If you want to come to Les Deux Alpes for less than a week, the options are limited since most places only do rooms for seven nights. However the Mercure did offer the option of only three nights and we were happy to go with the Mercure since in my experience the Mercure chain has always offered consistent quality at a reasonable price.

We were in fact very pleased with our choice. As previous reviews have noted, the staff at the hotel are very friendly and helpful and in particular enabled us to maximise our time on the slopes. Although we arrived early on our first day, it was no problem storing our luggage, getting changed and hiring skis from the shop which is less than five minutes away. Similarly on the last day, we were able to get a good morning's skiing and then shower and change in the courtesy bathroom with little hassle before heading for the airport. Parking the hire car was no problem at all nor was finding the hotel on the way in.

The hotel has good, secure ski storage facilities on the ground floor and the walk from the storage room to the first run is around five minutes, which could even be skiable in better conditions. Most lifts including the Jandri Express could be reached easily from the hotel.

We had a room for 4/5 people, which had a double bed, a bunk bed and a sofa bed. It would probably be fine for a family, but more than three guys would have been a squash. The room was very clean and the beds averagely comfortable. Not the best night's sleep, but when you're tired after a day's skiing, you can sleep reasonably well. The heating worked well and nobody was too hot or too cold. The room also had a balcony with a decent view of the mountains. The bathroom had a bath with a shower in it, although interestingly there was a notice asking people to refrain from having baths because of the demands it placed on the plumbing...

Breakfast and dinner were actually really excellent all things considered. Both were buffet-style. Breakfast seemed to cover most bases and even managed a good attempt at an English cooked breakfast. The bread was wonderfully fresh as you would expect in France. Dinner had themes on the different nights: North African, Sea Food and French and having experienced some fairly poor hotel buffets before now, I was very pleasantly surprised. The cheeseboard was a definite highlight!

The hotel also had a lounge bar with (OK-ish) live music. It was comfortable, if not terribly atmospheric, although the prices were on the steep side compared with the reasonably priced food and accommodation.

The downsides: the building is somewhat lacking in charm and character and does feel like part of a 1970s shopping centre. It is located some distance away from centre of the resort with limited local facilities (consisting of small supermarkets and ski hire shops). We noted a couple of bars within walking distance, but neither of these appealed to three blokes in their late 30s... Having said all that, we were really only looking for a functional base for our skiing and so the lack of decent shopping and nightlife was no great disadvantage.

Overall we were delighted with our choice for a long weekend's skiing and would certainly recommend a stay here.