shuttle service) ,which if you are lacking snow in Les Menuires and not the most confident to make it over the mountain on skis, provides an alternative route to the wider ski area. However this service only runs at 8.40, 9.55, then a huge gap with no further bus to Val Thorens until 13.25. Coming back the options were 13.50, 17.10 or 19.00 so not great for tired legs later in the day. This isn’t the fault of the hotel but it was also frustrating to find there was no bus to Val Thorens at all on a Saturday. Perhaps this is something Neilson can lobby the local council about. This is a minor frustration in an otherwise lovely week. We really cannot fault the hotel at all and would like to thank Dimitri and his team for a great holiday. Well...