Hotel Koh I Nor, Val Thorens, France

The Koh-I Nor certainly doesn’t fit into the “chocolate box” style you’ll find so readily in Swiss and Austrian ski resorts. The architecture plays on the name, “koh-i-nor” being Persian for “mountain of light”. Glass facades are a major feature of the design, giving a light atmosphere to the interior which is helped by the fact you’re looking down on the rest of the resort and out across the huge snowy bowl and surrounding mountains that you came here to ski. Each of the 63 rooms has a large balcony from which to remind yourself of this. And just because the hotel is a stone, glass and steel structure rather than a cutesy Heidi-hole doesn’t mean it hasn’t got a certain impressive charm as you approach, especially at night when the glass is lit up to glitter and sparkle like — well, like the diamond it is named after. The Koh-I Nor was clearly built with the kind of enthusiastic skier who is naturally drawn towards Val Thorens very much in mind. The boot room and ski lockers exit straight onto the slopes and you can grab a handful of mini-chocolate bars and sweets from bowls on the tables as you leave so you’ve got an instant energy hit when the legs and lungs start to flag. When the skiing is over there’s an 800-sq-metre spa with two swimming pools, sauna, hammam, salt wall and ice fountain — all as bright and airy as the rest of the hotel. I can also recommend the massages — I had a 30-minute neck and back massage after a painful wipeout whilst skiing off the side of the pistes in bad visibility, and really did feel that the aches and pains had eased when I came out. There’s little need to leave the hotel once you’re back from skiing either, since one of the two in house restaurants run by Michelin two-star chef, Yoann Conte, is among the best in the Three Valleys. Conte has stiff competition though — the Restaurant Jean Sulpice off the side of the blue Plein Sud piste also has two Michelin stars and amongst other things serves up the finest dessert I’ve ever tasted, an apple meringue with mountain honey and liquorice; the main course of venison in beetroot and gentian root sauce wasn’t bad either… The purists may not get on with the resort’s modern utilitarian architecture, but while the Koh-I Nor “modern” has also become visually interesting, and when you’re hooning down your favourite run — which for me is what skiing is all about — who cares what the resort looks like? (From: Evening Standard “Diamond white: the new five-star Koh-I Nor in Val Thorens”, 09/04/14)

Only just opened in recent weeks, the five-star Koh-i Nor is the highest hotel in Europe, nestled among the Alpine summits at 2,300 meters above sea level. The hotel is an architectural gem, faceted like a diamond with supersize bay windows, which bathe every corner in light. And this is how the hotel gained its name; Koh-i Nor is Persian for mountain of light. After a long day exerting yourself on the slopes, make your way to one of the picturesque spa cabins of the ultra-luxurious Valmont spa, to rescue skin from the cold and bring hair back to life after a day confined to a helmet. The snow break of your dreams. (From: Vogue Paris "Mountain Spas" by Christelle Baillet, translated by Charlotte Sutherland-Hawes)