Six Senses Residences Courchevel

What's in a name? Juliet thought a rose would smell just as sweet by any other. The hotel business has spent years proving that names are worth quite a lot of money, and Six Senses is one of its most evocative: secluded coves, remote islands, barefoot tranquillity and a conscience to match. In Courchevel 1850, the same name hangs over a collection of privately owned apartments. There are no desert cliffs or coconut palms. There is a lift pass to organise, a family to get out of bed and, if things go well, a kitchen table big enough for everyone.

Its fifty-three apartments belong to individual owners, some of them available for short stays through the brand. A name that once described an escape from everyday life now sits above a very well-made version of it. The better question is what an apartment can do that a palace room cannot. The answer usually arrives before breakfast, when six people want six different things.

The residences range from smaller apartments to duplex penthouses with as many as five bedrooms. There are proper kitchens, living rooms in which the whole party can gather and, in selected homes, fireplaces, private hammams, cinema rooms and balcony hot tubs. A family can argue about tomorrow's skiing without conducting the meeting in a hotel corridor. Friends can open a bottle they brought with them, cook nothing at all and sit around a table long after a restaurant would have brought the bill. Privacy here is not a mystic state. It is a door you can close.

The skiing is organised almost as sensibly. A concierge handles equipment and transfers, while a dedicated lodge beside the lifts at La Croisette means guests need not march through town in ski boots. Breakfast and private catering can be arranged in the residence; Sumosan serves Japanese food downstairs. The advantage is not that somebody has invented a new way to ski. It is that nobody has to be in the same place at the same time, except perhaps when the group finally gets hungry.

At the spa, the name earns its place on the door. There is an indoor pool, an outdoor hot tub, a Kneipp foot bath, steam and sauna, and an Alchemy Bar where guests make their own blends. Five treatment rooms are modest by the standards of a sprawling Six Senses resort, but after a day on snow they make very good sense. The brand's softer conscience is present too: Monty, a toy chamois, appears in the residences, with proceeds from sales supporting environmental and community projects. Even a cuddly mountain goat has a job to do.

What this isn't is a full-service resort spread over a landscape. There are no grounds to wander, no succession of grand public rooms and less sense of a shared hotel society than at the palaces higher up the mountain. The price can be steep for an apartment, however beautifully staffed, and service arrangements are worth checking when the home belongs to somebody else. Yet for a multigenerational family or a group of friends, those limitations may matter less than having an actual home for the week. Space does not need to pretend to be spiritual to be a luxury.

Juliet may have been right about the rose. Call this place Six Senses, a residence or simply a very good apartment: the best part is that everyone can leave their boots beside the same door.