Four Seasons Vail

Four Seasons Vail

You arrive at the western edge of Vail Village, on the corner where Vail Road meets South Frontage Road, with the interstate audible behind you and the pedestrian lanes of the village opening ahead, which tells you a good deal about how this hotel fits into the town, close to everything, part of nothing old. It opened in December 2010, a ten-storey building in the contemporary alpine lodge style, with peaked roofs, wooden beams and a stone exterior, designed by Hill Glazier Architects of Palo Alto, and it contains 90 guest rooms, 20 suites and 23 private residences, along with six Residence Club vacation condominiums, all on a parcel of about 2.7 acres in Vail Village. Gondola One is three minutes on foot, Eagle County Airport about 35 minutes by car, and Denver International roughly two and a quarter hours by road, mostly along I-70. The general manager is Jenny Simonson, who inherited a hotel substantially rebuilt under her predecessor, Jerome Arribas. Interiors are by Brayton Hughes, with natural hickory and limestone throughout, and every room comes with a gas fireplace and a balcony; the entry-level Garden View rooms run to 575 square feet, with bathrooms that have a separate soaking tub, glass shower, double vanity and their own WC. The old house restaurant, Flame, was replaced in December 2024 by Tavernetta Vail, from Boulder’s Frasca Hospitality Group, whose co-founder Bobby Stuckey came up through The Little Nell’s wine programme before founding Frasca; the third-floor room was redesigned by Studio Collective of Venice, California, with OZ Architects of Denver, and chef de cuisine Ethan Diamant builds the menus around single Italian regions, Sicily in July and August, then Friuli in September and October, with its Slavic and Austro-Hungarian influences. Frasca wrote the menu and trained the staff, while the resort runs it day to day. Downstairs, The Remedy is the lobby bar, under executive chef Simon Purvis. The spa covers 14,395 square feet with 13 treatment rooms, and was redone in 2024 by Rose Ink Workshop of Miami and New York; the heated outdoor pool and its two whirlpools are set in a sunken courtyard with an outdoor fireplace. This is a Four Seasons in the full sense, which means the pleasures here are those of precision more than personality, your boots warmed, the car ready, the children absorbed by someone competent. The building is large and corporate in feel, its corridors long, its public rooms built for groups, and the soul of the place is now upstairs at Tavernetta, where the wine list and the hospitality carry the Frasca signature, and where the Friulian autumn menu is the most interesting cooking in the hotel. The Remedy is another matter, loud inside, with sports on large screens, though the terrace with its fire pits is calmer. Staying here feels like being looked after very efficiently in a handsome, slightly anonymous building, which on a ski week with children is exactly what many people want. You should not come if you want a hotel with a past, a family behind the desk, or a lobby that feels like a living room, since Vail’s older houses do that better, and you should not come for ski-in, ski-out, since you will walk to the lift every morning. You should not come if quiet is the priority over the Christmas or Presidents’ Week holidays, when the building fills with multi-generational parties. You should come if you are travelling with children or parents and want everyone handled without friction, if you value a dinner reservation at Tavernetta more than a fireside in a chalet, and if the reassurance of the brand is worth more to you than character. The short version: A ten-storey Four Seasons from 2010 at the western gate of Vail Village, with 110 rooms and suites plus private residences, a 2024 spa, and a Frasca-run Italian restaurant that has become the reason to book.