Petit Velan: cheap alpine coliving in the Valais

Petit Velan is a coliving in Bourg-Saint-Pierre, a village in the Swiss Valais on the road to the Great St Bernard pass. It is run alongside a group of hostels and language camps, and it is one of the very few ways to spend a month in the Swiss Alps without spending a fortune.

What Petit Velan Does

• Shared rooms from around 500 Swiss francs per 28 nights. Rising to about 600 in winter, with private rooms from 800 to 1,200.
• Themed weeks. Ski touring, hiking and yoga weeks structure parts of the calendar.
• A seven night minimum. The house now takes only coliving guests staying a week or more, or groups of ten and up.
• Doubles with private showers and multi-bed rooms with shared bathrooms. A genuine range of budgets.
• High alpine access. Ski touring country in winter, hiking straight into the mountains in summer.

Why It Makes Sense for Nomads

Switzerland is normally the most expensive country in Europe to spend time in, and 500 francs for four weeks changes that calculation completely. That is less than a week in most Swiss hotels.

The Valais is serious mountain terrain. Bourg-Saint-Pierre sits at around 1,600 metres below the pass, with ski touring rather than lift-served resort skiing, and long high-alpine hikes in summer. If your reason for coming is the mountains themselves rather than apres-ski, it fits well.

Two things to be clear about. This is hostel-style accommodation run by a camps operator rather than a designer coliving, so the finish is functional. And the site is in German with limited pricing detail, so expect to email.

Pricing

Shared rooms from around 500 Swiss francs per 28 nights, 600 in winter. Private rooms from 800 to 1,200. Seven night minimum.

The cheapest month in the Swiss Alps you are likely to find.