Boutique hotel or grand hotel in St. Moritz: which suits you?

Anyone looking for a place to stay in St. Moritz is really choosing between three categories: a grand hotel, a small house of a dozen rooms, or a holiday flat. The question is not which is best but which suits your stay. We run a house of thirteen rooms ourselves, so we are not neutral. Even so, there are clear cases where we point people to the big house.

The quick comparison

When the grand hotel is the better choice

We say this without grinding our teeth: some stays are simply better served by a large house.

• With children over several days. An indoor pool, a kids' club and a restaurant that opens at six in the evening are not luxuries with small children, they are infrastructure.
• For long winter stays. If you are here for two weeks and ski every day, a ski room, a spa and half board under one roof genuinely help.
• When anonymity is the point. In a house of thirteen rooms you will be recognised. For many that is the reason to come, and for some the reason not to.
• For large parties. From around a hundred people, the grand houses in town are the right address.

I send people elsewhere every week because their stay belongs somewhere else. That isn't a lost booking, that's the job.

— Martin Camichel, Host

When the small house wins

And then there are the stays a house of thirteen rooms is built for.

• Two to five nights. Short stays live off closeness, not off infrastructure you cannot use up in three days.
• Couples. No buffet noise, no entertainment programme, but a bar you stay sitting at in the evening.
• Groups up to around thirty people. A house of thirteen rooms can be taken whole. In a grand hotel, even thirty of you remain a detail of the operation.
• When you want the place, not the hotel world. Our bar and garden are open to locals too. You sit among people from St. Moritz rather than among hotel guests.

Price is not the argument

Small houses in St. Moritz are usually cheaper than the grand addresses, but the difference is rarely what decides it.

In both cases you are paying for something different. In a grand hotel for infrastructure that is kept ready whether you use it or not. In a small house for closeness, and for a place where after two days you know where the glasses are.

Anyone deciding purely on price ends up with a holiday flat anyway. That is also a good decision, but only from about a week upward.

And the holiday flat?

For longer family stays a flat is often the most sensible choice. Your own kitchen, more space, no adapting to anyone else's timetable.

For two or three nights the maths flips. Key handover, shopping, final cleaning and a breakfast you have to source yourself: that is a lot of organising for a short weekend.

Our recommendation in one sentence

Staying a week or more with children, take a large house or a flat. Coming for two to five nights, as a couple or as a group that fills a whole house, take a small one.

What that looks like here is on the rooms and suites page and in our piece on the boutique hotel. An overview of every house in town is on Engadin St. Moritz.

If you are unsure, write to us. We will tell you honestly when your stay belongs somewhere else.