In July, 2007, I was hiking the Tour du Mont Blanc with two adult children, and we found ourselves in downtown Courmayeur with a 2-night hotel reservation that had somehow fallen through. At the central bus station we found an extensive hotel board with hotel names and red or green lights indicating whether rooms were available. We phoned the Centrale and arranged for a room.
The hotel's location was perfect: right in the center of the town. Our room was lovely with stunning views of Mont Blanc towering over the slate roofs of the village. The size of the room was adequate for 3 adults with hiking gear. The hotel’s 3-start rating seem to be well deserved.
But location is not everything. The individual at the reception desk had quoted us a price for 2 adults over the telephone. When I reminded him that we were 3 adults, he said, “That will be no problem: the price will be slightly more.” When we received our bill upon checking out “slightly” turned out to be exactly double.
We needed to launder out hiking clothes before continuing on the second half of the Tour du Mont Blanc, and quickly learned that Courmayeur, unlike other villages in the Alps, had no public laundry facilities. We asked the manager before noon if he could have our laundry done at the hotel. His reply was that it could be problematic: maybe yes, maybe no. We inquired later that evening as to the status of our laundry, and he basically avoided the issue. The next morning we finally received our laundry at 10:30, which put us resuming the hike around noon.
Because our hotel bill was twice what we were quoted over the telephone and that the manager’s uncooperative attitude bordered on rudeness, we will never again stay in Hotel Centrale in Courmayeur. This hotel certainly deserves its 3-star rating, but travelers will be surprised at the 4-star costs of staying there.
My advice for travelers would be to stay in one of the wonderful, quaint 2-star hotels 5 kilometers north of Courmayeur, in La Palud.