The most stylish mountain hotels for relaxing... no skiing required

From northern Italy to Megève via Finnish Lapland, Kate Lough shares her edit of chic mountain retreats
Barn burner: relax beside the San Luis spa’s roaring fire
Kate Lough29 November 2017

When you’ve done your share of high-octane partying, there is nothing like escaping to the mountains for high-altitude pampering — where fresh alpine air, stunning scenery and first-class gastronomy collide...

For the foodie..

Alpaga, Megève

If there was one hotel all over Instagram last summer, it was the oh-so-design-conscious Les Roches Rouges on the French Riviera. Come winter, you’ll want to be posting from the parent hotel group’s mountain retreat in France’s chic Megève. Alpaga has it all, including a Michelin-starred restaurant, interiors with a Nordic sensibility (think lots of cream, natural wood and sheepskin), a hot tub with views over Mont Blanc — and Spa la Colline for those extra bits of pampering.

Inside the Alpaga

Rooms from £310; alpaga.com

For the cabin junkie...

San Luis, South Tyrol

A family-run hotel in Italy’s South Tyrol, San Luis feels like an alpine Soho Farmhouse, with rustic-luxe wooden cabins set around a lake and tree houses dotted throughout the forest. Non-skiers will be right at home here. It’s less about shuttling to the piste, more about saunas in the barn-style spa, sessions in the lake-sunk Jacuzzi and lapping up the views — and tranquillity — from your chalet, which is made all the more picture-perfect by floor-to-ceiling windows.

From £260 per person sharing a treehouse or chalet; sanluis-hotel.com

San Luis hotel - in pictures

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For the design enthusiast...

Chandolin Boutique Hotel, Valais

With après-ski indulgence at the heart of its ethos, this typically Swiss grand chalet has been transformed into a design hotel. Forget about perfecting your parallel turns: after a morning in the Altitude Wellness spa’s hamman (the hotel sits at 2,000m), you can move from piste-side fondue and raclette to the mountain-view restaurant, with a roaring fire and meaty steaks from the local valley on the menu.

Alpine al fresco: on the Chandolin slope-side patio

Rooms from £175 including breakfast; designhotels.com

For the intrepid explorer...

Northern Lights Ranch, Lapland

If you can combine mountain air with spotting the aurora borealis, so much the better. Go off-piste this year and make the pilgrimage to Lapland, 200km north of the Arctic circle in Finland, where the Northern Lights Ranch has added five sky-view log cabins with glass ceilings and chic Scandi design for the new season. The resort sits on the outskirts of Levi, Finland’s biggest ski destination, but for those who’d rather stay put there’s hot-tubbing, reindeer-sledding and serious feasting to be done.

Sky light: a glass-roofed cabin at the ranch

Sky-view cabin from £350 per night; theranch.fi. Find out more about Finland at visitfinland.com.

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