Most people booking their first staffed chalet assume the concierge is the person who books the restaurant. In an Alpine week the role is considerably larger than that, and it starts months before anyone arrives. Here is what it actually covers.
The distinction that matters
A serviced chalet comes with staff: a chef, a host, a housekeeping team. They run the house: meals, service, the fire lit when you come off the mountain. Whether they are part of your week, and at what level, is settled alongside the chalet rather than folded into it.
A concierge runs everything else. Everything outside the walls of the chalet, and everything that has to happen before you get there. The two are complementary, and confusing them is how people end up in an excellent chalet with no lift passes on the 26th of December.
Before arrival
The bulk of the work happens in the weeks preceding the stay, and this is where a concierge earns the fee.
- Lift passes — bought for the correct domain and duration, in the chalet on arrival. Not queued for on the first morning.
- Equipment — sized in advance for every member of the party, delivered to the chalet ski room and fitted there.
- Instructors and guides — private instruction, children’s lessons, off-piste guiding. In festive weeks the good ones commit as early as the chalets do.
- Transfers — arrival and departure timed to the flight, not to a schedule.
- The table on the 31st — altitude restaurants and the resort’s few serious rooms are reserved in autumn, not in December.
Getting there
Geneva is the usual gateway to the Three Valleys, with Chambéry and Lyon as alternatives depending on the origin. The road up is the part guests underestimate: chauffeured vehicles equipped for winter conditions, drivers who know the transfer, and arrival timing that accounts for December traffic on the Moûtiers road.
Where the timing or the weather makes it the better option, helicopter transfer removes the drive entirely. Courchevel has its own altiport; Meribel is served from the surrounding pads. It is a supplement, always, but on a Saturday changeover in high season it can save several hours.
Inside the week
Once the party is in the chalet, the concierge role becomes the one people picture: reservations, adjustments, and the things nobody planned for. A change of restaurant because the weather turned. A second instructor because a teenager wants to go off-piste and the parents do not. A car at eleven at night.
It also covers what a chalet cannot supply from its own staff: a masseuse or physiotherapist after a hard day, a private doctor when someone comes off badly, a spa booking, a photographer for the family group everyone means to organise and never does.
Winter in the Alps, summer on the Riviera, the same desk.
With children
A family week and an adult week are not the same operation. Multilingual nannies, ski school or private lessons for children, and childcare scheduled around the adults’ skiing rather than in competition with it. The point is that the grown-ups get a full day on the mountain and the children get a proper one too.
Several of the chalets we place have dedicated bunk rooms or a separate children’s floor, which changes the arithmetic of a multi-generational week considerably. It is worth asking about before choosing the property, not after.
Discretion, and the rest
At this level a concierge also handles the things that are not talked about: close protection where it is wanted, confidentiality around who is staying where, private shopping and same-day delivery when something has been forgotten, and the quiet management of anything that would otherwise become a problem.
The range is deliberately open. The useful way to think about it is not a list of services but a single number to call, and the assumption that whatever is asked for gets arranged or, occasionally, that we say plainly it cannot be.
What the chalet rate covers
The rate quoted for a chalet covers the rental of the property, and only that. Chef and household staff, lift passes, equipment, instruction, transfers, helicopter access and the drinks list are each quoted separately, because each of them is genuinely optional and the right answer differs from one party to the next.
What we do not do is leave you to discover that piecemeal. Before anything is committed you receive the whole of it in a single figure: the chalet, the staffing you want, the services, the supplements. A number that moves after signature is not a number, and in our experience it is the one thing guests least forgive.
The same team, both seasons
Our concierge desk runs the Riviera in summer and the Alps in winter, for largely the same guests. That continuity is the point: the people arranging your chef in Meribel in February are the people who arranged the boat in Saint-Tropez in July.
Our chalets are here, and if you are still working out the timing, we set out when the festive weeks are decided.