Hôtel Village Montana by les Etincelles

This was meant to be a Christmas gift for the family and was a big disappointment. Very average hotel, definitely not a 4* The food was poor. Our rooms were tiny. The window on our corridor was open and broken all week. Swimming pool and hot tub cold. Customer service very poor when trying to book their other hotel for parents.

Stayed in an apartment in the hotel but on half board basis. The hotel is very nice with a large relaxing bar with comfy sofas and a log fire in one part. Drinks pricey though but so are all hotels. Staff very helpful and moved us to this hotel from Aigle du Montana as it was far from 4* (will review that hotel separately). Breakfast has extensive choice of hot, cold, pastries, cheese, meat, breads, juices. Dinner can be taken at 3 restaurants in the Montana area that are included in the half board option. Chaumiere is traditional fondu, pierrade, tartiflette etc and portions are large with desert after too ( 2 courses for half board and you won’t be hungry!). Chanterelles in the hotel itself is 5 courses every night with meat and fish choice for mains, soup followed by starter, large cheese buffet and then the equally large desert buffet - you won’t go hungry here either. Only criticism of Chanterelles is their service is a bit fast to eat 5 courses so could be slowed down a bit. La Place is the other restaurant and just pizzas and some fondu type things for half board - tried it one night and not great so wouldnt go back. There is a fourth restaurant, Gourmet, which you pay €15 extra for but we didn’t try that one. You have to book all restaurants in advance so we did this before arriving in Tignes. Would stay again but would prefer a room in the hotel which we think comes with access to the spa and open air heated pool.

Rooms were good, there was a kettle but no coffee, milk or black tea bags. Had to buy our own. The reception area nice but open , not secluded there was no bar/centre so no one used it. Hotel just felt like “rooms only” . Decent swimming pool and sauna but had no character, no pictures, plants . Decent breakfast though boring as it was the same every day, expected more for the price. You could go to affiliated restaurants though - no one tells you, you have to book well in advance, or at the reception. We couldn’t go into one even though empty as we had to walk back to reception to book “2nd sitting” 1.5 hours later. We did eat in the main hotel. Nice hotel and food but more like “an eating hall” than a restaurant. Noisy, people kids wandering around . Chairs were stained. Help yourself to cheese and desert board had been “well used” so we didn’t bother. I wouldn’t use either hotel TBH they both needed a little TLC

Good location and helpful staff. Food was OK, not as nice as last visit. The online booking system for the restaurants kept randomly cancelling us off so we turned up without bookings three times. Spa facilities were great if you got the timing right.

The hotel is ok and the accommodation is what you would expect, functional and perfectly fine for a group of skiers. The breakfast is good. We booked half board and the booking process for the four restaurants is terrible. We booked one of the restaurants on the first night and it was cancelled as we did not receive a message to pay a reservation fee. We tried to book again for the following day and received a confirmation message. Again when we turned up for dinner this had been cancelled and we were offered the only other restaurant available which is basically the snack bar. We were however assured that they would book us into the restaurant for the following evening. Booked said restaurant for 1845 the next evening. Checked the booking at breakfast and the reception confirmed our booking. We received a phone call mid after noon telling us our booking needed to move to 2045 as they had made a mistake. The received a further phone call at 1700 telling us the booking is now 2100. Terrible booking process and no recognition of this by the hotel offering half board. Only book if you don’t mind where you eat and when, or possibly at all as most are booked out by the time they try to rebook you!

We were advised prior to our arrival to book our restaurants in advance - with a link to an on-line booking process. We also confirmed a couple of nights direct with reception. On at least 3 occasions, our pre made and confirmed reservations were cancelled by the hotel, via email, with less than 2 hours notice. This allegedly was because the time slots were subsequently unavailable. This included the reservations that were made direct with reception! This continued throughout the week despite confirming our subsequent bookings with reception after the initial cancellation. It caused a huge amount of stress and inconvenience and we were left without our choice of restaurant, eating at times that really did not suit our family. The response from the hotel management was inadequate. The manager, who was capable of using her email to cancel our reservation, appeared unable to use her email to reply to our complaints or request for a meeting to discuss. Unacceptable level of service and leadership for a hotel of this alleged standard or price.