Half past two in the afternoon in Val Thorens. The lifts are still turning, and the terrace at Fahrenheit Seven is already filling with people who have not bothered to take their boots off. Somebody is setting up behind a pair of decks at the end of the bar. This is not the evening yet. It is the hour the evening starts from.
Fahrenheit Seven runs three hotels inside the Three Vallées, and they do not sell the same night. One has a stage and a licence until one in the morning. One is a fireside restaurant with an English pub attached. The third opens this December and holds the only swimming pool of the three. Which one suits you is a question about your evenings, not about your skiing.
Seven degrees
Where the name comes from
Water droplets freeze inside a cloud and turn into snow crystals. The stellar dendrite, the most regular of them, forms at −13.9 °C, which is seven degrees Fahrenheit. The group named itself after that number.
The evenings make more sense once you know who built the hotels. Fahrenheit Seven grew out of a friendship between the De Unger and Vidoni families, and Dom Tournier, co-founder of La Folie Douce Val Thorens, joined them in it. Véronique Vidoni designed all three interiors in the same seventies neo-vintage register: custom furniture, velvet headboards, dial telephones. Music was in the ownership long before it was ever in the programme.
Side by side
The three, compared
| Val Thorens | Courchevel 1650 | Les Menuires | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rooms | 108 | 86 | 51 |
| The loud room | Le Zinc, own stage, to 01:00 | The Seven Kings, three nights a week | DJ sets several nights a week |
| Terrace | 300 m², ski straight in | On the snow front at Moriond | 200 m² facing south |
| Swimming pool | No | No | Yes, 12 m indoor |
| Hotel opens | 27 November 2026 | December 2026 | 11 December 2026 |
2,300 metres
Val Thorens, the loud one
Europe’s highest resort, and the one where the season starts first. The hotel stands on the snow front and you come off the Cascades run onto its own terrace. Downstairs, a 200-square-metre ski room with a bar inside it.
Evenings here keep a timetable, and it is worth reading before you book:
- From 14:30 · après-ski opens on La Terrasse, 300 square metres facing the Belleville valley. You can ski straight in.
- 16:00 to 20:00, from February · Sunset Parties on the same terrace, DJs and live performers.
- 18:00 to 01:00 · Le Zinc, the gastro bar with its own stage. Live music three times a week, sharing boards, fondue, a wine list covering every region.
- Once a month · a Seven Party with an invited artist.
- 8:00 to 22:00 · La Cheminée, the quiet room. Leather armchairs, a fire, board games for the children.
That last line carries more weight than it looks. A hotel with a stage in it needs a room to retreat into, and La Cheminée is that room.
Worth knowing
There is no swimming pool and no gym at Val Thorens. Recovery runs on heat and cold instead, free for guests: hammam, sauna, ice fountain, a herbal tea room, and a Nordic bath for six on an open balcony, new this season.
The World Ski Awards named this hotel World’s Best New Ski Hotel in 2017, then France’s Best Ski Hotel in 2018 and again in 2020.
Moriond
Courchevel 1650, the pub and the fire
Moriond is the calmer shoulder of Courchevel. The hotel sits on its snow front beside the Ariondaz gondola, which reaches 1850 in minutes if you want the larger version of the night.
Dinner is the event here. La Cheminée cooks over wood: chef Damien Ducharlet works prime cuts, whole fish and Savoyard produce, the menu changes daily, and the cellar runs from author wines to Grands Crus. Live acoustic sets on Thursday and Friday evenings.
The Seven Kings is the bar: leather, dark wood, seven English and Scottish beers, British gins. It opens Friday, Saturday and Sunday, 17:00 to 01:00. Three nights rather than seven, and better to know that now than on a Tuesday. The other evenings the Ski Bar runs to 23:00, and the gondola is a short walk away.
Le Relax is free for guests, 10:00 to 20:00: sauna, hammam, herbal tea room, and two treatment rooms taking bookings daily. Families take the duplexes, which sleep five across two floors.
Opening 11 December
Les Menuires, the new one
Fifty-one rooms across nine categories, 26 to 93 square metres, sleeping two to seven. It opens on 11 December 2026 on the snow front at Preyerand, and the gondola beside it also runs in the evening, so La Croisette and back is a decision rather than a taxi fare.
This is the one with the pool. On level minus one, behind full glazing with the peaks in view, a heated 12-metre indoor pool with sauna and hammam, and an adults-only slot in the evening. Neither of the other two has anything like it.
What the evening looks like
- A 200 m² terrace facing south, run as a Sun Club with the House of Veuve Clicquot
- DJ sets several evenings a week, in après-ski mode and again later
- A dining room seating 110 around an open kitchen: Italian and Mediterranean, sharing tapas, reworked Savoyard classics
- The restaurant takes outside bookings, so reserve the table together with the room
- A ski boutique of over 100 m² with its own ski bar
One footnote, because it changes how the hotel reads. Les Menuires was the group’s first project, not its third: Véronique and Stéphane Vidoni moved to the Belleville valley for it and joined forces with Claudia and Glen De Unger. Setbacks pushed it back for years, and the first groundworks were only turned in 2024.
Winter 2026/27
The lifts open before the hotels do
Worth checking against your dates, because in places the gap runs to a fortnight.
| Resort | Lifts turn | Hotel opens |
|---|---|---|
| Val Thorens | 21 November | 27 November |
| Courchevel Moriond | 5 December | December, day to be confirmed |
| Les Menuires | 5 December | 11 December |
Resort dates come from Les 3 Vallées and stay provisional, since snow and lift operations can move them. Links across the ski area run from 5 December 2026 to 18 April 2027, and Val Thorens keeps its own season open until 2 May.
If you are choosing between them, the short version is this. Val Thorens for the season that starts earliest and the evening that runs latest. Courchevel 1650 for a proper dinner, with a gondola to a bigger resort on the nights you want one. Les Menuires for a swim after skiing, a new building and a quieter street to walk back along.
All three sit on our books: Val Thorens → · Courchevel 1650 → · Les Menuires →
Planning the season
We will hold the room and the table
Fifteen years in the Alps, and the good rooms in these three go early for Christmas and February. Tell us which evening you want and we will work backwards from it, transfers and instructors included.
