Chalet Eterlou

The hosts were friendly and gave us a warm welcome. We enjoyed the food and the many board games. The bathrooms could use renovation, though. Our shower was tricky to get to a temperature that wasn't boiling hot or freezing cold. Aside from the need for a bit of TLC in the bathroom, I can't fault the place.

Be careful about booking here during Covid. I was due to stay with a friend in a twin room, and because we booked close to the date, we paid cash. The chalet closed during the lockdown, so we couldn't go, and the owner has been extremely unhelpful since. Other people say they haven't been offered refunds for cancelled stays, but we haven't even been offered credit. It feels like he has simply kept our money. My insurance covered the cost except for the policy excess, but my friend lost €400 and his email has been ignored. You have been warned...

We'd stayed at this Chalet twice in the past decade and enjoyed it a lot, so we recommended it to plenty of people. For the end of March this year, we booked a full-board week about six months in advance. Everything was cancelled because of the Corona lockdown. We'd paid in full a couple of weeks earlier, and it turned out most travel insurance policies don't cover a pandemic. We contacted Eterlou and suggested sharing the loss. They said the circumstances counted as 'Force Majeur' and they weren't obliged to refund anything. After we tried again, they said they wanted to speak to their lawyers, then came back with a 10% discount on a booking next year. Even if their rates don't go up, that feels unacceptable to us. They didn't have to serve breakfast, high tea, and dinner, including wine, for seven days, or clean the Chalet or heat it. I assume the staff were still paid, though they may have been sent home without full compensation. So I presume Eterlou made its usual profit from our lost week, and probably saved more by not cooking, serving, or cleaning for us. We weren't asking for full compensation, but meeting us closer to halfway would have been more reasonable. A 40-50% discount next year would have worked well: it would have brought them money during the crisis and given them a guaranteed booking, with a chance to recover some losses next year. We'll all be dealing with losses next year. We were looking forward to coming back, but I guess we never will.

Excellent.