This is a very well run hotel. Great service, great location, just a few steps from the village, very nice rooms.......nice everything, in fact. And yes, it's Switzerland, so you expect prices to be stupidly high......and so they are. But as we brought our baby with us, the one thing I did NOT expect was to be charged 80 Swiss Francs a DAY because the baby was sleeping in the room.

Over our one week stay, we therefore were charged 560 francs ($700) extra for the privilege of having our baby in the room. This just really seems mercenary, as the reality is that it costs the hotel nothing for a guest to have a baby in the room. Maybe it's just me, but as 99% of the time it's FREE to have your baby in the room, this really left a sour taste in my mouth. We stay at 5* hotels a LOT, and I don't remember ever being charged a penny for the baby. A minor issue, perhaps...but still, money is money!

Anyway, apart from that....we tried the Michelin starred restaurant, and found the food generally good, despite some of the reviews here. I like classic French cuisine, and normally don't like this kind of food, food that is tortured into odd shapes, and all of the effort seems to go into how things look, not how they taste. This was a bit better than average, in that some of the dishes actually DID have nice flavours......though we had much better tasting food at several of the local restaurants in town. But if you insist on supporting the trend of chefs who prefer presentation over taste, you could do worse than this place.....at about 150 Francs a person with very modest wine. But it's only a 5 minute walk into the heart of the village, where there are good places to eat everywhere you look!

The room service breakfasts are world class, as is the gym/spa. There's a handy little cinema downstairs with a choice of 100s of films to watch, which is a nice little bonus.

Ultimately, it comes down to a choice of this place or the Palace if you are staying in Gstaad. I've stayed in both.......and they are quite different in personality. I'd probably opt for the Grand, given the choice, though it's a fairly close call. One thing the Palace suffers from is being up a very steep hill, and not THAT close to town, so expect a very "lively" walk home every night, if you choose to go into the village for the evening. The Grand is right there....a couple of easy minutes, and no hill.

One tip is that if you get a "forest view" room, you'll pay MUCH less than a "park" view room, and there is no way that the extra cost, which can be almost double, is worth it. The views are almost non-existent, as it is completely flat outside this particular hotel, so why the park view (meaning you'll look out on the grounds of the hotel) is worth almost double that of looking at the trees on the back of the hotel is indeed a question. Again, it's a matter of value. For 20% more, you could understand the difference. For double, we're back to the issue (as with the baby) of feeling taken advantage of. I actually own a couple of hotels myself, and there has to be some logic to the price structure of things...you don't charge $1 for an apple, and $25 for an orange, for example. The difference in room rates in no way reflects the true difference in what you get...so I'd stick with the less expensive option and spend the extra few hundred Francs a day in one of the very good restaurants in the village.

So overall, a very nice place, with a few flaws, all relating to money. Not bad, really, as the only complaints that I have are financial, and if you simply don't care about money, the Grand will seem exceptional to you. If like me, you appreciate the feeling of not being taken advantage of, you may find yourself a bit miffed occasionally....but still appreciate what a well run property this is.