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If I could only recommend one luxury family hotel in the Alps, this could be a contender

The short version

If Dachsteinkönig is built around children, and Trofana Royal is built around adults, Das Edelweiss somehow manages to sit convincingly in the middle.

It’s genuinely luxurious without feeling stuffy, genuinely family-friendly without feeling like a giant playground, and while I don’t think it’s perfect, it’s one of the very best combinations of those two worlds that I’ve personally experienced.

We’ve visited two or three times over the years, and every time we’ve left thinking the same thing: this place gets the balance remarkably right.

Luxury first. Family never forgotten.

Some hotels gradually grow on you. Das Edelweiss wins you over before you’ve even reached reception.

The building is striking, the lobby is impressive without becoming intimidating, and everything immediately feels thoughtfully designed. Even practical areas like the ski lockers feel unusually well executed, and the integrated ski shop stocks equipment I’d actually be happy renting. From the moment you arrive, it feels like a hotel that has paid attention to details.

One small blemish on our first visit deserves mentioning. We arrived a little before check-in, hoping to get changed and head to the spa. We ended up waiting around half an hour, largely because I think we were accidentally forgotten about. It was the only genuinely disappointing service interaction I can remember over multiple stays, and everything after that was exactly what I’d hope for from a hotel operating at this level.

We’ve stayed in several different room categories, from standard rooms through to larger suites, and never felt disappointed. One suite overlooked the gondola and ski slopes directly, which made for a fantastic view every morning. The rooms feel luxurious without becoming impractical. They’re modern, spacious and comfortable, but still work well as family accommodation, which is a surprisingly difficult balance to get right.

The restaurant almost steals the show

The hotel has several dining concepts, which immediately makes it feel different from many family hotels.

The breakfast buffet is excellent, while dinner offers enough variety that we never found ourselves becoming bored over longer stays. There’s a dedicated steak restaurant that somehow remains on my “next time” list, and an outstanding sushi restaurant whose menu can even be ordered from the main dining room.

The atmosphere deserves mentioning as well. Dinner feels lively rather than formal. Families, couples and groups all mix together, creating an enjoyable buzz without descending into chaos. The staff were always accommodating when we wanted to adjust seating arrangements, and our boys loved the elaborate mocktails that appeared with almost as much ceremony as the adults’ cocktails.

If Trofana edges this hotel on outright culinary ambition, Das Edelweiss closes much of that gap by creating an atmosphere where everyone seems to be enjoying themselves. It can feel a little crowded during peak periods, and service occasionally feels slightly rushed as a result, but the overall experience is still excellent.

Then you discover the spa

This is where Das Edelweiss becomes exceptional.

I’ve stayed in dedicated Kinderhotels with fewer waterslides. I’ve stayed in luxury hotels with less impressive spas. Somehow, Das Edelweiss delivers both.

Compared to Dachsteinkönig, the waterslide complex is larger, more varied and simply more fun. There are fewer land-based activities for children, but the overall water and wellness offering is on another level. Multiple family pools, dedicated children’s wellness areas, excellent saunas, outdoor hot tubs, and an entire waterslide complex somehow coexist with adult wellness facilities that never feel like an afterthought.

What impressed me most is that adults never feel like they’ve been relegated to a corner while the kids take over. The family wellness and adult wellness experiences coexist remarkably well, which is much harder to achieve than it sounds.

We never actually used the adult-only spa ourselves. At this stage of life we’d rather spend that time with the boys. Having toured the facilities, though, it’s clear that adults wanting peace and quiet aren’t an afterthought.

Even the treatment area impressed us. The boys both had massages during one stay and absolutely loved them.

One of my favourite memories from the hotel is watching Liam swim the full width of one of the pools by himself for the first time, encouraged by one of his older friends waiting at the other side. Hotels rarely become part of family history, but that moment certainly did.

A ski holiday that actually works with kids

Grossarl probably won’t appear on many experts’ lists of Austria’s most challenging ski areas.

Travelling with young children changes the equation.

The terrain is confidence-inspiring, with relatively few places where I found myself worrying about steep drops or intimidating transitions. This is where Liam really came into his own as a skier, covering around 40 kilometres in a single day at just five years old. And before that at age 4, after he watched me help his older friend by skiing backwards, he just flipped around and started riding switch to help his friend down himself! Adorable.

The ski school associated with the hotel was excellent, and the beginner progression area near the top of the gondola deserves particular praise. Long, gentle runs combined with an extended button lift gave the kids countless opportunities to practice without feeling pressured. It’s one of the better learning environments we’ve experienced.

Getting to the gondola isn’t completely friction-free. There’s roughly a forty-metre walk that includes climbing a snowy incline in ski boots, which always feels slightly longer than it actually is. It’s hardly a deal-breaker, but it’s enough that I wouldn’t quite give the skiing a perfect score from the perspective of a family with young children.

But there was a great little box jump in the dedicated kids fun park that the boys loved (they’ve since progressed well beyond that, but it was their first real air time). I also absolutely adore my wife for having tried it in order to keep them happy – even if she didn’t have the benefit of daddy’s guidance on how to do it and looked absolutely silly the first time, she’s a heck of a mom for having done it! And she improved greatly the next year. 😍

So why isn’t it a ten?

It’s tempting to call Das Edelweiss the perfect family hotel.

I won’t.

The waterslides don’t stay open as long as I’d ideally like, which occasionally clashed with our ski schedule. The restaurants, while excellent, can become busy enough that dinner feels just a little rushed during peak periods. Late-season snow is probably not this resort’s strongest point either.

None of those things would stop me returning, and they certainly don’t stop me recommending it enthusiastically. They simply stop me calling it perfect.

There’s another reason, too.

I’ve stayed somewhere that, for me, just edges Das Edelweiss overall. We’ll get to that hotel another day.

Who this is for / who it isn’t

Go here if:

You want one hotel that genuinely satisfies both parents and children.
You value excellent food, a fantastic spa and good skiing in roughly equal measure.
Your children are old enough to enjoy waterslides but still young enough that family facilities matter.

Avoid if:

You’re looking for expert-level skiing as your absolute top priority.
You’re chasing the absolute last word in luxury regardless of family friendliness.
You prefer small boutique hotels over larger resorts.

Scores

Kids Experience: 9/10
Parents’ Experience: 9/10
Rooms & Practicality: 9/10
Food & Dining: 9/10
Friction: 8/10
Ski Experience: 8/10

Final verdict

I don’t think Das Edelweiss is the single best kids hotel in the Alps, and I don’t think it’s the single best luxury hotel in the Alps.

What I do think is that it’s one of the very best combinations of those two things that I’ve personally experienced. Unlike Trofana Royal, it adapts itself to family life rather than expecting families to adapt to it. Unlike Dachsteinkönig, it never feels as though the adult experience has become secondary to the children’s.

If someone with children asked me for exactly one recommendation, and I knew nothing else about them beyond “we like skiing, we’d like a bit of luxury, and our kids are still young,” this is probably the first hotel I’d mention. That’s about as strong an endorsement as I can give.

It isn’t flawless, but it’s close enough that every time we’ve left, we’ve immediately started talking about when we might come back.

The skiing

This one comes with a bit of a story.

I came into Lermoos after a couple of days skiing in Laax, fully intending to keep going. We did what you’d expect on arrival with young kids, spending time on the small bunny slope just behind the hotel. I was walking up and down while they slid 8–10 meters at a time. Perfect early exposure to skis, and honestly one of the easiest setups I’ve seen for that stage.

Then overnight, something went wrong. I woke up in intense pain which I’m fairly sure was a groin pull, though I still don’t know what triggered it. For the rest of the trip, even lying still hurt enough that skiing wasn’t even a consideration.

So the assessment here is more observational than experiential.

There’s a chairlift a couple hundred meters from the Alpenrose Familux Resort, and the area is covered by a single ski pass. But the skiing itself is spread across multiple smaller, non-connected areas. It feels local rather than expansive.

For families with younger kids, that’s probably sufficient. You’re not there for long runs or big days, you’re there to get them comfortable and enjoying it.

One thing that stuck with me: I had rented skis on arrival, never used them, and when I returned them at the end of the week, the shop refunded me without me even asking. Very brotherly.

The hotel

This is part of the same group as Dachsteinkönig Familux Resort, and it shows immediately.

It’s a hotel built very deliberately around children, and it executes that concept well.

There’s a strong mix of activities:

A large crafts area
One of the biggest soft play zones we experienced
A proper climbing area, though it can get a bit chaotic when it overlaps with the ball cannons and more energetic kids
A large indoor pool complex
A pirate-themed area for younger kids
An outdoor heated pool, open in winter, right next to the beginner slope

The layout is fairly spread out. We had a room that required a decent walk, which I would normally enjoy, but was less appealing given I could barely move. That said, the walk itself takes you through areas packed with kids’ activities, so it never really feels like dead space.

Our room, the Grand Monte, was large, clean, and well put together. Looking back at it, I think my earlier instinct about it being “modern and dark” is only partially fair. It’s more contemporary than traditional Alpine styles, but not unusually dark. Whether you like it will come down to taste rather than any clear design flaw.

They also leaned into outdoor events like winter barbecues, which added a bit more variety to the stay.

Food and service

This is where the experience dropped off a bit for me.

The restaurant feels undersized relative to the number of rooms. Tables are packed tightly enough that you notice it, and it changes the feel of the space.

Service was also the least engaged we experienced across these trips. Not bad, but noticeably less warm and attentive than what you typically expect in Austria.

Food-wise, it’s a mixed picture:

Strong variety for kids
A very good make-your-own juice bar at breakfast
A tiny automatic pancake machine that the kids loved
Adult food that was perfectly fine, but not something I got excited about
Buffet format, similar to Dachsteinkönig, but with less range

The kids were very happy with it. I was less so.

The location

Lermoos is technically a ski town, but it doesn’t feel like a destination.

It feels more like a quiet village that happens to have skiing nearby. Not somewhere you’re likely to spend time walking around or exploring.

This is very much a hotel-centric stay.

The overall experience

This is a place that works extremely well for a specific phase.

If your kids are very young, it removes almost all friction from the holiday. You can get them onto skis without effort, there’s a huge amount to do indoors, and you don’t need to plan much.

The kids facilities are particularly strong, even by this category’s standards. Like its sister properties, it leans heavily into the details that make life easier with small children: toddler-sized toilets, diapers freely available, baby food around the clock, and even kid-height buffets so they can help themselves. It’s all very thoughtfully done.

But as they get older, the perception will likely shift. The skiing doesn’t look strong enough to anchor the trip, and the overall experience doesn’t quite reach the level of some of the other options once you move past that early stage.

It’s also worth noting that this is not a place designed for adult quiet. There’s a constant background noise that comes with a hotel full of young kids. That’s exactly what you sign up for, but it does mean this isn’t somewhere you’d choose as an adults-only escape.

Final verdict

Overall: 7/10

Kids Experience: 9/10
Parents’ Experience: 6/10
Rooms & Practicality: 8/10
Food & Dining: 6/10
Friction: 8/10
Ski Experience: 6/10 (probably!)

A very strong option for younger kids and early ski experiences, with particularly well-executed family infrastructure.

Less compelling once the skiing itself becomes the priority, or if you’re looking for a more balanced experience between kids and adults.