Four Seasons is on quite the expansion kick, and has just announced plans to open a new European ski resort. This is coming in the form of the conversion of an existing property.
Continue reading: The Park Gstaad, A Four Seasons Hotel, Opening 2026
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
The rengerings already look very good. The rooms seem very cosy and Switzerland is always worth a visit anyway. Nice.
The big knock on Four Seasons tends to be that their properties are generic and don't have a sense of place. Taking over an old (and restored) hotel should alleviate that. Many of their best (or at least most notable) hotels fall into that category, like Taormina, George V, Cap-Ferrat, Madrid, etc.
@Ben - I haven’t been to a Four Seasons property lately that “consistently offers a high level of service.” Whistler staff all seemed like they were on their first day with 20 min or so of training. Halls were dirty, front desk staff clueless, etc. Vail was almost as bad. Long check-in wait, unannounced construction in the hotel forcing several folks to come back to the long check-in line to request a move. Average food at best. Don’t even start with the horrendous and rotting Hampshire hotel.
Mandarin Oriental and Shangri La, on the other hand have been flawless at every location I have visited over the past couple of years (Munich, Zurich for MO and Vancouver and Paris for Shangri La). Four Seasons has lost the plot entirely, and certainly not worth the asking prices.
I can’t wait to see your reviews of the Park Hyatt and Ritz Carlton Reserve Niseko properties for your upcoming trip, and I know you’ve reviewed W Verbier and St Regis Aspen before. Please keep up the news and reviews on the best ski properties globally using points. On the other hand, it’s really hard to get excited about your posts for obscenely-expensive non-points hotels.
Correct, it was an old bank. I could have phrased that differently, but I meant in terms of moving into an established building vs. a new build.
The style of the rooms in the renderings look dated already. I prefer a modern clean look. At first I thought these are the pictures before the renovation!
The revamped interiors look way too generic for the location IMHO. Nothing will say I am in the Swiss Alps, except, perhaps, prices...
On the other hand, I'd trust Swiss hospitality training, even if majority of the workforce may be foreigners...
Any mention of Alpina should note (boookable with 150k preferred points which is a 4:1 transfer partner of citi).
... well, skipasses are about half the price of similar US skiing resorts. Agreed, in Austria and Italy they are about one third of the US.
Gstaad is more a mountain town with a few slopes than a ski destination, snow coverage is not guaranteed, everything is below 2000m. If you like skiing, you should go somewhere higher up.
Partly correct. The hotel consists of a few buildings and one of them was a bank.
Not true Jim, Glacier 3000 is part of the Gstaad ski area and is over 3000m. I had some excellent skiing there last year.
It will however need to be good to compete with The Palace standards !
It may work if they retain some of the past staff before refurb commenced ,as some of their people were very attentive.