This hotel is right on the piste, which is fantastic in the morning - just put on your skis and glide down to the lift! On your return, though, you have to do quite a circuit to get on to the piste (Belvedere) which leads down to the hotel. If you don't make it, you can phone the hotel and they will send a skidoo, but be prepared to make several calls and wait for fifteen minutes or so - or slog up the hill on foot...

Inside, the hotel has charming main rooms and recently renovated bedrooms which I would say are above average for a 3-star hotel, with OK showers and beds and of course lovely views either down the valley or up the mountain.

The evening meal is rather eccentric - fixed menu with no less than five courses and an even spread of hits and misses among them! The menu is available at breakfast, so you can order something like pasta with tomato sauce if you don't like the sound of one of the courses, and many did, expecially for their children. Breakfast is disappointing: bread stale and no hot food, not even a toaster or a waffle iron.

The staff are basically local ski bums, friendly and helpful but not very well organised, and ultimately not that interested. With a good manager, they would be absolutely fine, but the manager is a shadowy figure in the background who seems to do very little.

Probably the worst thing is that the hotel is cold: the public rooms are heated by by inadequate stoves and open fires and the rooms are thermostatically limited to 21 degrees when you are in them, which drops to 19 degress when you are out (that is, when you take your key card out of the slot). Our room never made 21 degrees and it was slightly miserable to come back to after a day's skiing in sub-zero temperatures. I suspect the hotel is economising and disguising its parsimony as eco-consciousness. Anyway, if you like to pad around in luxurious warmth, this hotel is not for you!

Being high up in the mountains at night is wonderful and this is basically a charming hotel which attracts many families who return year after year - especially Dutch and Italians. However, it could be so much better if someone took it in hand, warmed it up, got the staff motivated and the kitchen more focussed on providing the sort of meals people actually want, especially at breakfast.