TH Pila in Pila

We had high hopes for our holiday as the reviews were good and as always a handful of bad reviews but I thought on the whole it was probably reflective of its good review rating and decided to give it a go! Well I’m not entirely sure how the review rating is so high as we knew within the first few hours of being in the hotel that it is somewhere we would never come to again. After speaking with some fellow British travellers they were all of the same opinion. My description would be Butlins of the ski world! If you have kids and you let your kids do what they like then great! BUT for anyone else it is a pure week of headaches! The noise level in the restaurant is nothing I have ever encountered, you cannot hear yourself think, kids are running around the tables and the food area waiving half eaten croissant’s about and smearing Nutella over their faces like a face painting competition. The food is buffet style and is never hot, always luke warm or cold! There is a massive range of food and to be fair some of it is very nice! Just not hot enough. The tea urn is never hot so you get tepid tea all week. The pool is very small and filled with kids and you have to pay for towels if you don’t bring one with you! The gym area is an afterthought as it is behind the chairs in the swimming pool area. The hotel itself is dated, but our room was not too bad and the water was hot. It was on floor 1 which is hard to find from reception as you take a lift from 5 to 4, then walk the entire floor to a lift at the other end and then take a lift to floor 1, and stairs in every direction no matter where you go. We had to pay €30 euros for our ski locker which we have never had to do before. Add on the local tax and the insurance for our lift passes and we’ve spent €100 euros before we even start. The staff were pleasant as was the rep from Crystal Ski. It was a shame they didn’t have enough people for the ski away day, so that was cancelled. A shame as it would have broken the week up a bit. Pila itself is very quiet and from 6pm onwards it’s like a ghost town. The bars are either shut or hardly anybody in them. There was Apres outside the hotel on a Thursday which was very good, a shame it was only once a week and another few bars were open for Apres but nothing amazing. Getting around Pila is also difficult, we encountered a couple walking round the road asking us where Pila centre was…erm you’re in it! We had boarded pretty much the whole area within the first two to three days so not much variation after that. To be brutally honest Pila is not for us and not somewhere we would come back to as it just doesn’t quite meet our needs or offer what other bigger resorts do.

We had high hopes for our holiday as the reviews were good and as always a handful of bad reviews but I thought on the whole it was probably reflective of its good review rating and decided to give it a go! Well I’m not entirely sure how the review rating is so high as we knew within the first few hours of being in the hotel that it is somewhere we would never come to again. After speaking with some fellow British travellers they were all of the same opinion. My description would be Butlins of the ski world! If you have kids and you let your kids do what they like then great! BUT for anyone else it is a pure week of headaches! The noise level in the restaurant is nothing I have ever encountered, you cannot hear yourself think, kids are running around the tables and the food area waiving half eaten croissant’s about and smearing Nutella over their faces like a face painting competition. The food is buffet style and is never hot, always luke warm or cold! There is a massive range of food and to be fair some of it is very nice! Just not hot enough. The tea urn is never hot so you get tepid tea all week. The pool is very small and filled with kids and you have to pay for towels if you don’t bring one with you! The gym area is an afterthought as it is behind the chairs in the swimming pool area. The hotel itself is dated, but our room was not too bad and the water was hot. It was on floor 1 which is hard to find from reception as you take a lift from 5 to 4, then walk the entire floor to a lift at the other end and then take a lift to floor 1, and stairs in every direction no matter where you go. We had to pay €30 euros for our ski locker which we have never had to do before. Add on the local tax and the insurance for our lift passes and we’ve spent €100 euros before we even start. The staff were pleasant as was the rep from Crystal Ski. It was a shame they didn’t have enough people for the ski away day, so that was cancelled. A shame as it would have broken the week up a bit. Pila itself is very quiet and from 6pm onwards it’s like a ghost town. The bars are either shut or hardly anybody in them. There was Apres outside the hotel on a Thursday which was very good, a shame it was only once a week and another few bars were open for Apres but nothing amazing. Getting around Pila is also difficult, we encountered a couple walking round the road asking us where Pila centre was…erm you’re in it! We had boarded pretty much the whole area within the first two to three days so not much variation after that. To be brutally honest Pila is not for us and not somewhere we would come back to as it just doesn’t quite meet our needs or offer what other bigger resorts do.