Le Grand Hôtel Chandolin

Le Grand Hôtel Chandolin sleeps 137 people across 50 rooms, at almost 2000 m above sea level in the village of Chandolin, in the Val d'Anniviers, according to the hotel's own homepage. Chandolin itself, in a Wikipedia count taken in December 2002, before the village merged into the larger Anniviers commune in 2009, had a population of 82. A wedding party that books the whole building can, for a weekend, outnumber the village hosting it, and most of what makes this address unusual traces back to that arithmetic.

The site is explicit that this actually happens. Its "plan your stay" page states the house "is often booked for weddings and other celebrations," and recommends booking at least 2 nights, warning that "the organisation and implementation for such a large house is very extensive and often underestimated." The property's own FAQ, in French, lists a wedding party (un groupe de mariage) among the standard categories of group that rents the building, alongside several families together, friends, a seminar group, a church group, a choir and a school class.

Hotel until 2001, landlord since

It stopped operating as a hotel, in the ordinary sense, in 2001. The house is let out floor by floor or as a whole, never by the individual room, to a maximum of 2 groups at the same time. There's no restaurant service: "We do not offer meals," the homepage states outright. What a group gets instead is a shared kitchen on the ground floor, which the FAQ says is designed to feed 137 guests (the homepage separately puts the kitchen's capacity at 135; the FAQ figure matches the total bed count exactly, so 137 is the number worth trusting), and a historic dining room next to it with space for 120. There's also a fireplace room, a bar reserved for house guests only, and a disco in the basement.

50 rooms, 137 beds, 4 floors you can rent separately

The 50 rooms are spread across 4 floors, and the price list splits them out accordingly. The first floor, with a south-facing terrace, sleeps 36 across 13 rooms and 12 bathrooms. The second sleeps 35 across 14 rooms, also with 12 bathrooms. The third has 12 rooms and 35 beds, 6 of them sofa beds in a library the house numbers room 44, served by 4 private bathrooms plus 2 shared bathrooms with 2 showers and 2 toilets each. The fourth sleeps 31 across 11 rooms, with 6 bathrooms and one more shared on the landing. Taking the entire house costs 3,617 CHF a night in July, August and every summer Friday-Saturday, dropping to 3,170 CHF in the shoulder months between the ski area's spring closure and the week before Christmas. Winter rates run higher: 4,218 CHF over Christmas week, New Year and Carnival weekends, 3,617 CHF the rest of the season. Renting a single floor instead runs from 711 to 1,224 CHF a night, depending on the floor and the date. Kitchen use is a flat 200 CHF, or charged pro rata if only part of the house is booked. None of that includes bed linen (18 CHF a set), the obligatory final clean of the shared spaces (400 CHF) and of each bedroom (25 CHF more), or a visitor's tax the commune adds per person, per night: 4 CHF for anyone 16 or older, 2 CHF for a child aged 6 to 15.

Cash only, and the nearest card machine is a valley away

A booking is confirmed once the signed rental contract comes back with a deposit of around 20%, due within 10 days of signing; the balance follows 2 months before arrival, with a security deposit collected alongside it. None of it can go on a card. The FAQ states plainly that the house takes cash only, euros accepted at the day's exchange rate, and points guests toward the nearest ways to get more: a 3% withdrawal fee at Chandolin's own tourist office, a postal card machine at the village grocery store, or an actual cash machine, 1 of them in St-Luc and 3 in Vissoie, both a drive away.

The last 500 meters aren't paved

Getting to the house is its own logistical exercise. The paved road through the village ends before the property, and the final 500 meters run on an unpaved private track; in winter, that stretch needs snow chains or 4-wheel drive. The FAQ's suggested workaround is to drive up just to load or unload, no more than 30 minutes, then move the car back down to one of the village's paid parking lots, payable through the ParkingPay app or at a machine, and either walk the 10 to 15 minutes back up or catch the free shuttle to the "Calvaire" stop, about 5 minutes on foot from the door. A car left somewhere it shouldn't be costs 50 CHF. None of the rooms or bathrooms are fitted for a wheelchair: the ground floor and an elevator reach as far as the third floor, corridors run 1.90 meters wide and room doors between 0.75 and 0.85 meters, and while the house can lend a stool or a temporary ramp, it recommends that anyone with reduced mobility travel with a companion.

A caterer has to find the house itself

Because nobody on staff cooks for guests, a wedding party either uses the shared kitchen itself or brings someone in, and bringing someone in takes planning. The FAQ notes that suppliers can deliver food and drink if given advance notice of the date, that winter deliveries also need snow chains or 4-wheel drive, and that some suppliers stop at the village center and leave the tenant to carry the rest up. On request, the house will email a list of local suppliers and caterers, though it doesn't publish one on the site itself. For anything simpler, the village's own grocery store and its tourist office are the two resources the FAQ actually names; a couple needing a florist, a hairdresser or anything more particular is sourcing it from outside Chandolin, because the property doesn't offer it. A chapel near the house can also be rented, through the Protestant parish of Sierre, for a couple who want a ceremony on-site rather than just a reception; Switzerland only recognizes a marriage performed at a civil registry office, so whatever happens at the house or that chapel is the symbolic half of the day, a fact about Swiss law generally rather than anything this site claims about itself.

Rules built for a rented house, not a hotel

Running an entire building as short-term group accommodation produces a level of house rule a full-service hotel usually absorbs without a couple ever seeing it. Amplified outdoor sound, speeches included, needs written permission from the commune, capped at 2 hours a day and agreed beforehand; indoor music can run until midnight in the main hall (not in the glassed verandas) and until 4 a.m. in the basement disco, and confetti is banned across the whole property. Open fires outdoors aren't allowed, though there's a working fireplace inside for anyone who brings their own firewood. A dog costs 20 CHF a night and has to stay leashed everywhere in and around the house, a commune rule the FAQ says the local authority fines at around 350 CHF for letting one off the leash. Smoking is banned indoors entirely, in a building built largely from Arolla pine. The FAQ says 3 people manage the house day to day and aren't always on the premises, though reachable by phone, and that even a group renting the whole building will likely still run into staff, since the office, private rooms and service areas stay in use regardless of who's booked the floors around them. The company behind all of it, Le Grand Hôtel Chandolin SA, is listed as active in the Swiss commercial registry, with a filing as recent as 1 May 2025.

Le Grand Hôtel Chandolin isn't a venue that runs a wedding for a couple. It's a landlord that hands over an entire, slightly eccentric mountain house, built between 1893 and 1897 by the mountain guide and hotelier Pierre Pont to a design by the Vevey architect Louis Henry Maillard, and expects the tenant to organize the rest: the food, the transport, the ceremony, even the cash to pay for it. That suits a couple who wants their whole guest list under one roof in a setting few other Valais venues can match, and who doesn't mind arranging catering and a chapel booking independently. It won't suit anyone expecting a coordinator, a kitchen staff or a card reader. The small gap between the homepage's 135-guest kitchen and the FAQ's 137 is a minor thing, but it's a fair preview of what the whole site is: documents built up over more than 2 decades of running the same self-service model, not one polished, single, up-to-date wedding brochure.