Family Hotel Forest Star

The staff were helpful and polite, and breakfast was nice. The rooms are basic, and there's no shower curtain in the bathroom. It's ideally placed for getting to the chairlifts easily. It did the job for our three-night stay.

Great value, with excellent location and great staff!

The staff were pleasant and helpful, and the ski dry room has CCTV. The hotel also has useful partnership discounts with Alpin ski school and hire, plus a couple of local restaurants. Breakfast was okay, though it doesn't start until 0800 and the pastries and cereal could be better in quality and choice. The location is great, right by the four-person chair lift and the sledge slope at the bottom of a black run. It's close enough to the six-person lift and the busier bars and restaurants, but not right in the middle of things. We paid a lot for a three-bed room in the converted attic, where the low sloping ceiling meant I banged my head often. Pets are allowed, and there were some in the breakfast room. One barked late at night and kept us awake. I mentioned it to staff the next day, and they sorted it out, though we'd all been tired by then. It's a quirky old building, and I'm not sure what they can do to improve it beyond a lick of paint. There's no lift, just uneven stairs to haul your cases up and down.

Cash is worth bringing, as the hotel and most of the bars and restaurants don't take cards, or would rather you paid cash. It can be a pain if you only have cards. I'd stay at the forest star again for its convenient position, though. The hotel is quaint and right beside the four-person chair lift. The six-person lift and the busier bar and restaurant areas are close enough, but far enough away that you can still get a good night's sleep, unlike in slope-facing rooms at the Rila. For what you pay, you get what you pay for. It's clean and tidy but really run down, and needs at least a lick of paint. Breakfast has some variety, mostly continental things like cheese and meats. Be prepared for the cooked food to be cold, since the warmers didn't keep it warm. The dining area sometimes got crowded, with too few chairs and tables if every room was occupied. That was a hassle for our family of six, though smaller families or couples should be fine. Staff were generally fairly friendly. Cleaners would come by, but if they couldn't do the room then, it wouldn't get done at all, despite the hotel's own rules.