Luxury Chalet Rentals in the Alps

Three things, and price is not one of them. First, space per person. A high-end chalet takes 14 people in a comfortable floor area; a chalet at the very top level takes them in an area where nobody crosses anybody, with bedrooms of equal size and several reception rooms. Then the staff attached to the house rather than called in as needed. Last, what cannot be moved: aspect, view, position relative to the lifts. A house can be refurbished, a plot cannot. It is the only one of the three that cannot be bought afterwards, and it is the one that opens the gap between two chalets presented at the same level.

In four of the nine communes served, and for reasons of ground. Courchevel and Val d'Isère hold the very large new-build houses, because both resorts were built for the stay and their pistes run down into the built fabric. Megève and its valley carry another kind: farmhouses and outbuildings taken over with considerable means, inside a village that keeps its shops open all year. Elsewhere the level exists but stands alone. Chamonix, Les Houches, Praz-sur-Arly and Combloux hold a very good upper tier without making a segment of it. A stay at this level is therefore looked for in two valleys rather than five.

No, and two distinct measures explain the gap. The first is the price of land, which follows altitude and the scarcity of building plots. The second is the length of the season: a resort opening in late November and closing in early May spreads a house over five months, a resort at 1,000 m over markedly less. A week's rate carries both. Then comes the calendar effect, the strongest of the three. Between Christmas and mid-February, the price gap for one and the same house often exceeds the price gap between two comparable houses in two different valleys. Shifting a week pays better than changing resort.

Four points, all to be settled before booking rather than on arrival. The make-up of the team and its hours: who is there, across what span, seven days a week or not. How meals are handled, which varies from house to house under the same heading. Transport, both from the airport and daily to the slopes. And staff quarters, which decide what a house really allows. These four are put in writing, because they are the only basis on which two chalets compare honestly. One and the same heading can cover a team present from morning to evening in one house, and two daily visits in the next. The agency sets them out property by property.