Lodji Hotel & Spa

We have eaten and had drinks at The Lodji since it opened and have regularly stayed nearby. From what I have seen (I haven’t seen the bedrooms), The Lodji is a beautifully and thoughtfully designed hotel almost perfectly positioned on the slopes on St Martin de Belleville with ready access to the ski lift. On each visit we have found the staff in the bar and restaurant to be attentive and welcoming. I note one reviewer commented on the high cost of the beer. There is one reasonably priced beer – Jupiler - with the other brands being around twice the price. So, be careful what you order. We found the food to be very good and priced as one would expect in a hotel on the mountain. I note that there have been reviews mentioning the loud apres-ski music. Although the website says this stops at 6:30pm, in practice this is not always the case. Last week it went to 8:30pm on two occasions and was extremely loud. I can’t say exactly how loud as the hotel DJ did not have a decibel meter in place. This makes it difficult to recommend The Lodji as a family hotel because pumping, bass-heavy music does travels through walls - the deeper the bass, the bigger the sound wave – and I note some reviews mention that the rooms are noisy. Last year one reviewer recommended that clients did not take a room on one side of the hotel because of the loud music. Interestingly, the hotel management responded by noting that “the DJ is sometimes playing on the slopes' side and sometimes on the valley side, so it is useless to advise next clients to choose one side instead of another.” In the colder months, The Lodji place gas and wood fires on the front and rear balconies. These can become very smoky / fumy and unpleasant with the smell pervading clothes. I believe these external fires are prohibited in France for environmental reasons, so I was surprised to see them being used.

For either drink a coffee and be allowed to use the Wi-Fi to be able to do a little work or go drink a Belgian Beer for the after-ski, both the service and the place are wonderful. With kindness and a great sense of humor, the staff was 5 stars. And the landscape is just breathtaking.

It's so hard to give this place an average rating when the accomodation /location is absolutely amazing (ski in and ski out) and I would seriously consider staying there again. BUT we stayed in the 12 person apartment Duplex Encombres for a week in Jan and paid an absolute bomb for it to run out of hot water every single night after a couple of showers (10-15minutes total). We politely reached out to management who curtly told us that we where spending too long in the shower!!!!! After a lot of back and forth (and literally timing each person) on the 5th night we dragged the management down to the apartment and they agreed that there was "a problem". In effect after a few showers you need to wait half an hour for the service to warm up again. Not great when there is 10 people waiting after a cold days skiing. Most importantly we wish they had of treated us with respect and been honest rather than just blaming us for the problem.....oh and don't run the beautiful big bath if anyone else wants a shower anytime soon, there is not enough hot water in the system to fill it so we could not use it. Infact the plumber that came said to us the system is too small for the size of the apartment and he is right. Managements solution for the problem was getting the plumber to restrict the flow of the water!! I'm sure the problem only relates to the megga expensive apartmen Duplex Encombres. Otherwise the place was brilliant, apartment is stunning. It's the way you treat your guests that matter and we got treated poorly by the owner Rene'.