Hotel la Brunerie

When I booked back in Nov-21 the reviews were all glowing but the recent reviews in Feb-22 filled me with a sense of foreboding! I booked with Iglu/Crystal & couldn’t fault Viktoria the Crystal rep. One of the previous reviewers said she was elusive. We had the opposite experience. She was in the hotel when she said she would be & was super helpful. The ski locker room is inside the hotel, through the main reception. Sure the fancy swipe card locks didn’t work but let’s not over dramatise, your skis & boots aren’t really at risk. There are much easier ways of stealing skis if you want to than carting them through a hotel lobby. Our hotel room (318) did also have some mildew on the ceiling, & one of the bathroom downlights wasn’t fixed in the ceiling properly but I have seen rooms much much worse than this. The room was spacious & well heated, with plenty of hot water. The safe didn’t work initially but the receptionist did manage to fix it with the master key on day 2. The staff were slightly Fawlty Towers’esque. (One of the front desk staff never took his coat off. Maybe he was cold? Even stayed on when doing an impromptu Covid pass check in the restaurant one night. Leaving in one wired airpod earpiece for good measure too - think Crockett/Tubbs crossed with Mission Impossible). I tried to converse with the staff in my schoolboy broken French & they didn’t understand a single word. By my own admission I’m not great at French, but I can normally get by. They didn’t understand a word - because they were all Italian with zero French. Weird. Breakfast was OK, we only ate cereals / continental bread & cheese. The hot alternatives looked pretty insipid. The quantity of food at dinner was never an issue for us, nor anyone else I spoke to during the week. There was an English dinner menu on display in the lobby - but the translation was terrible. French version was a lot more representative of the actual food. The dinners looked like they had been thrown together with whatever was in the kitchen at the time. Some really strange flavour & ingredient combinations. One main course being x2 Bratwurst type sausages with onions. Not amazing. Overall it seemed a bit like a hotel run by people who had never run a hotel before. We probably wouldn’t go back.

The hotel boasts a fantastic location, complemented by a welcoming atmosphere with a warm pool and a cozy sauna. The breakfast, available from 7.30 to 9.30, is delightful, but be mindful that arriving after 8.30 may result in limited food options. Unfortunately, our stay was affected by two separate groups of noisy school kids, disrupting the tranquility both day and night. While this isn’t entirely the hotel’s fault, their lack of effective intervention was disappointing.

We travelled with nortlander. The hotel is situated on the main street close to supermarket's and restaurants. The only problem is that the hotel is really dated. The rooms have a dirty carpet. The double bed was actually to small beds placed close to each other. The room is cold and it has a small electric heater. The toilet is very small and if you are a little bit oversized it's hard to slip in. The pictures look much nicer then in reality. In the restaurant everything looks dated , neon lamps, the windows are dirty ( after beeng washed) looks blurry. The breakfast is okay for a 3 star hotel but the dinner is under all criticism. The salad buffet is a plate with corn ( from a can) a mixture tomatos and bread. You can have soup of the day and some dry pasta with a touch of tomatoes. After that you have a served plate with what i believe Is the cheapest you can buy at a grocery and ask a someone to make a meal of it. I must say that the staff is really hard working and very attentive. They try their best but the probleme is that every thing is falling apart in this hotel. One day the hotel had a strong smell of gasoline, we had to open the windows but the room was freezing. The spa that we were looking forward to use was even worse. The wals are porous and basically falling. There is mold and no ventilation. The floor is dirty. The sauna was not working and it hase place for maximum of 3 persons sitting next to one another. I can't believe the price I paid for a week. More then 6000 euros. I have never felt so disappointed before for a trip. Via Nortlander hade the option to rent ski's. Be mindful Skiset rental have old and dated ski's and boots. Go for Intersport rental. My recommendation is to be careful about this hotel. The positive reviews are totally fake made by staff or people that know the owner . This is a real low budget hotel. The staff do the best with what they have. I will never return to this hotel. I will not book Nortlander again. I belive they must have hade some idea about the problems in this hotel and still have it for an option.

If there was an option for no score then I would have chosen that so unfortunately I have to give them a 1! On arrival we were Allocated a room on the third floor with black mould on the ceiling! The start of things to come! Breakfast served til 9.30 but if you are down around 9am be prepared for cold scraps! Although a Crystal holiday we haven’t seen or heard from a Crystal representative, so you are left with unhelpful and miserable looking staff! If you want a towel change, you need to pay 5 euros for the privilege and don’t expect a bedding change either! Evening meals are gross so we ate out the 7 nights we stayed! Plus no gluten free options. Also if you are looking for 50 year old adults that are going through mid life crisis that want to slam doors and party in their rooms then this is the place for you! Again uninterested in resolving any complaints. More like a cheap hostel than a hotel. Just wish there was room at the Aalborg hotel for our stay!

We stayed at this hotel for 1 week ski, with 9 other people. the rooms are fine- general standard 3 star rooms- similar to other ski resorts. Unfortunalty the reports on the food is true. Very discorganised at breakfast- daily, several hot breakfast items not avalible and the lay out of the restaurant means everyone is trying to access a very small area of the room at once. Daily, the mugs ran out, to be told we had to wait 10 minutes for the mugs to be washed. The evening meals were variable and we ended up eating out 3 nights during our stay. With all this in mind, most of thr staff worked very hard under difficult circumstance , mainly lack of staff and direction, in the aftermath of covid restrictions. The manager seemsed to be engaged in trying to improve the situation things that could have been better 1. staff could have a name badge or unifirm to easily identify who they were 2. better organisation at breakfast 3. better quality food in the evening ( basic canteen food) 4. lockers broken- lots of sinage to say lockers broken but not ideal 5. kettle and tea and coffee making facilitys in the rooms would be a bonus 6. seveal people had to ask for toilet roll daily and one chap reportes his toilet seat was missing 7. Seemed to only ne 1 or 2 bar staff who went on meal break for 45 minutes at around 6.30-7pm. However this was changed after we spoke to the manger Plus points 1. rooms warm and clean 2. close to the ski lifts ( about a 5 minute walk) 3.pol and sauna ( need to book slot daily) 4. Shop next door and pub across the road

We were concerned about the recent bad reviews before going on our ski holiday so we’re pleasantly surprised with our stay at Hotel Brunerie. My summary is I think people need to remember that you get what you pay for!!! Hotel The hotel is not the Ritz, it has a slightly cheap and cheerful vibe but it is very cheap so what do you expect? In terms of value for money it is excellent. The proximity to the main gondola and ski shops is 100m which is great and they have a dedicated ski locker room with heated lockers allocated for each room. Our room was nice with balcony looking across at the mountain and a recently renovated bathroom with a nice bath. Rooms were made daily with fresh towels and clean. Again it had a lower end look (wooden panelling, thin carpet etc) but for the price that stuff doesn’t matter, is just nit picking. The rooms were spacious and clean with an electronic safe for your things. As for the street noise, we were awakened a couple of times by drunk singers but we were full aware ski resorts are party towns at night and that is no fault of the hotel. Food The breakfast is exceptional by any standard. Continental and full English offered every morning with help-your-self coffee machine and juice dispensers. Fresh bread/ croissants etc all available too - breakfast is 10/10 (and I think even the bad reviews on here agree with that). Dinner is fine. It isn’t top quality but it’s big portions of hearty food and you can go back up as many times as you like. Bread on the table was a bit stale (seemed to be from breakfast) but you could ask for more. There was a charcuterie and salad bar every night which was lovely and well presented and there was a soup option for starter every day (which was always very good!). There were usually two mains each night; one was normally a bog standard pasta dish which was simple but tasty (pasta pesto, ravioli, gnocchi etc) and the other dish changed every night (we had salmon one night, bbq ribs, curry etc). They post the evening menu up in the morning and there were two nights we didn’t think were particularly inspiring so we ate out 2 out of the 7 nights - if you’re happy to do this then it’s an ideal mix (eating out is about €50/head). Pool/Sauna The pool had to be booked in 1hr slots and is open from 15:00-19:00 which was no issue, we booked in the morning for that evening and had no issue with availability. I’ve seen reviews that the sauna is cold and it is at about 15:00-15:15 as it is heating up but then it is fine. The pool is a bit tired looking (the odd cracked tile etc) but again THE HOTEL IS A BARGAIN! If you need a 5* health suite you need to pay €300/night - the sense of entitlement from these 1* reviews from people who were happy to pay rock bottom prices is crazy! Bar The bar is nice and cozy with a good selection of drinks, my only qualm is that the pool table took €2 coins and they couldn’t exchange notes at the bar.