Club Med Pragelato-Sestriere - Italian Alps — Hotel in Pragelato

Club med:

Getting to Club Med from Milano (MXP): Getting everyone « checked in » for their suitcases + ski bags at the airport was a shit show. We waited almost 3 hours before we could leave the airport. The organization to put skis and suitcases inside the buses was so poor. A bunch of clients actually had to start emptying buses and repack them again.

Arrival at club med: We were the first bus to arrive and still managed to waste over an hour. Took a while to get our door keys and then had to wait to go pay at the counter. Then managed to have some rooms but couldn’t stay close or in the same cabin even if we booked our 4 rooms together.

Cabins/rooms: The cabins are 2-10 mins walking from the main lodge it is totally fine to walk from one cabin to the main lodge, but I think it made people not dress up as much because it was quite cold and you couldn’t really walk in shoes or heels. The cabins themselves were pretty nice. The rooms are a little bigger than in other club med we have been to. Bed was comfy. We had the best pressure in our showers and hot water!! The rooms were well cleaned and organized everyday. *The village is pretty isolated. Not a lot to see around or do.

Renting skis: A NIGHTMARE! We have rented skis in other club med and have had a way better service than here. The people at the ski shop didn’t know what they were doing. We paid for prestige to get the best skis for the week. We asked them to sharpen our skis and they told us to ski at least one day before to try them.. the guy setting our skis had no clue how to adjust correctly. My brother‘s ski fell off one second after he put his boot in. My bindings were very loose as well, and when we started skiing, our skis were so not sharp that it was actually dangerous to ski on them and we asked our guide just to confirm and he said it was really really bad, so we ended up going back to Club Med to get them sharpened which didn’t change that much because of the machine type they are using, they even told us to stay in Canada if we weren’t happy with the «quality » of work they were doing. We ended up paying €15 on the mountain each to get our skis sharpened for the week. Club Med didn’t want to reimburse us for it.

Guide: LUCA M! He was THE BEST! Very kind and attentive. He made this week honestly. We had a great group as well. Luca was extremely patient with all of us and had so much knowledge to share about the mountain. We would come back just for him!

Ski resort: we got lucky and got some snow the week before we arrived, so most slopes were open at the beginning of the day. We still have to take the gondola from Club Med to Sestriere and it does take a while, but you can ski all the way back to Club med once on the mountain. It is beautiful and you are able to go all the way to France if you take a ton of chair lifts.

Food: The food was good. It lacked a little bit of spices in my opinion. Val Thorens had better food. The restaurant had enough rooms for us to always have a table ready when we walked in. The bar was good but it is on a different floor. I must admit, the people working at the buffet were productive and running non stop!

Entertainment: live music, DJ & Sax were amazing. Wish we had it every day. The night shows were meh, maybe I’m just not the right crowd for it. The party wasn’t as crazy as in Val Thorens. The pool was coldish but perfect for swimming! It was mostly empty when I went. The access to ping pong tables and stuff like that was only reserved for teens…

Front desk: The people at the front desk were patient and kind but sadly not really helpful. We spent over 4 hours at the front desk to deal with all the complications. We were told we got silver status and had money to spend at the shop but then it was only one of us that could spend it. Club Med promised €200 and in the end we were only able to use €50.

Overall: I still enjoyed my week here with my family and meeting people in our ski group and at happy hour or dinner. Would probably not come back but still happy...

We just spent a week at Club Med Pragelato-Sestriere. Overall, we enjoyed our vacation but largely because of the people we met and hung out with, on the slopes and in the bars, rather than for anything special Club Med did. I would not return to this Club Med if I was coming back to the region.

The Facilities. 4/5.

The facilities and rooms were very nice, recently renovated by the clean looks of them. The common areas were nice as well, though it felt a bit cramped in the areas where everyone wanted to be at the same time (dining hall, main bar).

The Food and Drink. 3/5.

This was my third Club Med location and there are commonalities when it comes to food and drinks. The main area food buffet is always well-stocked and full of options, with high-quality and tasty food. But if you get tired of that, and you will after a week of eating breakfast/lunch/dinner there, then options are sparse. The only other option were the two onsite “restaurants” which were neither good nor available. Go ahead and try to book a table on your very first day, only to find out that they are both completely booked for your entire week. The “app” they want you to use for making reservations is a technical joke and finding people who can help you is almost impossible.

As for the drinks, you want to steal away to town for a real drink. Something about all alcoholic beverages at Club Med has me swearing that they are all either watered down or simply low alcohol (like 3.2%) by design. Seriously, I know what a couple of cocktails or half a bottle of wine should feel like, and that simply is not the case at Club Med.

The Activities. 3/5 (really 5/5 for skiing and 1/5 for everything else)

This is clearly a skiing destination, and for that they are well-equipped with tons of guides, equipment, and great locker rooms. But if you want to do anything besides skiing, well, you’re a bit out of luck. The pool is cold and overseen by two lifeguards with little sense of humor and who just talk to each other all day. Little kids brave the cold water while parents observe from the warm deck. There is a snowshoe guide which I heard was ok, but that is just a couple of hours each day. And that’s it, we’re at the end of the activity list.

The G.O.s. 1/5.

The famed Club Med GOs are the customer-facing part of every Club Med experience, tasked with turning a simple vacation into an “experience”. This includes all activity leaders, MCs, and other bright personalities that roam around each location. In Cancun they were fun, knowledgeable, and always worth spending a little time with. At Club Med Pragelato-Sestriere, they ranged from nice but not very helpful, to dismissive and decidedly unhelpful. It is like everyone there was confused how the place ran, which is not great coming from the people who run it.

Also, at the two other Clubs I’ve been to, the GOs worked very hard on daytime and nighttime entertainment, usually in the form of campy shows and “circus” performances for the GMs. But here? Nothing. No shows, no singing, nothing for adults to do at night but drink watered-down drinks.

As a business leader I’ve done several transformations to turn teams around. Left to me, I would “transform” this club … fire the GOs and hire a new leader and a new set of GOs.

The Staff. 5/5.

I separated this set of personnel out from the GOs to properly recognize them. By “staff, not GO” I mean the cook staff, wait staff, and cleaning staff. All these people did their job very professionally and very well, and with a smile and a great attitude. These folks were outstanding and really the only bright spot in terms of personnel at the Club. Special call outs to our room service expert, “pizza guy”, and our favorite food/bar waiters Alberto and Naceur. In fact, Naceur gave us a hug on our last day as we said goodbye. Put him in charge of this place.

I hope this helps in your...

This review and rating is for a winter club med. I'd guess pragelato club med is nicer in the summer. I hope some club med employee reads this and fixes at least some of these issues.

Maintenance seems lacking. Pathway stones between rooms are popped out or missing. Our showerhead broke and sprayed water. We ran out of hot water on our last night. Our heating was making loud thumping sounds every night. The piano in the restaurant looks great but is sadly not tuned and sounds terrible, I wish we could have done a sing along.

Transportation sucks. There is a municipal shuttle from club med to Pragelato (small nearby town with 2 ski shops), and a 20 minute walk gets you to the Sestriere bus stop (3 euro per person in a 15 minute ride to the nearby ski village with 30 ski shops). We got stranded multiple times in Pragelato and Sestriere needing a taxi which is 30-50 euros and some taxi drivers were cash only. Sometimes it was hard to even get the taxi as no app seems to work, it's all about calling the right dispatcher numbers. The ski school operates a bus to Sestriere and back, I wonder if Club Med could do the same. We wanted to head to Pragelato and Sestriere for some shops, restaurants and because the ski gear was so expensive in Club Med. Turns out there's a market in Pragelato on Sunday too.

Maybe it would've been neat to ski-in to Club Med but there wasn't enough snow when we visited and that piste was closed. Having to use the gondola 4 ways each day (morning out, lunch back, 2pm out, 4pm back) takes an hour off the already short ski day which is unfortunate.

For intermediate to advanced skiers and snowboarders this place is probably ok. For the day zero beginners it's great too because the gondola takes you to beginner 2 conveyor belts that were practically empty compared to the Sestriere beginner area. But if you're a day 3 beginner that needs to practice lifts then you're out of luck. You better have a shuttle to Sestriere because the path from the gondola down, and the path back to the gondola from the lift is pretty intermediate. My daughter was able to manage it after her first week of snowboarding but I would not recommend it for anyone that isn't athletic and willing to fail a lot on the way.

The food at the club med was awesome as expected. Though for some reason out of 12 people in our party, 4 people got so sick they were out of commission for 24 hours. Multiple other groups shared a similar experience. I suspect it was pathogen based because some people got sick on different days with similar symptoms.

I tried twice to get my daughter into the club med teen club, but the GOs there didn't speak English and in translation I must've misunderstood where or when the meetup is because they weren't there when I brought her.

Getting to the main restaurant when it's cold outside was painfully cold. Maybe I should've worn more layers. Still the club med cabins concept feels less fun when it's so hard to get out of bed to meet up for breakfast, or just to hang out with others.

The event the GO Yuval organized was pretty fun and I'm happy for it. The circus performance was cool. The live music performances were great. Also we enjoyed using the "bar" on the second floor for board games, otherwise it was too loud in the bar-lounge to play.

We were a big group and it's an expensive vacation. We love going to club med for snowboarding about once a year. So we had high expectations and were pretty disappointed with the experience in this Club Med Pragelato. If I ever come back to the area I'd probably prefer a hotel...