ABOUT OUR CHALETS
For the last ten years or so we British have been the Americans of the French Alps, the people who always had the most money. We left the biggest tips. We bought two bottles of claret while the French took a bottle of plonk. Restaurants refused locals if they thought Brits might book. An ordinary ski instructor who speaks English earns over €60 per hour, while even a world-class coach gets €40 if he teaches in French. And we’ve pushed up property prices and rents to the point where this resort which only had half a dozen chalets a generation ago now has scores, and what was once the smartest chalet in town is now used for staff accommodation!
The new chalets are seriously luxurious. Swimming pools and wellness centres; hot tubs and heated balconies (so the butler doesn’t have to shovel…).
Might this be the season which evens things up? Sterling is not what it was, and people have less of it. We don’t think that many skiers will simply stop coming, even if their bonus has gone from six figures to no figures, and we don’t believe they will head for the cheaper resorts, where one pays half as much for a quarter as much.
But we do think that this could be the season when guests compare prices quite carefully.
We have a range of chalets in Val d’Isère, from very comfortable to egregiously opulent, and will fit with whatever you want out of your ski holiday in the French Alps.
The smartest costs almost twice as much as the simplest, but we don’t aim for people with more money than sense. We wonder if we shoot ourselves in the foot sometimes by being too cheap!
Knowing we will fill pretty much every week of Val d’Isère’s five-month season, we can share the rent among more guests than most tour operators, and keep our prices reasonable. The usual trick is to add a few hundred pounds to the price so one can advertise last-minute discounts and still make money. That way the customers who book in advance subsidise the bargain hunters who don’t care where they go so long as they get a deal. We rarely give discounts, since our brochure prices are not inflated.
Our most expensive chalet is a top-floor apartment, en-suite throughout, in a newly-refurbished building on the nursery slopes. The least expensive is several top-floor apartments with a bathroom for every three guests in a slightly older building near the nursery slopes… The service, food and wine are the same in all of our chalets. Only the degree of comfort and the location vary.
Although there is no hotel in Val d’Isère where you would be more comfortable or spoilt, YSE chalets are not intended to feel like hotels. Instead of dozens of rooms, all identical, you’ll find just a few, often quite varied. Instead of faceless kitchen staff and nameless chambermaids, we have chefs and chalet staff you’ll automatically be on first-name terms with, and glad to meet up the mountain or in some smoky dive.
This informality is one of the keys to a successful chalet holiday. Eating and drinking well is another. If you click on the other headings at the top of this page you can read about our food and wine, and the staff who prepare them.
We aim for restaurant-quality cooking and hotel-standard cleaning, and we select, train and supervise our staff accordingly. If this isn’t quite right for you, we offer all sorts of cost-price options, from superior wine to daily linen changes, from taxis to the slopes to champagne up the slopes, enabling us to tailor your holiday to your requirements.
But none of this will make you happy if you are a cantankerous old curmudgeon, who never wanted to come in the first place! Enjoying the company of friends or family is half the point. YSE won’t subject you to the quizzes or pub crawls beloved of some tour operators, but you still need to be vaguely sociable. Even in a chalet for four there are three other people’s holidays to ruin, and a chalet girl who’ll dine out on your grumpiness for twenty years!
No YSE chalet is inconvenient for skiing. The two furthest from the centre of Val d’Isère have a Land Rover shuttle, while guests in most of the others can be on a lift within minutes of leaving their door, and some step straight onto the snow.
When you step back, of course, it is more comfortable for everyone if you can leave the snow outside. We recommend you bring some sort of indoor footwear, so you can take your Uggs off at the door.
Like any house, chalets can have the occasional technical problem. There are few buildings in Val d’Isère, new or old, which don’t need a plumber or electrician at least once during the long winter. But YSE’s reps and repairmen never sleep (or if they do, there’s a phone by the bed), so whilst we cannot promise you’ll never need to call for help, we can guarantee that it will arrive rapidly. This is a promise we can only make because the YS of YSE is available all winter.
We have stayed in most of our chalets, and would not be offering them to you if we hadn’t enjoyed them greatly. But please note that they are all different. Some are on the slopes. Some are close to the action. Some are ideal for families. Some suit people who stay in every evening. Some have close neighbours, and are not recommended for party animals. With twenty-one chalets to choose from, we probably have one of the right size and price for your group.
We have described them with tedious accuracy, with the dimensions of every room, and if you need still more information, the team in our Sherborne office know the chalets inside out. Please wade through the blurb, and ensure that your party all know what you are booking. They’ll merrily leave all the work to you, then blame you when they find you’ve booked a chalet they can’t ski back to when they’ve forgotten their sunglasses…
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