A ski holiday in Val d’Isere is the hippest way to do the French Alps
Val d’Isere has always felt hip, but a new design hotel is upping the stakes, finds Adam Bloodworth
Think of a ski holiday in the Alps and a certain image springs to mind. That of impossible wealth, of royals and oligarchs resplendent in furs, of Hooray Henrys from the King’s Road necking jeroboams of rosé, stomping on tabletops in Après bars and treating these majestic hinterlands like snowy extensions of their Chelsea yards.
Participating in the madness of a ski holiday – or watching it from a safe distance – can be entertaining. But it can also make you fantasise about skiing off the edge of a vertical piste without a helmet.
Val d’Isere, one of the highest French Alps ski resorts and thus, one of the least likely to succumb to the effects of climate change anytime soon, isn’t immune to obnoxious Brits. At Airelles, one of two properties positioned on the slopes, rooms are £4,000 per night on average (and that’s not the expensive ones.) But there is another side to Val d’Isere – known as ‘Val’ to locals.
Val d’Isere: a hipper French Alps ski holiday, with great DJs, design hotels and gently trend-driven food
Unlike Meribel’s pine-lined slopes, Val isn’t the prettiest. The mountains here feel vast rather than like a Netflix backdrop. But the skiing is some of the best in the Alps, and with that comes a certain cache. You’re likely to bump into former champions in the bars; while I was in town Ski Sunday host and former Olympian Graham Bell was sunning himself on the terrace at La Rosee Blanche.
While the influencers are distracted by the sanitised luxury of Courchevel, in Val, people are mostly focussed on skiing. It is the sort of place that lets tourism come to it, rather than a leopard who will change its spots. There are 1,600 locals who spend the whole year in the village, and British guests, who make up over forty percent of tourists, fit in with that. One local proudly says a defining factor of the village is how it feels free of judgement.
Seasonaires prefer the party scene in Val d’Isere to nearby Val Thorens, which has a third more hashtags on social media but a more homogenised, Sloaney form of hedonism. In Val, some of the bars – like La Baraque – feel more sophisticated. Fondue and seismic hunks of meat are served to an accompaniment of live music, and at around nine o’oclock, a diverse crowd of varying ages and backgrounds dance between tables. Yes, seasonnaires, but octogenarians too. It’s not that Val isn’t touristy – there are some absolutely gorgeous chalets – more that visitors have the opportunity to experience cohesion between locals, reps and guests.
It just all feels quite cool, and that’s not a word often associated with a ski resort. At Airelles, the Parisian pastry chef Cedric Grolet has a pop-up dessert buffet that’s gently trendy without sacrificing quality for Instagram likes. His desserts, resplendently shaped into lemons and mangoes that look like the actual fruits, sell out every morning in his bakeries in London and Paris, and Val is one of only a handful of places in the world to find them.
A ski’s lug from the entrance to Airelles is the new hotel by The Experimental Group. An independent firm run by five French and English entrepreneurs, they have a handful of hotels in Paris and around France, and one in London, where Michelin award-winning chef Jackson Boxer cooks. Rooms cost a tenth of what they do at Airelles, but that hotel’s guests are swerving their own bar to drink at The Experimental Group’s watering hole because it’s frankly more fun.
Interior designer Dorothee Meilichzon has made up the lobby, rooms and public spaces through the lens of the group’s trademark eccentricity. Expect pleasing primary pops of colour and clashing textures. It is playful in a way that is rare for a luxury hotel.
“There is a trendiness to it, but it’s still pretty high end,” explains Romée De Goriainoff, one of the French founders. “We avoid ultra luxury. A lot of new projects are catered for the untouchable, to people who can pay three grand per night. We’re trying to be somewhere ‘normal people’ could still go. I’m not interested in doing things just for the ultra rich. That’s what this is bringing to Val d’Isere. It’s good there’s something trendy and hip on the market as a counter balance.”
De Goriainoff laughs when I ask where he stayed when he was decking out the hotel for launch. “Obviously I haven’t stayed at the Airelles.”
My room disobeys the boring notion that luxury means fixtures and fittings in washes of beige. A sofa with piste views was green and orange mozaic, my carpet a cheering shade of burnt orange and shelves were great curved and shining oblong plinths, the sort of disruptive design that makes you stop and think. In the bathroom, an obedience to trends through statement marble. My only qualm is the lack of a bath. Every room costing £350 should have a bath, no matter where in the world, and especially at a ski resort where everyone wants to soothe weary limbs (don’t get me started on the scourge of bath removal in new hotels across the world).
As with the rooms, the bar’s vibe feels almost too cool for a ski resort. Cocktails are served every night until two in the morning. No misery guts approach here – it might be quiet but you’re guaranteed a drink into the bleary hours. Except before five in the afternoon, that is, when the cocktail bar bizarrely doesn’t serve cocktails. There’s a decent playlist rather than the tacky mainstream stuff you hear on the slopes, and a DJ on weekends, though it would be nice if that were nightly. Off the sauce, I lingered over a Mexican Diplomacy with Almarave, verjuice and chamomile syrup, as good as any alcohol free drink you’d find in a London bar. The bar feels like it’s been designed to be purposefully small to encourage the feeling of exclusivity, and it works. You have to rock up early to get a seat.
In the L’Aigle d’Or restaurant, chef Rudy Ballin, formerly of Roubouchon and Frenchie in London, confidently spins moutain classics. I tried a very good local Savoie sausage served with mashed potatoes and Beaufort AOP sauce.
“You’re gonna pay a lot in three or four star Val d’Isere hotels with no design behind them. We’re bringing cool rooms at a price that is maybe slightly higher but not crazy higher,” says De Goriainoff.
Over the road at Palladio, the restaurant within Airelles, it is admittedly exquisite. Save yourself tens of thousands by staying at The Experimental Group but pop into Airelles for dinner. Eating at their new Italian restaurant, I stick with what’s fashionable in that land and order the simplest thing on the menu: the Osso Buco, with handmade pasta, butter, and tender veal shank. It is a mindful experience just gently chewing and realising how great plain butter and pasta together can be. The venue feels timelessly cosy despite having only existed for a few months. De Goriainoff isn’t threatened though, reminding me the Airelles guests love to jump ship to his cheaper property. “They want to be more in action, more in the mix… That’s what we’re offering.”
Pouring buckets of beer in your face at Alps party spots like slopes-side party spot La Folie Douce is predictably fun, but The Experimental Group offers a fresh slope experience. It’s more Shoreditch than Sloane Square.
Book a French Alps holiday in Val d’Isere
Rooms at Experimental Chalet Val d’Isère start from £350 per night, inclusive of bed and breakfast and spa access. For more information on Val d’Isere go to valdisere.com/en. The village is a two-hour-twenty minute transfer from Geneva Airport. Adam used a Blacklane car transfer to get to Gatwick Airport and from Geneva Airport to the slopes. Blacklane offers transfers from major cities to ski destinations worldwide; including Canada, France and Switzerland. To find out more and book go to blacklane.com