Aethos Monterosa

We are just back from a 5 night stay. If you are looking for a traditional alpine hotel, this is not it! My best single word description would be 'spectacular'. The architecture is modern and the public spaces are huge in height and floor area - they look through huge plate glass windows outward to the surrounding forest and mountains and inward onto a massive indoor climbing wall. And yet the design is clever enough to make individual areas feel cosy and intimate with high end comfortable modern furnishings. The ambiance is warm both literally and in terms of the charming and helpful staff. The rooms are again very modern, on split levels, with great shower rooms on both floors, and wonderful views. Breakfast was varied and delicious. The one evening meal we had was OK - three of us happy, one not quite so. The shuttle service which runs both ways along the valley was great, the drivers excellent (despite heavy snow) and always cheerful - though we also enjoyed the 15 minute walk into town along a lovely woodland path (which is lit at night). Highly recommended.

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 wer

CampZero offers a very nice combination of good accomodation and all facilities that come with a better hotel with the chance to try many different outdoor and indoor activities. I and my family had a great time there.