We've just returned from our first ever ClubMed holiday at La Rosiere and we really enjoyed our stay. We are a family with two children aged 2 and 5 years old, our kids never skied before and us adults skied many years ago, so the main goal was for each of adults and a 5 year old to improve our level and have an active holiday. The stay exceeded our expectations in this regard: I was in the Begginer group and my husband in Level 1, and by the end of the week we both were told to do level 2 next time. Groups started large, but by day3 my husband and I each found ourselves in mini-groups of 4-6 people which was very enjoyable. Big thanks to my instructor Candice and from my husband to his instructor Guy. They were both fantastic and really made our stay so great. Our son also was very happy to go to the mini club and on Saturday went skiing with my husband on a green/blue slope. Our two year old was in his little club for the majoroty of the week (decided to stay with me towards the end of it) and wonderful ladies from the club took great care of him (I'm terrible with names but huge thanks to Iona and all others). He also had few 30min private ski lessons with Alexandra and two more ladies: I've seen some of these lessons and all the instructors were extremely attentive to my son, it was great seeing them building connection with him.
We really enjoyed the atmosphere in the resort, the rooms (we had interconnecting family room), the beds were super comfy. I loved how clean everything was (I've seen the 2 year olds toilet - it was shining), rooms were cleaned very well, the food was great, and always in abundance, it really felt like a holiday all week long. We went to the swimming pool once (water was a bit too cold for us) and to a family yoga session (Bash was fantastic with children - both my boys followed through his 45min class).
Now, couple of things we thought could be improved: organization of the transfers and the arrival day experience. We were unlucky to have issues with both arrival and departure transfers and our conclusion is that next time we should book our own flights and transfers. To give more details, upon arrival to Geneva airport I found myself in a crowd of people near ClubMed desk, but ClubMed people were now by the desk, but rather in the crowd as well. So it was a quest to get to a person in the first place, and then the very friendly lady told us to go wait in the corner, she will call our driver and hopefully he will arrive soon. We go and wait, 30min pass by, I go to this lady again and she again tells me that she WILL call our driver (so she hasn't called them yet). Few minutes after that a driver comes to me, and after saying hello, proceeds telling me that she's been waiting for us since 11.45 (this was supposed to be our flight arrival time, but flight was delays 1.5 hours) and that now she will have parking charges. I had to explain to her that it's not our fault but she was quite upset. Turns out we both were in that crowd waiting for each other for 45minutes without knowing we were both already in the same place. A week after that, we had even worse experience: were told to be at reception at 13.45, arrived early only to see other people being picked up by drivers and I had to ask every ten minutes wheres the driver was but wasn't getting a clear answer. And what was more upsetting, I had to ask same questions again and again, people were forgetting about me soon enough unless I came and asked about our transfer again. Turns out, our driver was waiting down the road rather than near the hotel door, as a result of which we departed almost 1hr late. And again, I'm not sure we would have departed at all should we have not constantly chased the people at the reception. I would suggest to give passengers mobile nr to driver and vice versa or establish a certain process with the drives so that such situations don't arise.
Second thing that was a bit unusual is (and maybe that's because it was out first time at ClubMed) how little info we had about what needs to be done on arrival day (rent ski equipment, go to each kid respective club, go to kid ski school to discuss skiing level, bring the kid's ski to kid ski room, discuss each child with the club members, remember what time is the drop off and pick up for each, where the pick up of each kid is next day etc). I was hoping to ask all these questions at reception upon arrival but check-in was done by the fitness instructor (very friendly and nice guy) so understandably he wouldn't know all ins and outs of the kids clubs etc. It would be nice to have some schedules in the app as well as the "first day check-list" in the app/given as a flyer, would have made our experience so much smoother.
We also had to spend more than 2 hours queuing for the ski room and choosing the boots, skis and helmets, also constantly protecting our place in the queue (maybe the UK where we live has spoiled us but it felt like people did not respect the queue at all and also staff in the ski room were clearly overworked and didn't have energy to fight back with more pushy customers who were constantly jumping over us in the queue). This was very chaotic experience (also exclusive member had a priority to go to the ski room over "regular" people so at some point we waited 40min without moving because there was always someone new from the exclusive collection queue coming). It definitely feels like more people are needed in the ski room on the afternoon of the arrival day.
Resume: we will be back and bring friends, we will focus on improving our skiing skills again as the main purpose of the trip, kids will use clubs again, but we will book our own transfers. Would be great to see less chaos on the arrival day as well, by adding more people (although general manager was already involved fitting the ski on the day, worth mentioning!) and by having more info/help with find our way around the resort/sorting all what needs to be sorted before the week starts.
Thank you for one of best holidays we've every had!
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