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.

What happens when you take young kids to a true five-star alpine hotel

Why the pictures focus on my kids

One thing I’ll do consistently in these reviews is include photos of my kids actually using the hotel.

A three-year-old and a nine-year-old experience the same place very differently, and it’s easy to read a review and assume your kids will have the same experience. The photos are meant to give you a quick visual sense of where on that spectrum this sits. My kids have experienced these hotels at various ages, and future updates will – obviously – highlight the experiences of even older kids.

Plus, if I’m honest, I’m just that kind of dad who thinks my kids are adorable, and I want to show them off!

The short version

Trofana Royal is a true five-star alpine hotel. The food is outstanding, the service is exceptional, and the skiing in Ischgl is among the best in the world.

It is not a kids hotel.

You can bring young children, and we have, but doing so reintroduces a lot of the friction that places like Dachsteinkönig are explicitly designed to remove.

If your priority is skiing and adult-level luxury, it’s an exceptional base. If your priority is an easy, structured family experience, it isn’t.

Luxury first. Everything else follows.

We’ve been coming to Trofana for more than a decade, usually at least once a year. Sometimes alone, sometimes as a couple, sometimes with friends, and a few times with kids. It’s our anchor in Ischgl, and one we worked up to over time after trying several other strong hotels in the area.

That history matters, because this is not a one-off impression.

Trofana is unapologetically luxury-first. You feel it immediately. Bags disappear and reappear in your room without effort. You’re guided through the hotel, shown the spa, introduced to the facilities. The staff remember you from previous years and take the time to engage properly, whether in English or German.

The rooms follow the same philosophy. Warm, wood-heavy finishes, generous sizing, and a general sense that nothing has been done halfway. There are different parts of the hotel with slightly different styles, but I tend to stay in the more modern section.

One small but telling detail: I often arrive late from Copenhagen, after the kitchen has closed. Every time, there’s been a proper Austrian charcuterie board waiting in the room. Not an afterthought, but something done properly.

That’s the level this place operates at.

This is why you come here

The food is exceptional.

Breakfast is technically a buffet, but it’s an excellent one. Dinner is where things really stand out. Multi-course, well-paced, and clearly designed as an experience rather than just a meal.

It’s the kind of dining where you’re aware that someone has thought carefully about how the evening unfolds.

In fact, I wouldn’t particularly want to stay here without skiing. The meals are substantial enough that you need a full day on the mountain to justify them.

This is one of the clearest contrasts to a place like Dachsteinkönig. There, food is designed to be easy. Here, it’s designed to impress.

And then you bring children into the equation

This is where the experience shifts.

The hotel doesn’t ignore kids, but it’s clearly not built around them, and you feel that fairly quickly.

The first friction point is timing. Dinner typically starts around 19:00, which, with young children (ours were between 1 and 4), is exactly when you’d ideally be winding things down. We had more than one evening where a child simply fell asleep on the bench during the meal.

We worked around that by occasionally eating earlier at the bar and then hiring a babysitter through the hotel. That worked well – the babysitter stayed in the room while they slept, and we could have a proper dinner afterwards – but it’s a workaround, not something that feels seamless.

Breakfast has a similar dynamic. An 08:00 opening time makes it difficult to get out early enough for first lifts if you’re managing young kids, getting them dressed, and navigating the hotel.

This is really the trade-off. You’re stepping back into a traditional luxury environment, which means more friction day-to-day – but also a much higher ceiling in terms of food, service, and overall experience.

Yes, there are things for kids

There is a dedicated kids area of around 500 square meters, with toys, games, a small climbing wall, and a play structure. For toddlers, it’s actually quite good. Our kids enjoyed it at that stage, and I have no real complaints.

But it’s not a place designed to hold their attention for long stretches, particularly as they get older. The kids club is unstaffed by default, although supervision can be arranged.

The pool is similar. It works for kids, and ours enjoyed it, but it’s fundamentally an adult-oriented space. There are no slides, no high-energy features, just a well-designed pool.

That’s the consistent theme. Children are accommodated, but they’re not the focus.

Where this place actually dominates

You can’t beat Ischgl as a ski destination. It’s consistently among the best in the Alps.

Trofana’s location is strong, but not perfect. It’s not ski-out, with roughly a 200m walk to the main gondola. At the end of the day, however, you can ski back, which makes a noticeable difference.

The main challenge, particularly with kids, is the start of the day. Carrying equipment and navigating queues at the main gondola can be frustrating, especially in peak periods. We’ve seen anything from 10–15 minutes to closer to 30 minutes.

There are ways around this if you’re alone, but with kids, you’re largely committed to the main flow.

One nice detail for younger children: at the Idalp ski area, there’s a carousel that pulls kids around on inflatable tubes. Ours loved it, and it sits right next to beginner slopes and magic carpets.

The advantage of not being a resort

Unlike a fully self-contained family resort, you’re in a real ski town.

Ischgl has plenty to do beyond the hotel. You can take a horse-drawn carriage ride, walk through town, or just sit outside with a hot chocolate on a good day. There’s also easy access to practical things like grocery stores just a short walk from the lift.

That flexibility is something you don’t get in more isolated, family-focused setups.

Who this is for / who it isn’t

Go here if:

• You prioritise skiing and want one of the best areas in the Alps
• You value true five-star service and dining
• You’re travelling without kids, or with older, more independent ones

Avoid if:

• You want a low-friction holiday with young children
• You expect kids-focused infrastructure
• Your schedule revolves around early dinners and early bedtimes

Scores

• Kids Experience: 6/10
• Parents’ Experience: 9/10
• Rooms & Practicality: 9/10
• Food & Dining: 10/10
• Friction: 6/10
• Ski Experience: 8/10

Final verdict

Trofana Royal is exactly what a five-star alpine hotel should be.

The question is whether that’s what you need at a given stage of life.

With young kids, you’ll feel the friction. With older kids, or without them, it’s close to ideal.

For us, it remains a place we keep coming back to – just with slightly different expectations each time.