Hotel Alpina: Appalling - Dk23. Date of travel: Dec 2007
I stay in a lot of hotels with work and whilst on holiday all over the world and the Alpina Hotel has got to be the worst for a long time. First of all the rooms have an overpowering smell of what seems like the cheapest lemon air freshener they could possibly find. The cleaning staff must use an entire can in each room and the stench gets right to the back of your throat. The only way we found to rid the room of this was by leaving the balcony door open all night. It was -13°C outside which strangely wasn’t a problem since the place is heated hotter than a Turkish bath and you really need the door open all night so as not to die from dehydration in your sleep. We placed a 'do not disturb' sign on the door to prevent the trigger happy cleaners from poisoning our room but apparently this is not enough, they were straight in there emptying a boot load of chemicals all over my belongings. After complaining to reception that the cleaners had ignored the fact that they weren’t welcome in our room they apologised and said that it wouldn’t happen again. It did, the very next day. We hung the sign on the handle again and they released their nerve gas again. Maybe they’re on commission from the lemon spray company. Maybe there’s something much worse they’re trying to hide. The rooms are extremely shabby. It’s like the record cost of oil had prevented redecoration, during the 1973 oil crisis! The wallpaper was trying to fall off the walls, the shower was verging on mouldy, and I could feel the springs in the bed and felt strangely surprised that the sheets didn’t have any stains. Maybe I was lucky… The mini-bar wasn’t even plugged in and warm Champagne was amongst the delicacies on offer. It’s not like the bar in reception was much better either serving the worst Vin Chaud (Mulled Wine) in the whole of Chamonix. You wouldn’t think warming wine would be a problem. Apparently it is. We had breakfast included in our room but only braved it once as it was much worse than any school dinner either of us has ever endured. I only found the croissants edible. The scrambled egg was luminous yellow and may well have been produced in one of the many French nuclear reactors. I was a little concerned about the terrorist implications of this. Only one of the three “coffee” machines worked and produced murky brown dishwater in a cup. Our flights had online check-in as an option to avoid the queues. We attempted to use the hotels internet and printer facilities to print our boarding passes. No such luck. I work in IT and this setup was having none of it repeatedly printing test sheets whilst charging my credit card as if it had done what I’d asked of it. I would not recommend this hotel to my worst enemy and it’s only redeeming feature is that it is in Chamonix. This must be what the hotel management use as an excuse for the poor standards they keep the hotel in. Appalling.