Courchevel Cable-Car Bedroom: Airbnb’s 2015 Night Above the French Alps

In early 2015, Airbnb and the ski resort of Courchevel turned one of the resort’s red cable cars into a bedroom for a night. The cabin hung near La Saulire, the highest point of Courchevel’s ski area, at roughly 2,700 metres above sea level in the French Alps.

The room was a competition prize. One winner could bring three friends, so four people would spend the night suspended above the slopes with 360-degree views and no television.

The 2015 Airbnb cable-car competition

Airbnb announced the stay in late January 2015. To enter, hopefuls wrote 100 words explaining why they deserved the night. The listing was never open for ordinary booking; the cabin was a one-off promotion for the winter season.

The prize package went well beyond a bed. Reports at the time described a traditional Savoyard fondue dinner with wine and, the next morning, an hour on untouched pistes before the lifts opened to the public. A powder run with the whole mountain to yourself is a rare thing at a resort as busy as Courchevel.

Inside the cable-car bedroom

The designers kept the furnishing simple: a double bed, soft bedding, curtains, pale furniture and a small place to sit. The real decoration is outside the glass: a full panorama of snow, rock and sky from high above the resort.

The cabin’s red shell and Airbnb branding stayed in place, so the room never pretended to be anything other than a cable car. That contrast between a cosy bedroom and a working lift is what made the photographs travel so widely.

Courchevel and Les 3 Vallées

Courchevel sits in the Tarentaise valley in Savoie and forms part of Les 3 Vallées, often described as the largest linked ski area in the world. The domain connects Courchevel with La Tania, Méribel, Les Menuires, Saint-Martin-de-Belleville, Val Thorens and Orelle.

The resort is spread across several villages that used to be named after their altitude:

• Le Praz (about 1,300 m), home of the ski jumps used at the 1992 Albertville Winter Olympics;
• Courchevel Village, formerly Courchevel 1550;
• Courchevel Moriond, formerly Courchevel 1650;
• Courchevel, formerly Courchevel 1850, the most famous of the group.

Courchevel 1850 was planned during the Second World War, after a 1942 study, and became the first French ski resort built from scratch on empty mountainside. The resort also has one of the most unusual airfields in Europe: a 525-metre runway with an 18.5 per cent gradient, which only specially qualified pilots may use.

Planning a Courchevel ski trip

The cable-car bedroom was a single winter’s promotion, but La Saulire remains a highlight of any visit. It is the highest point of Courchevel’s ski area, and the lifts that reach it give skiers some of the widest views in the resort.

Courchevel’s official visitor site lists current lift passes, accommodation and opening dates. For more high-altitude French scenery, see Aiguille du Midi Through Jakub Polomski’s Camera.

If unusual mountain stays appeal to you, compare the cable car with the Refugi Lieptgas cabin in Switzerland, The Cambrian in Adelboden, or the villages of Ski Arlberg in Austria.

Related reading

• Aiguille du Midi Through Jakub Polomski’s Camera
• Provence Lavender Fields: Twenty Photographs and the Landscape Behind Them
• Passage du Gois: The Tidal Road to Noirmoutier
• Refugi Lieptgas cabin
• The Cambrian in Adelboden
• the villages of Ski Arlberg

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