THE VAIL PLAZA HOTEL AND CLUB

The lakes and mountain ranges are spectacular as you drive into Vail. The village is surreally pretty. The residential area is spread out in the east or in the more mid-range Lionshead, but Vail Village itself is very upscale and picture-postcard looking, protected by the dark, seven-mile charcoal face of the Vail Mountain range. I could see the kids were overwhelmed by how different the topography and general atmosphere in Vail is - another world away from the traffic and palms of L.A, where we had just come from. There nature is manicured or buried under concrete; here it totally dominates and dwarfs everything around it.
 
We loved the look of THE VAIL PLAZA HOTEL AND CLUB, with its Tudor windows, natural stone and very modern timber touches amongst the ski chalet aesthetic. The new building is an interesting, rather beautiful structure, with the ever-present Vail mountain range visible on all sides.

Inside, the lobby the lounge has a big banquet feel, with high, curved ceilings that showcase wooden beams, stone-walls and clubby chairs in red velvet or chocolate leather and a massive stone fireplace. It’s an impressive first impression, but we felt the public spaces far exceeded the appeal of the rooms.

SUITE DREAMS

The whole “5 star in the snow” ideal often falls short in ski resort towns and certainly does at VAIL PLAZA. Our two standard rooms were side-by-side, but not interconnecting, so the boys could do their thing within knocking range of Mum and Dad. The rooms simply had nothing special about them - even the veneer of newness only showed up how unimaginative the design was; they were never going to look better or more up to date than at opening after all.

Sheira and I love design twists, innovation or even just individual flavour, but there was no one vision behind the décor here - the VAIL PLAZA made the classic hotels’ mistake of doing the rooms ‘by committee,’ with typically bland results. 
Sometimes ski lodges are pared down because people are there for a sporting experience, but in this case it was the clutter that made the room seem bare! As Sheira put it, although the stone and wood was real, the atmosphere in the rooms had a “fake” feel about them.

Each room at the Plaza is good value at US$469 per night in peak season. I guess Sheira and I have become real ‘boutique’ people who cherish small-scale charm - and that is just not the Plaza’s specialty.
There is a huge amount of traffic coming through due to skiers and the business conference market. The village has infrastructure, looks beautiful and works well in summer and winter. Every hotel chain you can think of is building there and there is constant redevelopment.
The location really worked for us, but next time I would go for ambience and choose “The Lodge” - also centrally located in the square (see GETTING THERE).