Le Massif Courmayeur opens on 5 June: the first Pestana hotel on Italian soil

It’s called Le Massif Courmayeur, it opens on 5 June 2026, and it sits at 1,224 metres in the resort of Courmayeur, in the Valle d’Aosta, with Mont Blanc filling the horizon and 100 kilometres of pistes at Plan Checrouit at the end of the road. It’s the group’s first property on Italian soil, and the next step in a European strategy that CEO José Theotónio described, in a recent interview with the Italian press, as one of consolidation – with Rome and Milan already in the pipeline for the coming months.

Le Massif is not a new hotel. It’s a five-star property that opened in 2018 under the management of Italian Hospitality Collection, was named World’s Best New Ski Hotel in its very first year, and has since gone on to claim the title of Italy’s Best Ski Hotel in 2023 and 2024 at the World Ski Awards, returning to the nominations in 2025. It’s part of The Leading Hotels of the World circuit and holds the Green Key environmental certification. What changes now is the management: the property will operate under the Pestana Collection brand, integrated into the Pestana Guest Club programme.

For travellers from Portugal, it’s a chance to stay in an alpine five-star hotel – with a direct view of the highest peak in the European Union – without leaving the same loyalty programme that connects Funchal to Marrakech. For the industry, it’s the clearest signal yet of the group’s ambitions in Europe.

A contemporary alpine chalet, with a local signature

Le Massif was designed by Valdostan architect Fabrizio Gandolfo and stands on the Strada Regionale 38, a short walk from Courmayeur’s historic centre, the Via Roma, and 200 metres from the cable car station that takes you up to Plan Checrouit. The structure combines wood, stone, and natural light in the spirit of a contemporary chalet, steering well clear of pastiche and Tyrolean folklore. The west-facing façades catch the sunset over Monte Chétif, the mountain that lends its name to the main restaurant.

There are 80 units across rooms and suites, spread over nine categories, with a clear distinction between village views and Mont Blanc views. The high ceilings, private balconies in several rooms, and the materials chosen – wool, Alpine larch, warm-toned curtains – set the tone for the project: five stars, but without the showiness. Pestana Collection properties are, by definition, places with a character of their own, designed to sit naturally within the story of wherever they happen to be. Le Massif follows that same logic.

Another element worth mentioning is La Loge du Massif: a baita (an alpine hut, in mountain Italian) with a restaurant, bar, and terraces, located directly on the slopes of the Plan Checrouit area, accessible by cable car. Very few hotels in Italy have anything comparable.

What this opening means for Pestana, and what changes for guests

Starting June 5, all Le Massif guests will have access to Pestana Guest Club benefits: 10% off the public rate. For existing program members, integration is automatic from the opening date. Additionally, during this opening period for the new hotel under the Pestana brand, there are two offers that add value to bookings made during this Spring/Summer period:

• Book 2 rooms, paying for only 1. Valid for stays from June 5 to June 26, 2026, across all room types. Cannot be combined with the PGC discount. (PGC members exclusive)
• Book with an additional discount of an extra 10% on top of all PGC tiers, meaning discounts starting from 20%. Valid for stays from June 27 to August 9, 2026, across all room types.

A view of Mont Blanc in a category of its own

One of the interesting decisions made by Italian Hospitality Collection – and kept by Pestana – was to treat the Mont Blanc view as a standalone room category, not just an optional upgrade. Guests who book a Mont Blanc View room pay, on average, more than an equivalent room on the village side, but they get the window with the mountain framed in it. 

Spa, gym and the mountain cabin: what to expect beyond the room

The wellness offering is one of the pillars of the operation. BIOAQUAM is a circuit combining hot and cold water, indoor and outdoor saunas, a Turkish bath and a jacuzzi with mountain views. The treatments use alpine ingredients – honey, pine, arnica, local herbs – and are designed for sports massage at the end of the day, as well as a “relaxing ritual”. 

The gym runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with Technogym equipment and a functional training area – useful for anyone combining skiing and walking with strength work or recovery. The hotel keeps the Experience Team inherited from the previous management, which puts together personalised adventure programmes at the guest’s own pace.

La Loge du Massif: the mountain cabin most hotels don’t have

The Loge du Massif is the one thing Courmayeur’s direct competitors simply can’t match. It’s a baita halfway up the slopes at Plan Checrouit and 1700 meters above sea level, with a restaurant, bar and ski equipment lockers. In the morning, guests take the cable car up without having to carry their equipment, which they collect directly from the lockers before heading to the slopes. At lunchtime, they can stay right there without going down to the village, and then easily return to skiing. During the winter, the ski butler service handles the transportation of the equipment from the village to the lockers on the mountain. For the effort-to-comfort ratio of the overall ski experience, it is the kind of detail that makes all the difference.

Chétif: Valle d’Aosta cooking without the tourist gloss

The Chétif restaurant celebrates the culinary traditions of the Aosta Valley, one of Italy’s most distinctive regional cuisines. The area shares history and ingredients with French Savoy and the Swiss canton of Vaud, and its cooking is mountain cooking: fontina (the region’s DOP cheese), mocetta (cured goat or chamois meat), fonduta (the Valdostan take on fondue), polenta, seupa à la Vapelenentse (bread and fontina soup), and wines from the highest vineyards in Europe, grown on plots planted up to 1,200 metres.

Breakfast is served buffet-style from 7:30 to 10:30 (à la carte in low season), at Chétif. Dinner is à la carte, from 18:30 to 22:30. For guests with early starts on the slopes, the hotel prepares a breakfast box at no extra charge. Lunch at the hotel itself is open from 12:00 until 16:00 with the Loge du Massif taking care of the mountain meal.

There’s also the Bar, open from 10:30 to 00:00, serving Italian aperitivi, regional wines and signature cocktails, which doubles as a lobby bar and the natural gathering point for après-ski once people are back from the slopes.

Insider tips: what to ask for, and when

Le Massif Courmayeur offers a total of 20 shared ski lockers for rent, plus 1 individual locker per room. All lockers are heated. The service includes equipment transport: on arrival, staff collect the gear and take it directly to the locker; before check-out, they retrieve it. Guests do not carry equipment at any point during their stay. This level of operational detail is rarely included in the hotel’s commercial materials, but it is consistently requested by tour operators specializing in snow travel and by ski publication journalists during the fact-checking stage.

Courmayeur, beyond the slopes

Courmayeur has always had the enviable problem of being a small resort with a big reputation. With around 100 kilometres of runs (42 km of marked pistes plus the Monte Bianco freeride area, according to CourmayeurMontBlanc data), it falls well short of the French mega-areas in sheer kilometres. But it’s precisely because it’s small, authentic and elegant that it avoids feeling like an anonymous resort. The centre is pedestrianised, built around the 17th-century Via Roma, and has more restaurants than makes any sense for a village of 2,700 permanent residents.

For Le Massif guests, the off-piste programme comes in three main chapters: the Skyway Monte Bianco (the rotating cable car that National Geographic Traveller described as one of the most spectacular gondola experiences in the world, reaching 3,466 metres at Punta Helbronner), the trails of the Parco Nazionale del Gran Paradiso (Italy’s oldest national park, with over 500 km of walking routes), and the gastronomic and architectural heritage of the Valle d’Aosta. Anyone who combines all three will understand why Courmayeur attracts a different kind of visitor from Italy’s other resorts.

Winter and summer: two hotels inside the same building

The snow season runs from mid-December to the end of April, with the best windows in January and the first half of March. Skiing in Courmayeur suits intermediate level particularly well, and the area is known for the quality of snow on the north-facing pistes (known as “Val Veny”), which hold their condition even in milder winters. For advanced skiers, the Skyway gives access to glacier descents of several hundred metres of vertical drop, on off-piste terrain that has no real equivalent elsewhere in Italy.

In the summer, the resort becomes a base for hiking the Tour du Mont Blanc, via ferrata on Mont Chétif (a two-hour route for beginners, with head-on views of Mont Blanc), mountain biking in the Val Ferret and Val Veny valleys (over 30 marked routes), and the trail running  marathon Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB), which passes through Courmayeur between 25 and 29 August, every year without fail. Le Massif opening on 5 June is no coincidence: June marks the official start of the walking season in the western Alps.

Getting there: the three workable routes from Portugal

There are no direct flights to Courmayeur, but there are three clear routes from Lisbon or Porto.

• Via Geneva: direct flight to Geneva Airport (GVA), followed by a road transfer of around 90 minutes. This is the logistically simplest option in winter, with several carriers operating the route during ski season.
• Via Turin: flight to Turin-Caselle Airport (TRN), with a transfer of around 90 minutes. This is the most common option in summer. There is a partial rail connection to Pré-Saint-Didier, with a shuttle on to Courmayeur.
• Via Milan: flight to Milan-Malpensa (MXP) or Milan-Linate (LIN), with a road transfer of around 2h30. This is the best option if you want to add a city stay before or after.

For any of these options, a hire car or private transfer is recommended, which the hotel concierge can arrange on request. Le Massif has paid private parking, with advance reservation recommended (not suitable for low-slung sports cars, according to the hotel’s own information, given the nature of alpine road surfaces).

Essential practical information