This guide is about areas, not hotels. What a particular hotel offers — its own ski school, a spa, a pool — changes from season to season, and the only reliable source is each hotel's own site. What is stable, and what actually decides where to sleep, is the resort and the village: whether there is a ski school at the foot of the slopes, whether there is a snow garden and from what age, and whether the village stays open all year.
Depending on what you are going to do
For learning to ski
If you have never put skis on, what decides the week is not the hotel: it is where you step out in the morning.
5 areasWith small children
What changes a trip with small children is the youngest age they'll take them from.
8 areasSki-in, ski-out
Sleeping where the piste starts: no car, no queue, and no carrying gear for more than two minutes.
6 areasWithout skiing
If the plan is thermal baths, shopping or culture, the high mountains are the wrong base.
4 areasAll the areas
Soldeu
Canillo
The Grandvalira sector with the most village life at the foot of the slopes.
El Tarter
Canillo
Quieter than Soldeu with the same mountain above it.
Canillo
Canillo
A real village, open all year, with a gondola up to the ski area.
Encamp
Encamp
The best-connected village in the valley: the funicular goes straight up into Grandvalira.
El Pas de la Casa
Encamp
The highest place you can sleep in the ski area, right on the French border.
Grau Roig
Encamp
A closed valley inside the ski area, with no village around it: essentially just the hotel and the snow.
Arinsal
La Massana
The base for Pal Arinsal, with the gondola leaving from the village and a snow garden at the resort.
Ordino-Arcalís
Ordino
The northernmost and quietest resort in the country.
La Massana
La Massana
A valley village with its own gondola up to Pal, services open all year, and twenty minutes to the capital.
Ordino (poble)
Ordino
The most scenic village in the country and the easiest to walk around.
Escaldes-Engordany
Escaldes-Engordany
The thermal parish: this is where Caldea is, and the hot springs it is named after.
Andorra la Vella
Andorra la Vella
The highest capital in Europe, and the country's shopping hub.