Hotel of the Week: An Austro-Hungarian Palace Resort in Courchevel Unveils a Cutting-Edge Spa Treatment
Les Airelles’s flagship is toasting nearly 20 years in the French ski resort, rolling out a botanical-based skincare line from Provence and a sushi restaurant by Chef Nobu
Gliding in a gondola over Courchevel 1850, the swish French ski resort referred to as Saint-Tropez with snow, some of the largest names in luxury—Cheval Blanc, Aman, Barrière—vie for attention on the slopes. Traditional timber-and-slate Savoyard chalets spill down into the village, where low-slung, stone-clad shops house designer brands like Hermès.
Located in Les Trois Vallées in the French Alps, the world’s largest interconnected ski area, Courchevel has long attracted queens and Kennedys, with Slim Aarons snapping iconic shots of the society set sunbathing during après-ski. Resembling an Austro-Hungarian “snow palace” with its stained-glass windows and Venetian-style coffered ceilings, Les Airelles Courchevel’s frescoed facade looks straight out of a fairytale—and it’s still one of the most distinct on the slopes today.
Ahead of the 1992 Winter Olympics in nearby Albertville, luxury real estate trailblazer Raymonde Fenestraz converted a former 1960s-era hotel into what would become a model for the area’s future five-star hotels, cementing Courchevel’s reputation as one of the world’s most exclusive (and expensive) ski resorts in the process. After a Christophe Tollemer-led restoration of the property nearly two decades ago, infusing an opulent, residential feel evocative of Empress Sissi of Austria, Les Airelles Courchevel was born, and it quickly earned prestigious Palace status reserved for France’s most exceptional hotels. The lobby is anchored by a 12th-century stone fireplace sourced from a Burgundian château and framed by traditional wood carvings and hand-painted murals that artist Louis-Daniel Jouve touches up annually.
As Les Airelles ventures outside the country for the first time with the opening of Airelles Palladio, Venezia in Italy this spring, the French brand is sprucing up its Alpine flagship with the debut of its Airelles LBA Spa concept and dedicated spa suite. Short for Laboratoires Botanique Avancée, LBA’s botanical-based regenerative skincare line masterfully blends science and French savoir-faire, working with artisans in Normandy on glass bottles and crafting hand-polished caps in the Jura region—each piece requiring nearly 15 days to complete.
Gardens of medicinal plants, lilies, and peonies are planted near the working laboratories at Airelles’s Villa Baulieu, a verdant, 17th-century private estate sprawling across the crater of Provence’s only volcano. (Former residents include acclaimed botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, who served Louis XIV and developed the namesake plant classification system.)
Tollemer, Airelles Collection’s architect and interior designer, refers to the properties as maisons, since they’re intended to feel more like homes than hotels. Following a no-expenses-spared mentality, guests even receive gifts like tartan fleece pajamas that you’ll see sported in the dining room at breakfast, adding to the home-away-from-home feel—that is, if your home features the culinary prowess of chef Nobu Matsuhisa, whose latest outpost of Peruvian-inflected Japanese Matsuhisa made its debut at Les Airelles Courchevel this season.