Alpine Elements

Great place buildings to stay but if the food and wine is important to you (as it was to us) look else where. Frozen mini croissants in France.... unforgivable.

Reading through trust pilot reviews and google reviews, seems not much has changed since 2005 when I first did a ski season, working in France. Alpine Elements even then had an appalling reputation, both among seasonaires and guests I met. It is somewhat surprising that they are still in business ! Unfortunately catered chalets are staffed by young, just out of school teenagers, with little catering or managerial experience. It is unfortunate that the ski industry ( British ) as a whole run their businesses with very low paid ( would be illegal in the UK ) teams of staff whilst charging premium prices to their paying guests

Just returned from Christmas week at Chalet Caroline, Tignes Le Brevieres. The chalet itself is a nice space. Our very young chalet hosts, Lauren and Ed were lovely and their cooking was good given the circumstances. However we were extremely disappointed with the quality of the food. If you like tinned soup, cheap frozen sickly desserts, sausages, green beans and peas etc. etc., then you will be happy. Apart from chicken, turkey (Xmas day) and duck there was no other meat or any fish at all served. Very little veg (frozen) served and when we got it the portions were far too small. The general opinion of the chalet guests was that we had eaten 'beige' all week. Lauren did make a lovely home-made cake each day for afternoon tea, thankfully. Avoid booking Room 2 as it provides access to the balcony where the outdoor hot tub is. When it snowed heavily and the outside steps from the floor above were covered in snow guests were going through our room to get to the hot tub. Got back from skiing to find our door to balcony open, as they couldn't get back in otherwise. Spoke to Ed about it. Very nice other guests so we felt we couldn't stop them having access to the tub but it is obviously not acceptable! Room 1 also has access. Also bed headboard is against the wooden 'wall' with the hot tub directly behind so you can hear every word spoken - they might as well have been in our room. The bedroom smells very strongly of chlorine when the hot tub is going. It meant we could not relax in our room at all after skiing. Bathrooms and toilets were not cleaned once during our stay. A quick wipe-down is needed!! We have stayed in a lot of catered chalets and this food was the poorest quality. You really need to serve a lot more vegetables and simple home-made desserts!