Hotel Cristallo - Wellness Mountain Living — Hotel in Pustertal - Val Pusteria

Amazing place. The highlights are the food and service. ||Text: 1. The good/fine:||The place is beautifully appointed in modern alpine decor. Lots of places to take IG photos. Good view by local standards, great by normal standards. We got a suite with a mountain/pool view (more on this later). The room is very nice, albeit a bit small for a suite. Coffee and tea maker in the room and a few pay-per items in the mini fridge. No iron but you can pay to have laundry done ($4-8 per item!). Basic soap, shampoo, and lotion included.||2. The great:||The food. We got 3/4 board and every thing was really excellent at every meal. Very close to Michelin star quality meals. Divine dolci aplenty. There is a heavy snack in the afternoon that can be a lunch so this is basically all inclusive minus drinks (more on that later). Service was all around great. No complaints.||3. The bad/needs improvement:||The big one: the hotel is right on a busy highway and it is LOUD. You will hear cars all day and night. The wellness area vibe is tainted by constant car noise. At night, there is NO A/C so you need to have your balcony door open in the summer. But that means extremely loud cars and headlights coming directly in your room all night. Also directly across the street is a parking lot where Italian teenagers apparently party until 2am on the weekends. Peaceful sleep was a serious problem. The rooms should at least have a fan so you can close the door in summer and not overheat. I would try to get a room on the backside if I came back, but then the view isn’t nearly as good. ||No outdoor hot tub. Seems like a major miss because it’s cold or mild all year. There is a “warm tub” down in the basement with the kiddie pool, but no one above the age of 10 wants to be down there. It’s insanely loud and kind’ve dungeon-ie. If you have teenagers aged 10-16 that are more mature/calm types, they will be miserable here because they technically can’t go in the outside “spa” pool (16+) but will hate the indoor kids pool.||Wellness area nudity: a lady comes around enforcing this bizarre mandatory nudity rule in the wellness area. You can wear a towel but NO swimsuit in the steam room or saunas. It’s NOT optional. There is no private changing area so it’s like they’re promoting nudity here. I ended up just covering my suit with a towel when she wasn’t looking, but I literally had to hide from the lady all week. Really bizarre and creepy. You will see old naked Germans.||Dining area: atmosphere a bit sterile. No view. No dinner music. Not dimly lit. They also don’t enforce the rules/signs, as every night some adult males were wearing flip flops and shorts to dinner. Kind’ve disappointing for Italy but again the food was great.||Bar/snack area : great selection but was basically always dead. Because NOBODY in their right mind wants to pay $20 for a cocktail. Beer was 6e so that was decent. ||So all in all a great place with several areas they can fix and one huge thing they can’t fix (the highway noise). Probably would return but get a...

The best 4 ⭐️ Hotel in Alta Badia...that I've been too.

Almost absolutely perfect, literally 99.9% perfect. The service was a traditional friendly Italian service. Lovely, smiley, happy employees working on the desk, at the bar and in the restaurant. It doesn't matter what you ask for, 4 more pillows, 2 extra bowls of fantastic bucatini amatriciana (that's right, pasta for desert is possible) pasta.

The bar was peaceful throughout the day, but also quite lively in the evening when the live piano player was around (which was beautifully played). The bar men and women were again friendly and inventive! We threw all kinds of cocktails at them and they managed to make them all, with some extra flare!

There were extra nibbles throughout the day. Sunday evening there was a buffet of free sushi, cakes, fish, meats, pizzas...a true Italian feast! You'd think we were at the wedding of the infamous Michael Corleone. (Side note, I'd have signs up or tell the customers that this service is on, as some people missed out).

The spa, oooooooooo that was lovely. Outside pool in the evening under the stars in the mountains was truly special. Steam room, saunas, fresh fruit, flavoured water and many relaxing rooms. Plus, a zero child policy...winner winner. The gym was fine, no problems there, maybe a few extra things, but who's really going to the gym on a ski holiday?

Lastly the restaurant, an all inclusive hotel usually let's itself down on the food, BUT the restaurant here was stupendous. You choose an entree, starter, main and dessert (always a buffet of cheese, yes a lot of cheese!). All of which were so tasty. I mean seriously bloody good. The meat was cooked to perfection, the plates were decorated as if I was fine dinning in London. The wine selection was mental, I mean really if you love Italian wine they've got a bottle or two (or 4!) for you. I would say, if you're a fussy eater, try the food - choose a couple extra plates. If you find nothing you like to eat, well then grow up and stop being so fussy because the food really is delicious and there's something for everybody.

This doesn't apply to me, but there's a big kids area you can drop off the kids. Including a kids pool bit, which looked horrible for me, but if you're a parent I suppose it's ideal.

NEVERTHELESS, the downsides are.... the beds, they're not that comfortable. If you like the soft and squishy mattress, just pack a mattress topper. (I'll be doing that next year!), this is also same for the pillows. Yet the pillows aren't that bad. There's free cake and tasty Italian treats, maybe add free tea and coffee? 5-7€ for tea is a little cheeky, but I get it. They need to offer wine decanters for wine of a certain age / price. For a bonus point the shower's could change, the higher you have the shower head the weaker the pressure, however there's a bath so not all that bad.

Anyway, it's a yes! I'll come again, maybe even in the summer and winter. All in all a very well thought out hotel, a 5...

I have mixed feelings about Hotel Cristallo. Here is why:||Positive elements||The hotel is very luxurious and very neat. All employees are very competent and incredibly friendly. They really do their best to please the guests. You will not want for anything. Big praise to all employees who do their utmost best day in day out to make this happen!||Negative elements||What really makes our blood boil are two things: the presence of spoiled and bored children, running through the corridors and through the restaurant.|But the worst was the large number of antisocial (mostly Italian) guests and their behaviour in the restaurant during dinner. And this was no exception, and unfortunately it was not just a single table. What is apparently considered normal during an extensive and luxurious dinner is to put your mobile phone on speaker mode, and then watch TV at the table, play music, or just make loud phone calls.|A table next to us consisted of a family of four (father, mother and two daughters): one daughter had the speaker on and was watching TV, the other daughter had the speaker on and was playing a computer game, mother was having a phone conversation with the speaker on and father had the speaker on while watching a football match.|We asked for and got another seat in the restaurant, but there too it went wrong. The table next to us put the phone on the table, speaker on of course, and all watched a ridiculous program. The lady at the table behind it was apparently celebrating her birthday, and spent the entire evening making noisy phone calls.||For people who want to enjoy a good dinner with a good glass of wine, this was really a moment of:...