Les Barmes de l'Ours, Val d'Isère

In the old patois of Val d'Isère, a barme is a cave, the kind brown bears once chose to sleep through the winter. Les Barmes de l'Ours is named after those dens, and in its own way it has been hibernating ever since it opened: curled up at the foot of the Olympic slope, warm and contented, while the resort around it slowly woke up to money.

Val d'Isère was always a skier's town first, one of the great ski areas of the world, high, steep and snow-sure, in a village that cared more about the next run than the next magnum. When the Barmes opened in 2003 beneath the Face de Bellevarde, it was one of barely two hotels in town that a demanding traveller took seriously. Since then grander names have moved in, the cars outside have grown longer and a richer crowd has discovered the slopes. The Barmes has hardly stirred.

Inside, it reads like a time capsule from a simpler idea of luxury, one that wanted guests to have fun rather than to be impressed. The owner, Delphine André, filled the den with bears, carved, painted and stitched into cushions; every room key dangles from a Steiff teddy, and small children are handed a plush one of their own at check-in. Each of the four floors is a different habitat, Scandinavian, North American lodge, Savoyard chalet and contemporary loft, the last presumably for the urban bear.

The essentials have not aged a day. The pistes start at the door, the main lifts are a couple of minutes on foot, and the ski shop is in the house. Downstairs waits a spa of some thousand square metres with a pool, saunas and a hammam, and teenagers have their own hideout with pinball, billiards and a private two-lane bowling alley, which in a ski resort is about as close to a nightclub as most parents will allow.

The den earns its name in the late afternoon. Skiers come down the Bellevarde almost to the door, peel off their boots and fold into the Sofa Bar, whose name is less a brand than a forecast. Dinner then runs from fondue beneath paintings of bears and cows at Le Coin Savoyard, through spit-roasted meat for sharing at La Rôtisserie, up to La Table de l'Ours, where Antoine Gras smokes trout over juniper and makes Savoyard cooking light enough to ski on the next morning.

Simpler times had their compromises too. This is a bigger den than the cosy name suggests, the lounges and the pool fill up in the holidays, some rooms are on the snug side, and grown-ups without a soft spot for bears may find the teddy count a little high. Outside, Val d'Isère's après-ski is loud and proud, and the hush stops at the threshold.

Real bears sleep through the winter and wake in spring. Les Barmes de l'Ours keeps the opposite hours. Each December it wakes with the first proper snow, glances down the street at the latest arrivals and carries on exactly as before. Then, as the bears come out, it locks the door and goes back to sleep, dreaming of a Val d'Isère that was mostly about the skiing.