Holiday Club Åre

The room was comfortable and a decent size, and breakfast was great. It was busy, but the food was good. The coffee was poor, though. I wish they'd had someone at the machine just making coffee in the mornings instead of that coffee-flavoured sludge in the urns. The building is massive, so expect several minutes of walking to get to your room. It was teeming with students, and you could almost smell the hormones flying around the corridors. It served its purpose.

The staff are very nice and the service is great. The hotel is definitely kid-friendly, the "action bath" is great, and breakfast is okay. It's also very close to the Åre train station and a grocery store, which can be handy. But it's not ski-in, ski-out, despite the impression they seem to give that it's almost close enough. The restaurants in the hotel are below par, and Åre has much better options. The biggest problem is the rooms. They're tidy, so housekeeping is doing its job, but they're in poor condition, badly thought out, and don't match the website. We paid a premium for a "family suite" with marks where fixtures had been moved, lint on the ceiling near the ventilation tube, permanent brown stains in the bathroom sink, and curtains dragging on the floor. The double bed had single-bed mattress covers, and the sheets barely covered the mattress pad, so every morning we woke up in a mess of sheets. The hallway was big, but there was nowhere to sit while putting on or taking off ski boots. I assume they don't want people walking past the tiles in ski boots and damaging the wooden floor. They say the room has a "big bathtub" without jacuzzi functions. But when you arrive and see it's actually a jacuzzi with the bubbles disabled, alongside the general state of the room, it feels like they've let things fall into disrepair. You don't install a jacuzzi, switch off the bubble function, and call it a "big bathtub." The whole bathroom is built around this spa idea: the jacuzzi is the centerpiece, there are double showers, and there's a window through the bathroom wall into the next room. You might think you'd get an outside view from the tub, but you'd be looking at other people's balconies. The window is also inconvenient when the kids are sleeping just outside, since bathroom light could wake them. It all feels poorly planned from the start and then neglected. The staff are doing a good job, but the people running the place seem to ignore the need for renovation. Given what they charge for this room, I wasn't happy.

It's a large wellness center with real potential, especially in a ski area, but the visit was very disappointing and fell short of expectations. Only one of all the saunas was working, which is completely unacceptable for a facility this size. There's little or no information about which ones are operating, yet they still charge the full entrance fee. Cleanliness was very poor, and nobody was supervising or checking the facilities. People wore swimsuits in the sauna, with no rules being enforced and no respect for basic wellness etiquette. Such a shame for a place with this much potential.

The location is great, close to central Åre, and the staff are friendly. Our room was excellent, with an awesome view, and breakfast was nice. We chose the hotel mainly for the pool and sauna experience, but about half the stations were working. The pool and Sauna World need maintenance: the steam bastu, contrast shower, and several other options were out of order. Getting all the equipment working would add points to an otherwise great hotel.