Ski accommodation can be prohibitively expensive, but a cosy youth hostel puts the Montafon resort and its glorious runs within reach for those on a budget
‘W
ant to come skiing in Austria at half-term?” I asked my 13-year-old son. “It’ll be just like one of those luxury chalet holidays, only we’ll make our own beds, cook our own dinners and carry our gear back to our accommodation ourselves.” Osian didn’t hear the caveats. “Sounds amazing,” he said, his eyes glazing to a cinematic sweep of white powder and the chance to perfect his 360.
For many families, the dream of a catered chalet – and its ready-lit fires, homemade strudels and chauffeured lift shuttles – remains just that. Apartments offer access to the slopes at less vertigo-inducing prices, but they tend to come with a minimum seven-night stay. If you only have a few days to spare, or a budget that won’t stretch to a full week’s lift pass, hotels fill the gap, but then you’re back navigating the moguls of cost.
Instead, Osian and I were youth hostelling. I booked the last room available in the February school holidays at St Josefsheim, in the small western Austrian town of Schruns, and started scrolling Vinted for salopettes. Opened in December 2021 within a stately, blue-shuttered villa built in the early 1900s as a hospital and maternity facility, this is the first – and, so far, only – hostel in the Montafon ski area. Five minutes’ walk from the town’s railway station, and across the road from a bus stop, it is also, crucially, just two minutes’ ski-booted shuffle from a gondola station.
