Hotel Chetzeron

Until 2003, Chetzeron was the top station of a gondola line, not a hotel at all. Built in the early 1960s as skiing turned into Crans-Montana's main economic engine, the lift closed for good that year once a faster, modernised line to Crans-Cry d'Er took over service to the whole west side of the ski area, leaving the old altitude station standing empty on the mountain. It was the same year, 2003, that Sami Lamaa first saw what the abandoned building could become: a hotel built into an unused piece of the resort's own ski infrastructure, at 2112 m, with a 360-degree view he thought was worth saving.

He spent the rest of 2003 and the start of 2004 writing a business plan around that idea. In 2004 he brought in a fellow Crans-Montana enthusiast, Louis Bégault, and their wives, Napa and Christine, joined the project too. In 2005 the group filed its first request with the État du Valais to convert the disused station into a restaurant, and once that was accepted, architect Ambroise Bonvin of the firm actescollectifs took on the design.

Two permits, a decade apart

The restaurant came first. Its building permit was granted in September 2008, and work began about two months later, straight into a mountain winter. Crews reinforced the original structure against seismic load, poured a new terrace, insulated the facades and fitted new windows, rebuilding the 1960s station around its own bones rather than starting from a clear site. It held to schedule: the restaurant served its first guests in December 2009.

Converting the rest of the station into overnight rooms took much longer. That paperwork started in 2006, but the building permit for lodging was not granted until 2012. Interior demolition followed, then the rooms took shape gradually alongside a lobby, a dining room, a smoking room and a seminar room. The hotel's signature wide glass frontage was installed in May 2014, and the hotel itself opened seven months later, in December 2014, the same building's third distinct use inside little more than a decade.

The reuse has been recognised on its own terms, not just as a backstory. In 2015 Chetzeron was a finalist at the European Hotel Design Awards in the adaptive-reuse category, and it has since joined three independent-hotel collections: Design Hotels in 2016, Hip Hotels in 2018, and Mr & Mrs Smith's list of 1000 hotels worldwide in 2020.

What the lift station left behind

The hotel keeps the building's origins visible rather than covering them up. Concrete, the material the original station was built from, is paired inside with stone and oak, a combination the hotel describes as recalling the region's mountain cabins, and wide glazing throughout lets in light a working lift station never needed. All 16 rooms and suites are named for a peak rather than numbered: 9 are 30 m² "vallées supérieures" facing east toward the Simplon pass, 4 are 38 m² "angles deluxe" with two glazed walls giving a 180-degree view south, and 3 are 50 m² junior suites facing west, where the Alps run on into France.

A separate chalet on the same site has its own second life. It became the hotel's massage and relaxation space in 2016, but in 1987 the same building was the starting hut for the women's World Cup downhill.

No road, and a lift pass bought separately

None of this comes with road access. The route up is strictly closed to public traffic, so the hotel's own 4x4s are the only vehicles allowed on it, and every other arrival is by the Crans-Cry d'Er gondola, which is not included in the room rate: guests buy their lift pass separately, either on mycma.ch or at the ticket office. From the top of that gondola it is a 3-minute ski or a 20-minute walk down to the hotel in winter, and a 20-minute walk in summer. When the lift itself stops running, the hotel phones staying guests directly to arrange an alternative and sends restaurant guests to the marked footpath instead, which starts opposite the ESS chalet in Crans-Montana. Even the hotel's own snowcats cannot move during the day: for safety, they are only allowed out once the whole ski area has closed for the night.

A reception for 150, beds for a fraction of that

That transport chain also shapes what a wedding here actually looks like. The events page states a reception can run to 150 guests, but the hotel only sleeps a small share of that: 16 rooms in total. Booking Chetzeron for a big day means booking a venue built for a much larger party than it can ever house overnight, and the gap only works because most of the guest list is moved up the mountain for the evening rather than put to bed there. The hotel spells out what that involves for anyone not staying over: transfers are bundled with a 5-course evening menu, snowcats collect guests from Crans-Montana in winter and 4x4s from Plans-Mayens in summer, the transfer has to be booked in advance, and once its schedule is set, guests are expected to see it through rather than leave early, for logistical reasons the hotel states plainly on its own site. Beyond weddings, the same events page lists private parties and corporate seminars among its regular bookings, so a wedding shares the calendar rather than having a dedicated department to itself.

Who still runs it

Chetzeron remains independent. It belongs to Sami Lamaa, who first sketched the idea on the empty station in 2003, and to the family of his co-founder Louis Bégault, now deceased; it has no ownership tie to the company that runs Crans-Montana's ski lifts, the very network that made the original station redundant in 2003. In the local patois, Chetzeron means "the round ridge", and the site is still marked on some trail signs by its older spelling, Chetseron. A transfer service makes the hotel reachable for guests with reduced mobility, and one room is fitted for a wheelchair. Dogs are welcome at the restaurant at lunchtime, but not inside the hotel or in the hotel's own vehicles.

What a couple gets, in the end, is a building that was never designed to hold a wedding: a lift station stripped, reinforced and rebuilt around its own concrete structure, with a reception space that can outgrow its own bedrooms and a transport chain that answers to the mountain rather than to a driveway. That trade suits a couple who wants the mountain's own infrastructure as the setting, not one hoping to arrange the day around a coach that can pull up at the door.