Club Med Valmorel

This was my ninth ski holiday with ClubMed and BTW, I’ve never stayed at the same resort twice. At the airport, my name was not on the hotel transfers list and upon arrival, my suitcase was delivered to a wrong room. The hotel is modern and nice. The room ergonomics confused me a bit with bathroom not lit enough and sinks unit designed to always obstruct your toes. The hallway was a bit cramped. The liquid soap was very thin, almost watery. Some of the wall sockets were not fixed properly and would fall apart every time you unplug a cable. The food was good, but not varied enough for a four-tritons hotel. I am comparing it with the one at Peisey-Vallandry last season, which was excellent! There was no olive oil for some two days, and one evening there was no coca-cola! The salad bar was the worst, offering the same types of salad every day! The bartenders would not make my favourite cocktail. The swimming pool was full of toddlers and their parents – it was impossible to swim after skiing. Good and hot and steamy hammam though. The evening entertainment was an average ClubMed one, the GOs though were always very enthusiastic! There was good snow on the top of the slopes, but not enough at the bottom. This had made returning back to the hotel very tricky towards the end of the week! My whole holiday was nearly ruined when our ESF ski instructor took another student and myself off-piste in the afternoon on the last day skiing with the excuse that the on-piste snow was not good! The snow was really bad and I fell three times. To make the matters worse, on our way back to the hotel, he took us through a closed slope with no snow at the bottom. In fact the slope was closed because of lack of snow! As a result I tripped up on a gravel road and ended up in the mud and quite bruised, with a big dent on my helmet! I was very disappointed that an experienced ski instructor could behave in such irresponsible way!