Hotel Portillo in Chile is probably the most expensive hotel at a ski resort in South America. In 2024, prices for a single room are as high as $1,400 USD per night! That's a big increase from 2023 prices. Portillo is small ski and snowboard resort, but it has some of the most difficult in bounds terrain that I've seen in South America, and only one hotel - Hotel Portillo. So what do you get if you pay those prices?
Hotel Portillo is an all-inclusive resort. So while $1,400 is certainly a hefty nightly rate, you don't have to buy chairlift tickets. You don't have to pay for breakfast, lunch and dinner (except soft drinks and alcohol). So the effective nightly rate is significantly lower.
Let's start with the downsides. First, Hotel Portillo was built 75 years ago. So the walls are thin and the radiators occasionally make noise. So you may want to bring ear plugs for when you're trying to sleep. In the dining room, wherever you sit the first day -- that is where you have to sit for the rest of the vacation. So choose your table wisely. Some people may not like the check-in experience because everyone arrives on the same day at approximately the same time. I didn't find it to be that bad. If you prefer a quick lunch, you may not like the lunch option here because it tended to take me 1.5 hours, and I ate quickly. There are also no TVs in the hotel rooms.
Now the upsides. If you stay for a week, the hotel can provide a free transfer to and from the airport. There is one formal dining room, and the meals are surprisingly good for an isolated ski resort. It's not a Michelin star restaurant, but I was impressed by how good the food was. I never left the dining room hungry. The staff is very friendly, and if you don't speak Spanish like me, there were no problems because most of the staff spoke English. The rooms in the hotel have been renovated and are much nicer than what you may read about them in older online reviews. If you're traveling from North America or Europe, you'll arrive at the airport early in the morning and leave late at night, so you can squeeze in two extra days on the mountain compared to the average week-long trip in the northern hemisphere. The hotel has a lot of activities, and is great for kids. The view from the hot tub is unbeatable.
So is it worth the price? Well, for those who can't stomach paying such a high nightly no matter how many other costs are covered and therefore eliminated, it may never be worth it. For others, it may depend on how good the snow is, because in my opinion, Portillo is such a unique and special experience in and of itself that if you add tons of snow on top of that, it can easily be worth the price.