Crans-Montana Ski Resort village

The Village

The resort of Crans-Montana is made up of 3 villages: Crans Sur Sierre, Montana and Aminona. Crans is certainly upmarket; Montana is quieter and more family orientated; and Aminona is home to the snowpark and rumoured to be proposed as a location for development of a major hotel and apartment complex, but approval has yet to be given.

The neighbouring villages or towns of Crans and Montana lie to the west and east respectively of small Lac Grenon. The villages are quite spread out, with a ribbon like development either side of the roads running between Crans and Montana, and although there is a free bus service operating between Crans, Montana and Aminona it runs approximately every half hour, which is not regularly enough.

With the main access road running some 2km from Crans to Montana initially it seems there is no focal point to the villages and if arriving in Crans in the low season it might seem quite as a large proportion of the many privately owned chalets and apartments are unoccupied. And in stark contrast to the impressive mountain views, the sequence of 8 storey chalet apartments that line the road with window shutters down is unattractive.

On further investigation on foot, especially in Crans, if you head away from the main road and walk towards Golf Club Crans-sur-Sierre and you will find the main focal point of town, a pleasing arrangement of boutiques with shop windows glistening with expensive Swiss watches and designer fashion brand, and an ample selection of restaurants and bars as well as a few nightclubs.

The shopping in Crans is superb with names such as Chanel, Prada, Hermes and Bulgari represented, to name but a few, and shop opening times are 08.30 – 12.00 and 14.00 – 18.00. The real estate, shopping opportunities, hotel accommodation and village environment in Crans is generally more upmarket than neighbouring Montana, but both are attractive places to stay and whether you choose to stay in Crans, Montana or Aminona be sure to travel around and explore the area fully to benefit fully from everything that Crans-Montana has to offer.

Approximately 55% of tourist guests are Swiss, with around 10% coming from each of France and Italy (benefiting from fast rail connections from Paris and Milan or relatively easy road journey), around 8% from each of Germany and Benelux and around 3% of guests come from Britain, and a high proportion of repeat visitors. Less than 1% of guests are from Russia so for the time being at least rumours that “the Russians are coming” are sometimes exaggerated.