Mountain hotels worth crossing the world for.
Peaks, valleys and alpine air, in the shoulder seasons when the light is long and the lifts are quiet.
Mountain hotels run two peaks, ski and summer, with dead ground between them. That gap is where the rates collapse, and whether it is a bargain or a wasted trip depends entirely on whether the lifts, the restaurants and the hotel itself are open.
courchevel · FR
Airelles Courchevel
The fairy-tale flagship of Courchevel 1850 — ski-in, ski-out opulence with alpine-chalet warmth.
patagonia · CL
Awasi Patagonia
Fourteen standalone villas overlooking Torres del Paine, each assigned a private guide and 4x4 for fully bespoke all-inclusive excursions.
Travel windows 25% to 60% below peak
sri lanka hill country · LK
Ceylon Tea Trails
Five restored colonial-era tea planters' bungalows at 1,250 meters among working Bogawantalawa tea gardens, with butlers and all-inclusive dining.
troll peninsula · IS
Deplar Farm
Eleven's converted sheep farm on Iceland's Troll Peninsula — heli-skiing, geothermal pools, and the northern lights.
colorado rockies · US
Dunton Hot Springs
Restored 19th-century mining ghost town turned all-inclusive resort, with hand-hewn log cabins and geothermal hot springs in the San Juan Mountains.
dolomites · IT
Forestis
Minimalist wellness retreat at 1,800 metres above Brixen, built around a 1912 former sanatorium site with suites facing the Dolomites.
mallorca · ES
La Residencia, A Belmond Hotel
Two manor houses in the artists' village of Deia under the Tramuntana ridge, with an art studio, resident donkeys and olive terraces stepping down toward the sea.
gstaad · CH
Le Grand Bellevue
Gstaad's 1912 grande dame recast as a playful country house, fifty seven rooms in Saanen around one of the finest spas in the Alps.
big sky · US
One&Only Moonlight Basin
Alpine minimalism with a Western edge in Big Sky, Montana — black steel, stone, and mountain-framing glass.
big sur · US
Post Ranch Inn
Treehouses and cliff houses twelve hundred feet above the Pacific on the Big Sur coast.
scottish highlands · GB
The Fife Arms
Artfarm's Victorian coaching inn in Braemar, packed with museum-grade art, tweed, and Highland eccentricity.
adirondacks · US
The Point
William Avery Rockefeller's Great Camp on Upper Saranac Lake, eleven rooms of Adirondack timber and stone where dinner is black tie twice a week and everything, from the wine cellar to the guide boats, is included.
montana · US
The Ranch at Rock Creek
Working 19th-century cattle ranch turned all-inclusive hideaway on 6,600 private acres of granite, pine and blue-ribbon trout water, with lodge rooms, historic barn suites and canvas glamping cabins.
big sur · US
Ventana Big Sur
An adults-only glass-and-cedar retreat in the Big Sur redwoods above the Pacific.
dolomites · IT
Vigilius Mountain Resort
Matteo Thun's larch-and-glass eco-retreat on a South Tyrol ridge reachable only by cable car, all loden, silence and long valley light.
niseko · JP
Zaborin
Secluded villa ryokan in a birch forest near Niseko, each villa with private indoor and outdoor onsen fed by natural springs.
Two seasons, and the gaps between them
Almost every mountain hotel is really two businesses. One sells snow, the other sells hiking, and between them sit weeks when the lifts have stopped but the trails are not yet walkable. In the Alps those gaps are so unprofitable that hotels simply shut: Le Grand Bellevue and much of Gstaad close from April to mid-June and again from mid-October until the ski season opens, and Airelles Courchevel runs a winter-only season, closed straight through the alpine summer and autumn.
North America handles it differently. Big Sky and the Colorado Rockies mostly stay open and drop their prices instead, which creates something genuinely underrated: a ski resort in summer, with the same rooms at a fraction of the winter rate and the mountain to yourself for hiking and fly fishing.
The lesson is that in this category the calendar is not a preference, it is a constraint. The cheapest week of the year at an alpine address is often a week when there is nothing to do and nowhere open to eat.
When mountain hotels are cheapest
For skiing, the reliable window is early January. Once the New Year crowd leaves and before the February half-term waves arrive, the same room can cost a fraction of its holiday rate on the same snow. Late March into April is the second window, with longer days and softer snow, where the resort is still running.
For summer mountains, the American ranches and lodges are the value. Big Sky from June to September is a different proposition entirely: hiking, rivers and dark skies, at rates the ski season would never allow. The Colorado Rockies between the snow and the summer, in April and May, bring hot springs season without the crowds.
The months to treat carefully are the mud seasons and the dead shoulders. April in the Adirondacks turns the trails to slop and The Point closes outright. May in Big Sky is full mud season with the lifts stopped. November in the Dolomites is the dead space between hiking and skiing, when the lifts and mountain huts close. These are not off-peak bargains, they are months when the mountain is not open for business.
The honest answers
what we’d tell a friendWhat is mud season, and why does it matter?
Mud season is the stretch when snow is melting but the ground has not dried, so the trails are unusable and the lifts are stopped. It lasts roughly through April in the north-eastern United States and May in the northern Rockies. Towns use it for maintenance, restaurants close, and some hotels shut entirely. It produces the lowest rates of the year and the least to do.
Do alpine hotels really close between seasons?
Many do, completely. Gstaad and Courchevel are the clearest cases in our catalogue: hotels closed from spring into early summer, and again through the autumn, with the village largely following suit. Always check that the hotel and the lifts are both running before booking an alpine shoulder date.
Is a ski resort worth visiting in summer?
Often it is the best value in this whole category. The infrastructure is built for far more people than show up in July, the landscape is the same one people pay winter rates for, and the hiking, biking and fishing are excellent. Some lifts run for walkers, though not all, so it is worth confirming which.
When is skiing itself cheapest?
The first two or three weeks of January, immediately after the New Year departures. Snow cover is usually good and the mountain is quiet, but rates have dropped sharply from the holiday peak. Avoid February half-term across Europe, which is the second peak of the winter.
Every rate on this page is tracked nightly. How we track rates.