VAYA Kühtai

We (couple, late 20s) spent a week at VAYA Kühtai in mid-December and overall had a pleasant stay. Positives: Very friendly staff, perfect location right next to the slope leading to the Drei-Seen lift, nice spa and gym, ski storage with personal heated lockers, vegan food options, and good value for money (with discount code). Areas for improvement: The food looked great but often tasted rather bland. There was no clear labeling of dishes – some supposedly vegetarian soups even contained bacon. The hotel was uncomfortably warm overall (rooms, dining area, gym), and when airing the room, chimney smell came in. Also, charging extra for water at dinner, which seemed like tap water, felt a bit odd. All in all, a modern hotel with a great location and kind staff, but some room for improvement in food quality and room temperature.

We recently stayed at this hotel with our dog. The hotel itself looks nice and has a good location, however we came in September which I guess is after the season, and everything in the village was closed. Unfortunately, the experience in the hotel left a lot to be desired. The room was fine and the SPA itself was great, but the opening hours are very short, which makes it hard to enjoy what’s supposed to be one of the highlights of the stay. Given the location it's obvious guests will be hiking, cycling or skiing the whole day, and after coming back to the hotel around 17:00/18:00 they want to rest or take a nap, eat and then go to the SPA, but you have to rush as the SPA is only open till 20:00! The breakfast was ok, but the dinner in the hotel costs 40e/pp. During the breakfast you could get a freshly made omelette or eggs, the breakfast was till 10:00, but the fresh eggs only till 9:15 max, so you pay for the stay, but you can't have a full experience if you come to eat after 9:00. Now, the dog policy is frankly unacceptable. When booking we knew there will be a dog fee, but we couldn't find the information how much will that be (usually it's 15-25e/per night). When doing the online check-in, we were charged 30e/ per night for our dog which is A LOT, especially given all the limitation we had to experience because of coming with the dog. By the way, this hotel says they are "dog friendly" but in our opinion that's not how it works there. Firstly, dogs are not allowed in the restaurant, even though the restaurant is big enough and divided in two sections. Instead, we were forced to eat every meal sitting in the hallway, between the restaurant entrance and reception, with NO windows, where they placed ONLY 2 tables for the dog owners. I was very disappointed, because we chose this hotel for the view, and we couldn't enjoy the meals in the restaurant with big windows. To make matters worse, the staff clearly had no system for handling the number of guests with dogs - there were more dogs than hallway tables, and it was chaotic and uncomfortable. Further more, those tables weren't marked as "only for dog owners", so guests without the dog were also sitting there... and dog owners were kinda expected to just wait in case the table is taken... RIDICULOUS! We felt discriminated and treated like a problem, really not a nice experience and same happened to other dog owners during our stay. We paid a lot and even more with the dog fee, and could use the hotel with a lot of limitations, which is really not ok! Therefore I wouldn't call this hotel "dog friendly". When talking about those issues with the stuff, they were incompetent, giving stupid reasons why dogs can't be in the restaurant like "it's not safe when you pass to this other section some kid might come and there might be an accident" - let me remind you, they made us seat in the hall way, which means EVERY guest is passing next to those dog when entering the restaurant, to not mention that if you are alone, your dog will be left in that hallway unsupervised when you have to go grab your food at the buffet! It's really an absurd, and clearly the stuff inventing this has no idea about how to behave with dogs and what's safe. We also chose this hotel for the direct field access shown in pictures (ski slope in the winter), but it was closed, forcing us to walk way around via the street - disappointing! The conclusion is - if you’re traveling with a dog, this hotel will charge you a premium but treat you like an inconvenience. For the price, the service and policies fall way short. On top of that, on the day of the departure, we had the room till 10:00 and at 9:00 the cleaning staff entered our room at 9:00 without knocking, violating our privacy (especially since the bathroom and bed are visible from the door). Finally, everything is handled by email — I received around 10 messages just for this stay, with no alternative, so if you like to have an offline holiday, that's not quite possible with this hotel.

We had a wonderful time a Vaya in July. The location is unbeatable for hikes and summit tours and beautiful surroundings. The staff was super helpful and friendly and the food was outstanding. Traditional dishes were elevated with really interesting (and working) flavour combinations. I will be back. Oh, and worth saying, the pillows were really good (real down) not the lumpy synthetic stuff you get in most hotel beds.