Aethos Monterosa — Hotel in Ayas

We booked two rooms, one Mountain Suite and one Forest Suite, for seven night for our annual family ski vacation.|Overall it is a nice place but it does not meet the expectations set by its 5-star category and price.|On the positive side, the staff are very kind, friendly and responsive, with a special mention for the drivers of the vans that take guests back and forth from and to the village and ski lifts. They are truly wonderful.|The van service is very convenient and we never had to wait for more than a few minutes to be picked up and taken wherever we needed to go.|The breakfast buffet and à la carte menu in the morning are very good and of high quality and can accommodate all preferences and diets. Service can be inconsistent, though. The wait staff are friendly and responsive but quite disorganized and sometimes we had to ask for the same item many times before getting it to our table.|The hotel has very nice pool and spa, both indoor and outdoor, facilities. They ask guests to reserve access - they did not explain the system well at all by the way - but practically, even in peak season, we never had any issue using the facilities.|The ski room is also very convenient, secure and functional.|And now to the negatives. The suites are small and not functional at all. They are on two floors, organized in a way that makes no sense. The main bedroom is upstairs but there are no closets, drawers, or any kind of storage there. The bathroom upstairs, supposedly the main one, had a bath tub with no shower curtain or other protections so showering there meant flooding the room with water. The bathroom downstairs had a nice shower but no bidet, which by Italian standards means that it’s not even a real bathroom. Amazingly there is no place anywhere in the suite to hang your wet ski clothes at the end of the day, not even hooks on a wall, which are typical of hotels in ski resorts.|We paid a substantial amount more for the Mountain Suite than the Forest Suite but the two rooms were absolutely identical! When I mentioned it to the general manager he tried to joke about and make light of it trying to convince me that the alleged and non existent “Monte Rosa view” of the Mountain Suite justified the difference in price. Eventually he gave up and offered us a free dinner for four (beverages excluded) in the hotel’s restaurant, Summit, to, according to him, “keep us happy.” The dinner, of course, did not even begin to cover the difference in price for seven nights between the two rooms. And, by the way, the manager forgot to inform his front desk staff that the dinner was comped so it was still on the bill when we checked out.|The hotel’s restaurant, Summit, is hands down the worst restaurant we tried in Champoluc. It is very expensive with a limited menu and and almost offensively overpriced wine list. There is a bottle of red for 55€ and the next cheapest bottle is 90€. Service is spotty and not very attentive and friendly. The night we checked in we were all tired after long trips from far away places and tried to go to the restaurant about 30 minutes before our reservation time. There were plenty of available tables that we could see but we were sent, somewhat unceremoniously, away and asked to come back at the time of our reservation. Another afternoon a couple of us ordered salads in the bar area and had to wait almost an hour for them because there was some change of shifts between waiters and the order got lost.|At the spa, I got a massage and asked the masseuse for a sport massage and to go deep on my aching back and she proceeded to give me a very light and relaxing massage. It was nice but not what I asked for and did not do anything for my back.|In summary, the place would be fine if it cost much less. At these prices expectations are accordingly high and the hotel does not meet them.|We would not recommend it and will look elsewhere if we go back...

CamZero is a very good hotel. Here is my review:

Reception: The reception was super. When we arrived there where two boys that directly picked up the lugage and parked the car. Then we got something to drink and we went to the room. Super service!

Food: Breakfast The breakfast was very good. You had a variety of bread, cold cuts, some sweets etc...

Dinner The dinner was very tasty. We ate one evening in the summit restaurant. It was very tasy and the show was good. But, it was extremely expensive for what you got. For the price of the menu you will expect not only a good show and a "tasty" dinner. You should expect a good show and a special dinner. With more special dishes, and more special products. Simply it wasnt worth its money.

Lunch We ate one day a lunch after a walk were we hadnt enough sense to find a restaurant. The lunch was very good. We got some mixed cheese and a club chicken sandwich. But sorry it was way too expensive. We payed 60€ for a Chicken sandwich, the mixed cheese plate and some sparkling water. We know a 5* hotel can ask more money but was an exaggeration.

The rooms

The rooms were SUPER. Our room had two floors. Every floor had a bathroom with a rain shower and a toilet etc. On the main floor of the room you had a double bed and on the first floor you had 2 single beds. There was one problem: it was way to hot on the first floor. On the main floor you can open a window and it was there 19°C, a good sleeping temperature. But on the first floor it was 24°C. That is way too hot to sleep. There should be a possibility to open the window from the top of the room. You can't reach it.

Wellness The wellness can be beter. I think some good upgrades are: add one or two more hot tubs with bubbles, add 2 more heaven suites, get some beter speakers and a very important one: start thinking of an outdoor pool that is connected from the inside pool. You have so much space to extend the wellness.

Also: The music in the sauna and heaven suite is way too loud. Luckly we can get to the control panel of the music in the heaven suite so we can put the volume louder.

When childs under 16 want to enter the wellness, their parents have to sign a paper and write their phone number on it. Also there are some extra rules on it. That is ok but some childs will not respect it.

I was in the hot tub for like five minutes, then their got some childs in the same hot tub. That is ok but they were talking the whole time and it started to disturb.

This was my review. Hopefully CampZero will read this and will think about the things that could be better.

I will say that my stay at CampZero was very good.

If you search a good hotel near or in Champoluc i will surely...

[Rude, incompetent, unhelpful staff] My friend and I recently had the misfortune of dining at the Summit, a restaurant within the supposedly luxurious Aethos Monterosa Hotel. What should have been a delightful evening turned into an utter nightmare, culminating in an experience that epitomises incompetence and neglect on the part of the hotel staff.

As we concluded our meal and attempted to leave the premises, we were confronted with the harsh reality of the hotel's disregard for basic safety measures. Despite the surrounding Champoluc/Monterosa area having made diligent preparations for the snow, including plowing roads and spreading salt, the Aethos Monterosa Hotel had evidently chosen to forsake such responsibilities.

The steep driveway leading to the main road was encased in ice and snow, rendering it virtually impassable. When we sought assistance from the reception, our hopes were swiftly dashed by the dismissive attitude of the male receptionist. He callously informed us that there was nothing the hotel could do, citing the unavailability of salt and equipment locked away in a storage facility inaccessible to anyone but a departed staff member.

His lack of empathy was astounding as he instructed us to abandon our car—an insane proposition considering we resided in another village with no alternative means of transportation. When we implored him to at least provide a shovel, his refusal was met with further indignation as he retreated back into the hotel, leaving us stranded in the biting cold.

After an agonising wait, during which our pleas for assistance fell on deaf ears, two other staff members begrudgingly emerged, offering token gestures of aid that bordered on farcical. Their ill-equipped attire and feeble attempts to push our car up the icy incline only served to highlight the utter incompetence and apathy that pervaded the hotel's staff.

In the end, it was only through our own resourcefulness, and the use of a chain, that we were able to extricate ourselves from the predicament in which the hotel's negligence had ensnared us. The entire ordeal was a disgraceful display of ineptitude and disregard for guest well-being, leaving an indelible stain on what purported to be a five-star establishment.

I can only caution others against patronising the Aethos Monterosa Hotel. From the appalling lack of preparedness for inclement weather to the disdainful treatment meted out by the staff, every aspect of our stay reeked of incompetence and disrespect.

Save yourself the agony and seek accommodations...