Chalet Graphite, La Plagne 1800, France

Well the holiday was fabulous and the chalet hosts exceptional. However this is mainly due to the character and skills of the hosts, good snow conditions, and our group being a lot of fun. So I’d like to point out the problems for others to see. The hot tub is ridiculous. It requires constant attention to work at a satisfactory temperature which is almost unachievable by staff. Our group is very adept at camping and hot tub maintenance (some of us own them ourselves) but it should not be our responsibility to do the work constantly, Im sure most guests won’t. Add to this the water evaporates (or leaks) quickly and needs topping up regularly. The water also quickly becomes stale and smells fowl, quite gross! The sauna stopped working after maybe 3-4 uses. I think maybe day 2 or 3. Absolutely unacceptable that nobody came to fix this! I personally took a look at it and deduced it is probably a controller issue but without an electrical meter and toolkit I couldn’t go much further. At the rates being paid I would expect this fixed as it is a premium feature of the chalet and I know it angered most of the guests. I must say the electrics in the place are shocking. I work in an electrical environment and aware that French regulations are less stringent than the UK, but the design and installation at this chalet is very very questionable In terms of functionality and safety! The fuse board tripped on numerous occasions requiring guests to find the solution or disturb the hosts. On one occasion the fuse board tripped and stopped the chimney fan extracting the smoke from the fire. Luckily one of the guests came upstairs for water and found the place FULL of smoke before it caused anybody any harm! This was around 1am when most were sleeping. Im not going to start on what is wrong with this setup but considering none of the smoke alarms went off they should seriously consider the liabilities surrounding this!!! I believe other guests also had issues with smoke ingress into their rooms somehow. Even though their windows were shut, so there could be some underlying construction issues somewhere that allows this. Quite a few rooms had heating issues. Presumably electrical problems again but I know my room was cold on 3 of the nights even though the temperature setting was never changed. WiFi…. doesn’t work. Pointless so everyone used their data instead. The equipment used is cheap junk and the wrong kit for the job, very DIY. COLD showers! This should never be an issue in 2019 and effectively sums up that this chalet is not fit for purpose. Im happy to have a cold shower in the morning to freshen up but very few are. However having ice cold showers before bed is absolutely unacceptable! All compounded by the fact that we couldn't even use the hot tub or sauna anymore either!!! So overall a sub-par accommodation accompanied by poor management. The chalet hosts and food were great, and so was the view, but this did not make up for all of the shortfalls experienced

Apres-Ski 3/5
Accommodation & Value 1/5

Thomas