Hotel Carina — Hotel in Zermatt

Location: The hotel is in a GREAT location. It is not on the main street of Zermatt but a 10 minute walk. It was located in a quieter area and convenient to the ski lift and the Denner grocery store. Zermatt is incredibly hilly with steep inclines to reach certain hotels. There is a short hill to reach Hotel Carina which makes is pretty walkable, however, I do not recommend staying here with elderly or children. You can walk here from the train station (10 minute walk) but we took a taxi for $15 so we weren't drag our luggage through the streets (although we saw many people doing this).||Staff: The staff is young and kind. They are attentive and helpful. Laura gave us an overview of the slope map and restaurant recommendations. The cleaning staff kindly serviced our room upon request and the reception ordered us a taxi for transport.||Accommodations: We stayed in the Mountain Penthouse and had an exquisite view of the town and the Matterhorn. Our place had a modern kitchen and family room area, and upstairs had a king bed. The room was clean and modern. The bed was incredibly hard, like a futon, but adding extra pillows to the bed helped us sleep. We also found the couch to be comfortable to sleep on. The place can technically sleep four people because the pull out sofa but the place would be too crowded. There was no place to store open suitcases and no place to store clothing (like dressers or drawers). We kept our suitcases on the floor of the kitchen. The bathrooms also had tiny round mirrors that were hung pretty high and there was no place for brushes or toiletries for getting ready. There are two full length mirrors which were GREAT but no outlets near them for drying hair. Basically there was very little space for the things we brought and so we felt unorganized during the stay.||Breakfast and Dinner: The restaurant is convenient and lovely. We enjoyed dinner and breakfast. We loved the coffee machine and toast, and we had boiled eggs and yogurt.||Spa area: This area is open from 4:00pm-9:00pm. There is a sauna that needs a repair on the door to hold in the heat and a steam room that worked great. There is a lounging area with towels and lemon water. There is also a shower but the shower does not have a lock on it so it's a bit awkward to actually shower there.||Why the hotel earned few stars: This hotel does not offer 24 hour reception and we experienced an emergency at 5am. The reception area was dark and locked with no posted hours of operation and no instructions on what to do in an emergency. So there are periods of time when there are zero staff members present at the hotel. Outside of the hotel was a sign that said call this number for 24 hour assistance but we called it and it was out of service. We called the police but no one there spoke English at the early hours of the morning. If you are traveling from out of the country, it is important to note when you book a hotel that does not offer 24 hour reception because it could put you in an unsafe situation. At 7:30am, the housekeeping staff arrived and they were able to help me but I had to wait in the dark lobby area for 2.5...

Our stay at Carina Zermatt felt so cozy and relaxing like a little home in Zermatt. We were so happy to stay at Carina because it made our visit at Zermatt during the off-season extra cozy when a lot of things are closed. It is perfectly located within 5 minutes walk from the Zermatt train station. Even though it’s a bit far from the Old town area, it is in the quieter district among the other resorts and hotels close to the “Zermatt viewpoint”. We were especially impressed and stunned by the beautiful interior design of Carina, where it had such a modern design creating a vibrant atmosphere to their common area. For our room, we stayed in the double room, and it had an amazing balcony view to the Matterhorn where you can see the Matterhorn during sunrise and sunset straight from the room. The bed was super comfy, very clean, spacious enough for a couple, or friends or even family of 3 because it had a sofa bed on the side.

Carina is a well-rounded place to stay as it truly has THE BEST restaurant dining you can find and experience in all of Zermatt. What makes their restaurant so special is that they have an in-house Italian chef who changes the menu everyday and you can find your meals made with the freshest ingredients, and enjoy different dishes to try throughout the nights of your stay. We tried out their Menu Della Mamma (a taste of every item on the menu) and it was undoubtedly the best meal we have in all of Switzerland. It had everything from entree, to italian rigatoni and risotto main plate, meat dish of grilled pork, to lastly the siciliana cannoli & tiramisu dessert. Everything was just deliciousssss! I really can’t recommend trying out their dining, because it was so tasty that we were happily stuffed yet still wanted more for the next day. They also have a grand breakfast buffet every morning that was delicious as well.

Overall, the staff were so friendly to give us recommendations to Zermatt and made us feel so welcomed every time we were greeted by them. Definitely would come back...

Lovely staff that gave us some wonderful drink and food recommendations, good view of the Matterhorn if you pick a room for that, and a decent distance from the main happenings of town.

Unfortunately, my experience of the room wasn’t as wonderful.

After checking in and getting settled into our room, staff unlocked our door unannounced and then hastily left when they realised we were in our room. No apologies. We had a do-not-disturb hanger on our door during this, and for our entire stay.

The entire floor, laminate and carpet-like, was sticky to walk on with bare feet.

The only bins in the room were tiny and basically useless.

The shower would completely drench any towel on the floor outside being used as a mat, as the doors barely close properly and have a large gap at the bottom. This then even leaked further into the room itself that I had to mop up, regardless of how careful you are with the shower and where it is pointing water.

The room has 0 soundproofing. With a massive gap under the main door that light shines through in the night, I could hear people up the hallway whispering to each other as if they were next to me in bed. Every conversation that was had in our room would have easily been heard by anyone nearby.

On the suite tablet, you can opt for no towel changes in exchange for a free draught beer. I thought why not, so I chose that and went and asked about the beer. No, apparently the deal is “actually” for a non-alcoholic beverage like a soda. Didn’t...