Skiing in Switzerland: the 10 best Swiss resorts, hotels and ski slopes
Switzerland was where skiing developed in the 19th century, and also blossomed during the first eight decades of the 20th. While Swiss resorts may these days lose out on the grounds of higher prices, fewer new lifts, and less ski convenience than rivals in other euro-zone countries, it’s important to remember why this was.
France, Austria and Italy attract the vast majority of British visitors each year, but while each of its Alpine neighbours has its particular strength, in many respects Switzerland is hard to beat. It has an unfair share of the most dramatic mountain scenery, and ditto the most captivating traffic-free old mountain villages, the best mountain restaurants, and some of the most impressive ski runs.
Sadly, with the Swiss Franc’s strength against the pound, prices for British visitors have become almost prohibitive in the big name resorts. Even in the cheaper, lesser-known Swiss resorts, costs on the ground are likely to be higher than in the average resort in Austria, France or Italy.
However, by shopping around carefully for budget-conscious accommodation and avoiding buying lunch on the mountain it’s still possible to enjoy a superb ski holiday here.
Here's our pick of 10 resorts that are definitely worth considering, by category.
Unless stated otherwise, prices are per person, based on two sharing a double or twin room, half-board, for seven nights, including flights and transfers.
Best for powder
Andermatt
Andermatt sits in a good position for gathering snow, at a meeting of valleys close to the northern side of the Alps. The altitude is helpful, too – on one of it’s two separate ski areas, steep and shady Gemsstock, most of the slopes are between 2,000m and 3,000m.
There’s often high quality snow cover in Andermatt when conditions in the Valais region – Switzerland’s main concentration of major resorts – are mediocre. Although it does have one or two intermediate pistes, Gemsstock is really an expert’s mountain. The main face of 900m vertical consists almost entirely of black runs and off-piste routes to mid-mountain, and the one run to the valley is also a black, although an easy one.
However, Andermatt’s other sector, Nätschen-Gütsch-Sedrun, has a whole expanse of intermediate slopes, bringing the total pistes on offer in Andermatt to 120km. A network of modern lifts and pistes links Nätschen-Gütsch with Sedrun, 15km away to the east, the link being part of an ongoing £1.2 billion redevelopment of the resort, backed by Swiss-educated billionaire Egyptian entrepreneur Samih Sawiris. Once only linked by train, there is now a series of red and blue pistes, and lifts including six-seater chairs and a fast 10-person gondola from Oberalppass to Schneehüenerstock.
Where to stay
The Chedi in Andermatt is in a league of its own, with Asian decor, lavishly proportioned rooms, a spectacular spa with indoor and outdoor pool and a one-Michelin-star Japanese restaurant. From £2,295 B&B with Snow-Wise.
Alternatives
With its village at 1,500m and slopes up to 3,330m, Verbier’s altitude ensures there’s a strong chance of good snow throughout the season. Engelberg is a favourite of Zürich weekenders. Not far north of Andermatt, it has a similarly well-deserved reputation for snow – although the village is quite low, most of the slopes are high (up to 3,030m) and shady.
Best for experts
Verbier
Some Swiss resorts may match Verbier for luxurious chalets and hotels and vibrant après, but none quite have its cool cachet – and that’s largely because few can rival its challenging high-altitude terrain. Anyone who can handle Verbier’s itinerary routes, never mind its couloirs, can consider themselves pretty darn good.
The itineraries (which, though loosely marked, are not formally avalanche controlled or checked by ski patrol) are where many experts spend their time, treating them like pistes. Epic highlights are the 900m-vertical route from Col des Gentianes to Tortin, and the 1,000m vertical Vallon d’Arby down to La Tzoumaz on the edge of the ski area.
The 80 lifts access more than 400km of runs, including some of the best lift-served off piste in the Alps. From Mont Gélé (3,025m) there are steeper itineraries and serious off-piste routes, while the top of Mont Fort (3,330m) offers a black mogul run on the front and adventurous off-piste routes on the back that end down in Siviez.
The resort is a gentle sprawl of chalets, hotels and apartments, few of which are ski-in/ski-out – but the free ski bus system is generally very efficient. Resort life revolves around the après hub of the Place Centrale, the main lift base at Médran 500m away, and the buzzing street between the two.
Where to stay
Chalet Place Blanche 2 is a penthouse at Médran overlooking the W Hotel. It is rented on an exclusive rather than shared basis sleeps four with an optional two more in a mezzanine bedroom. Bedroom 2 has one of the most dramatic bathrooms in Verbier, with a glass roof. From CHF4,000 based on four sharing, with Ski Verbier Exclusive. Excludes travel.
Alternatives
Andermatt’s main mountain, Gemsstock, is an expert’s dream, with some seriously steep pistes and challenging off-piste routes. All of the main sectors in Zermatt have long, testing marked itinerary runs, there are also epic off-piste routes from several points. Zermatt has Europe’s biggest heliskiing operation, too.
Best for intermediates
St Moritz
In St Moritz, ski trains and buses give fairly efficient access to a wide variety of intermediate slopes in six widely spread sectors. The two largest are Corviglia, accessed from town and Corvatsch, a 25-minute free ski bus ride away. All sectors go up to around 3,000m, and afford fabulous panoramic views. The wide, open slopes above the treeline make for particularly attractive piste cruising.
St Moritz is famous for being the world capital of winter glitz, attracting a clientele with stratospheric income, However, with its 350km of sunny, reliably snowy pistes, there’s more to it than bling. The resort village is divided into two main parts. St Moritz Dorf is the largest and where most of the five-star hotels, swanky clubs and restaurants are located. Quieter St Moritz Bad has the cross-country track around St Moritz lake as its focal point.
The resort offers a huge range of quality leisure facilities, notably ice-skating, tobogganing and the famous Cresta Run for skeleton – which is, infamously, using still open to men only. More unusually, there is golf (using red balls), cricket and horse-racing on the frozen lake.
Where to stay
Hotel Monopol is a very central four-star in St Moritz Dorf. It’s a short walk from the Corviglia funicular and the ski-bus for the Corvatsch area is two minutes away. From £1,069 with Inghams.
Alternatives
Davos has an extensive network of linked intermediate pistes on offer in its six separate sectors of slopes, shared with its smaller neighbour Klosters. The main ski area, Parsenn, links the two resorts. Laax and neighbouring Flims share 224km of almost entirely intermediate slopes.
Best for beginners
Saas Fee
The gorgeous little, traffic-free village of Saas Fee looks a bit like a small Zermatt with its dark wooden chalets, and it is surrounded by magnificent glaciers and mountain peaks, including the Dom – the highest mountain located entirely within Switzerland. Later in the season, when the village gets a decent amount of sun, is the ideal time to visit.
The ski area is relatively small, with 100km of pistes, and best suits near beginners and intermediates. The nursery slopes are long, gentle, quiet and only a short walk from the main street – plus the glacier area and most of the top half of the mountain are ideal for beginners with glorious easy blue runs up at altitude. Even runs that are marked red here are generally very gentle, and would be classified blue in many resorts.
Saas Fee has a friendly atmosphere and is good for families as there is plenty of après-ski entertainment to keep everyone occupied, including the state of the art Aqua Allalin pool and spa complex. The Feeblitz Rodelbobbahn (a bobsleigh/rollercoaster hybrid), which makes an excellent afternoon’s entertainment – especially when the weather closes in. It’s open Wednesday to Sunday from 1pm until the early evening.
Where to stay
Modern, well furnished and located on the edge of the village, around 1,200m from the main gondola up the mountain, the three-star Allalin apartments are managed by the hotel of the same name. Accommodation ranges from studios to two-bedroom places. From £638 self-catering, based on four sharing, with Inghams.
Alternatives
Villars is a reassuringly slow-paced resort where beginners can make first turns in a relaxed, low-pressure atmosphere. The gentle nursery slope is at village level. Laax has plenty of long easy blue runs from high on the mountain back to the village for beginners looking to move on from the nursery slopes.
Best for charm
Grimentz
The beautiful Val d’Anniviers comprises four resorts: Grimentz, Zinal, St Luc and Chandolin, which share two ski areas covered by a single lift pass, totalling 210km of pistes.
Grimentz-Zinal is on one side of the valley while St Luc-Chandolin is on the other. Together they offer the quantity and variety of pistes needed for a full week’s entertainment. It’s best to have a car to get between the two ski areas as the bus service isn’t great.
The villages are traditional and small scale, with Grimentz and St Luc in particular having charming old-fashioned town centres, with blackened wood chalets much like a smaller and less commercial version of Zermatt or Saas Fee. Grimentz is the larger of the two, with more restaurants, bars and accommodation.
Where to stay
Les Vieux Chalets No 7 is a two storey top-floor apartment with four bedrooms sleeping eight in Grimentz. It’s 200m from the main Bendolla gondola to the slopes. From £188 self-catering with Mountain Heaven. Excludes travel and end of stay cleaning (£115).
Alternatives
Mürren is pretty, with narrow lanes lined by small chalets at an altitude high enough to more or less guarantee snow on the rooftops. It’s also car-free. Saas Fee is traffic-free aside from electric carts and taxis, and the buildings are mainly in traditional Alpine style – look up, and tumbling glaciers loom above.
Best for partying
Zermatt
Après that starts on the mountain in mid-afternoon is a well-known feature of Austrian resorts, and is being propagated in big-name French resorts through the Folie Douce franchise – but it’s arguably been going on in Zermatt as long as anywhere, in the cute huts that dot the lower part of the Matterhorn sector of slopes.
These days, it isn’t just amiable sing-songs fuelled by creamy schnapps concoctions. Bars such as the Hennu Stall at the bottom of the Matterhorn sector and Cervo at the bottom of Sunnegga have live bands generating an atmosphere to rival anything in St Anton.
Later on, Zermatt has something for everybody, from squeezing into the panelled Elsie’s Bar for a glass of wine (and maybe oysters or snails) to having eardrums assaulted in one of the several venues in the Hotel Post, or the Schneewittli nightclub under the popular Papperla Pub.
Zermatt has lots of other attractions too of course – 200km of varied, extensive slopes linked to those of Cervinia in Italy (another 160km) and including testing off-piste itinerary runs; heliskiing on tap; quality mountain restaurants; a characterful, car-free village; and, naturally, stand-out views of the Matterhorn.
Where to stay
Chalet Banja is a spacious luxury chalet that’s convenient for the Matterhorn Express gondola. Available on an exclusive use basis, it has three en-suite bedrooms (one with four bunks), and a swimming pool, sauna, and gym. From CHF2,125 based on eight sharing with Matterhorn Chalets. Excludes travel (except transfer from Zermatt train station).
Alternatives
Verbier presents the full range of après options, starting with lively bars on the mountain and progressing through to happy-hour live bands and seriously expensive night clubs. Laax has succeeded in attracting lots of young people, mainly snowboarders, who fill the bars early and late, particularly at the Laax lift base.
Best for families
Wengen
Essentially car-free (with the exception of taxis) Wengen might have been designed for families, and at its heart there’s a snow-covered field that serves as a combined playground and gentle nursery slope. For children progressing beyond this, one of the two ways up the mountain is a cog railway that also gives access to the village from Lauterbrunnen down in the valley. The other main lift is the speedier Männlichen cable car.
The village sits on a sunny shelf and is made up of a mix of small chalets and bigger, more institutional-looking hotels. Wengen shares a ski area with Grindelwald, and most of the slopes are above its neighbour – lovely long red and blue runs under the towering north face of the Eiger. The Jungfrau region lift pass covers the slopes of neighbouring Mürren as well as Wengen and Grindelwald – 210km of pistes in total. Lift passes are free for the under sixes, and reduced up to age 19. Over 62 year olds also benefit from reduced prices.
There are plenty of family friendly activities on offer, including 50km of toboggan runs. The most obvious of these is the 4.5km run from Wengernalp down to the train station in town, but there are also long runs from the top of the mountain going in the opposite direction towards Grindelwald. In the middle of the village there’s indoor curling and outdoor skating.
Where to stay
Built in 1908, the family-run Hotel Bernerhof offers simple yet pleasant chalet-style accommodation. It’s two minutes’ walk to the Männlichen cable car. From £739 with Crystal Ski.
Alternatives
Stay at the south end of Saas Fee where the village meets the mountain and offspring can enjoy immediate access to the snow without tiring walks or tangling with the resort’s electric taxis. There’s traditional tobogganing, a rollercoaster ride and a large aquatic leisure centre. Adelboden is a traditional, chalet-style village with nursery slopes close to hand. There’s a good leisure centre with skating, climbing and bowling, and several toboggan runs.
Best for terrain parks
Laax
The ski area shared by the villages of Laax, Flims and Falera targets a youthful market, and the area’s key appeal lies in its four terrain parks, high up on Crap Sogn Gion (the local dialect fourth official Swiss language generates some awkward names – Crap translates as “peak”).
In total the parks have almost 90 features such as rails, boxes and kickers as well as two halfpipes (the larger one is the world’s biggest, a massive 200m long, 22m wide and 6.90m high). The resort also has an indoor freestyle facility at the Freestyle Academy, with a skate bowl, ramps, jumps, trampoline, foam pit and airbag.
The 224km ski area also has lots to offer freeriders, with a good range of ungroomed but marked and patrolled freeride runs as well as vast off-piste areas. However the sunny orientation of the slopes means snow conditions can be highly variable, especially late in the season.
There’s a wide choice of places to stay, from the quiet backwaters of Falera and Laax Dorf to the roadside hotels of Flims Dorf, the wooded seclusion of Flims Waldhaus or the sharp, modern, youth-oriented and convenient Rocksresort development at the Laax lift base.
Where to stay
Signinahotel is right by the lifts in the Rocksresort complex and has a swimming-pool and sauna, and offers a complimentary yoga or tai chi lesson. From £1,298 room only with Sno.
Alternatives
Davos is a great area for freeriders when the snow is good, with long runs from the top of the mountains down to the valley, but its appeal to freestylers is equally compelling – the Jakobshorn sector has an extensive terrain park and a superpipes. Saas Fee has plenty of wide, well-groomed pistes and an impressively big and varied terrain park up on the glacier.
Best for value
Leysin
The key to getting value for money, particularly in Switzerland, is to steer clear of the high-profile, fashionable resorts. In this respect, it’s hard to beat Leysin. It’s known as a resort for schoolchildren and also snowboarders, mainly for the reason that prices here are lower than in the big, well-known resorts.
Drinks in particular are reasonably priced by Swiss standards. In its early days Leysin was the setting for tuberculosis sanitoriums, thanks to its sunny climate and proximity to Geneva, about an hour and half’s drive away. These days it’s a traditional ski resort with chalets scattered across a sunny meadow, although a few larger buildings of institutional architectural style bear witness to its health-tourist history. A cable car and a quad chair provide main mountain access from the edge of the village.
The slopes best suit beginners to intermediates, with 100km of pistes going up to 2,200m and a terrain park with areas to suit all levels plus a halfpipe that’s good enough to host the Junior World Snowboard Championships in halfpipe each January. There is also a 7km cross-country track meandering through the forest. The lift pass includes nearby Villars and Les Diablerets.
Where to stay
Les Airelles is a large B&B chalet with four varied rooms sleeping up nine people in all. It was originally built for a Russian Princess in the 1880s. Prices haven’t gone up in the 10 years it has been open, and also don’t increase at peak times. From CHF100 per room per night B&B with use of a kitchen, booked direct, travel not included.
Alternatives
Engelberg has something of a cult following locally, but has quite a low profile internationally, and three-star hotels outnumber four-stars eight to one. Local prices are about as low as Swiss resort prices go. Andermatt has undergone a lot of change of late with upmarket new developments, but the original old village still offers modest hotels and prices (for Switzerland).
Best for weekends
Crans-Montana
Grabbing a quick weekend at short notice when snow conditions are good is a very appealing prospect in Crans Montana. It is a great place for a bit of short-break indulgence, with a wide choice of seriously good hotels and restaurants, and is also easily reached from Geneva. Trains run from the airport to the valley town of Sierre, from where a funicular zips up to Montana, a total transfer time of about two hours and 40 minutes.
Last minute weekends are a particularly good idea because while it has a scenic, extensive and varied ski area, Crans Montana is unusual among major resorts in that virtually all its slopes face south or south west. This means that although around a third of its 140km of slopes are covered by snowmaking, it is exceptionally vulnerable to the sun after midwinter. Booking a major holiday here therefore means risking poor snow conditions.
It’s a big place – a merging of the two towns of Crans and Montana, their centres a mile apart – in a prettily wooded setting. The panoramic views are fabulous, particularly from the mountain restaurant terraces, but it does lack resort-village atmosphere. For ski tourers, there are 15 uphill ski touring routes ranging from easy to difficult. The over 40km of marked paths can be used to access the same slopes as the lifts. They’re free to use with a lift pass, or CHF5 per day.
Where to stay
The Cransalpin is a large apartment residence in an elevated position 1.5km from Montana centre. There is shared use of an indoor pool, sauna and ski room. The ski bus stop is 100m away. From £215 self-catering based on two sharing a one-room apartment with Iglu Ski. Excludes travel.
Alternatives
Villars is just over two hours from Geneva airport by train, changing at the valley town of Bex. The slopes, though rather limited for a week-long holiday for those beyond beginner level, have plenty to offer for a weekend. Champéry is about two hours 30 minutes from Geneva airport by train, changing at the valley town of Aigle. Champéry is the main resort on the Swiss side of the cross-border Portes du Soleil circuit, which also takes in Avoriaz and Châtel in France.
