Megève, Haute-Savoie
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In the early 1980s, while much of the Alps was busy pouring concrete, Jean-Louis Sibuet went shopping for old barns. He travelled the valleys around Megève buying up abandoned farm buildings, numbered every beam and board, more than two thousand pieces in all, and stored them in a disused joinery. In 1989 he and his wife Jocelyne put them back together on a meadow at the edge of town, with ski instructors and mountain guides doing the carpentry out of season. Les Fermes de Marie is the result: a grand hotel built from second-hand farms.
It was also the start of a family style. Maisons & Hôtels Sibuet, now run with their children Marie and Nicolas, has grown into a small collection of houses, and none of them follows the grand-hotel script. Where others build palaces, the Sibuets build homes and then fill them with the contents of a well-loved attic.
The hamlet is the purest version of the idea. Seventy rooms are spread across nine linked chalets in a two-hectare park, a short walk from the village, around courtyards that fill with snow. Inside, the walls are old wood, the floors worn terracotta, the furniture antique or simply loved, and the clutter of country clocks, pottery, family portraits and hunting trophies feels collected over a lifetime rather than ordered from a catalogue. Families fit right in: children get their own hamlet, complete with a dining room and a cook just for them.
The hamlet has grown over the years and has a large spa of its own, but its character has never changed to keep up, and that is the quiet radicalism of the place. While much of the Alps races to look newer, Les Fermes de Marie keeps looking older, with cheerful stubbornness. What counts here is the mountain, and the hamlet fills accordingly: in winter with serious skiers, out on the first gondola and back at dusk with snow in their collars, in summer with hikers, cyclists and trail runners, while the meadows the old barns came from turn green again.
What they come home to is atmosphere, and the hamlet has it to spare. At dusk the courtyards glow, cheese bubbles over the flames in the Carnotzet, and the outdoor baths steam into the cold. Half board stretches across several tables in the house and the village, and the charm never feels staged, because nobody here is trying very hard.
The same refusal has its price. The hotel is not on the piste, so the shuttle to the gondola is part of every morning, Megève's lower slopes can run short of snow in a thin winter, and the decor, all skins, trophies and dark beams, will feel too rustic to lovers of clean lines. On a spec sheet, plenty would look missing.
Jean-Louis Sibuet numbered every piece of those old farms so that the carpenters would know exactly where each one belonged. The hotel has been doing the same for its guests ever since.
1,800 metres
The height of L'Alpage des Fermes, the house's summer table on the Rochebrune massif.
What reads from the lane as a hamlet is a single hotel: nine connected chalets in a two-hectare park about 500 metres from the village, so the park, not a street, lies between bedroom, spa and dinner. Not every building began as a farm. Among the timber stands a stone tower, which holds the ski shop and the round-walled Rochebrune Suite. Behind the chalets, an Alpine garden of herbs and fruit trees supplies the kitchen through the summer.
The rooms run from a 16 m² Classic to the 90 m² Suite Mont Joly 1 for five, by way of Club rooms, rooms with a lounge area, Prestige rooms and the Duplex Family of 50 m², which stacks a children's mezzanine above the parents' bed. The materials hardly change across the range: old timber, stone, wool and fur throws. What separates the categories is space and layout rather than style, and for a family the Duplex and the suites with a children's room are the ones built for the purpose.
The Pure Altitude spa is where the afternoon goes: 1,000 m² of wood and stone with an indoor pool that keeps a lane for swimming. The less expected part is the pair of Japanese baths, one hot and one cold, and a sauna placed outdoors. The wellness area is split in two, a family side where children come with their parents and an adults-only side, so an adult's quiet swim does not depend on the timetable. Pool, sauna and steam room are reserved for hotel guests.
Le Carnotzet is inside the hotel, in the wine cellars of Les Fermes de Marie, and is newer than it looks: the house opened it as a cheese restaurant in 2024. It serves fondue and raclette from local cheeses among wood and red-and-white tiles, in winter only, and is booked like any other restaurant. Upstairs, Le Restaurant Traditionnel in the main chalet works around a large fireplace and stays open through the year. Le Vieux Megève and Le Beef Lodge are in the village, not the hotel.
At a glance
Where
163 chemin des Épis, 74120 Megève, in a two-hectare park about 500 m from the village centre and about 1 km from the ski area; Geneva airport 70 km; Sallanches station 12 km
Why this one
Spa, fondue cellar, children's table.
About 500 metres to the centre of Megève.
Alpine garden, pool and a table at 1,800 m.
The Edit Notes
The first transport of the morning is the hotel's shuttle, which runs guests to the Chamois gondola and brings them back on request; on foot, the village is about 500 metres away. The ski shop in the stone tower assigns a technician to each guest, so boots and rental skis are fitted in the house rather than in a queue in town. The gondola tops out at La Caboche on the Rochebrune side, with Mont d'Arbois a further lift away. Short, but a commute all the same.
A Classic room measures 16 m², and the category list shows where the weight lies: a suite with a separate children's bedroom, another with an adjoining twin room for three children, and Suite Mont Joly 1, 90 m² for five. Beyond the hotel, chalets with hotel service range from the 112 m² Chalet de la Grande Ourse, new for 2026, to the 400 m² Chalet des Fermes de Marie, reached from the hotel underground. A family of four is better served by such a suite than by two small rooms.
The hotel offers bed and breakfast or half board, and its half board covers dinner at four of the family's restaurants: Le Restaurant Traditionnel and Le Carnotzet in the hotel, Le Relais Mont-Blanc and Le Beef Lodge in the centre of Megève. Le Carnotzet serves in winter only, and drinks are not included. Over a week that gives real variety without leaving the family's own tables. Children from five can eat at their own table d'hôte, supervised by the Kids Concierge.
The village lies at 1,113 metres and the linked Évasion Mont-Blanc area climbs to 2,350, so at either end of winter the reliable snow is above the restaurants, not outside the door. The house compensates with a year beyond skiing: it closes only for some weeks in spring, reopens with the July holidays and adds a summer table at 1,800 metres. The French winter school holidays are the weeks the house is organised around: the Kids Concierge runs its programme, and the Day Spa package is not sold.
The price question
The money buys a day with two halves: skis fitted in the house and a shuttle in the morning, then a large spa, a fondue cellar and a children's table once the lifts close, in a house that also reopens for summer. It does not buy the piste at the door, which Megève sells elsewhere. With children, pay for a suite with its own children's room.
Book it for a winter week in which the afternoon, the evening and the village count as much as the first lift, or for a summer stay at altitude. Look elsewhere for skiing straight from the room.
Four Seasons Megève
At about 1,300 m on the slopes of Mont d'Arbois: 41 rooms and 14 suites, with ski-in, ski-out access in winter.
Hôtel Le Fer à Cheval
A hotel on route du Crêt, steps from the village centre, with 53 rooms and suites, an indoor pool and a spa.
The Extra Edit
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