Das Gerstl Family Retreat - Reschensee (IT)

 3-4 hour drive (can take car train from Klosters) from Zurich. Slow with public transport but possible. Can be done mostly on swiss trains (or the railjet to Innsbruck) and the 273 bus that is in our experience reliable in Süd-Tirol

https://www.dasgerstlfamily.com/

Visited in July 2025 and August 2026.

Highlights

• Excellent food

• Modern and really great hotel facilities

• Beautiful hotel inside and out

• Lake location is stunning

Less strong for

• The local area has less to offer in terms of family activities than other mountain areas and you need a car to properly explore

• Quite a lot of screens in the kids play areas 

Food

The food was excellent and you could tell you were in Italy and not Austria. There is a buffet element to the evening meal (e.g. dessert or starters) but normally at least 2 courses are served at the table. 

They had a full pizza oven serving fresh pizza at dinner most nights a week as well as an ice cream soft-serve machine for kids. The kids menu was very pasta-oriented but our kids ate well. 

The breakfast buffet was excellent with plenty of choice and great quality. 

Free coffee available all day. 

Kids Club

We didn’t use, so no comment on the quality. 

The club seemed to have set slots e.g. morning 9-11:45, with drop off from 9-10. The club was no parents. The activities they organised with the kids was varied and interesting (e.g. making little boats to go and sail on the lake). Unfortunately our son wouldn't really settle (no fault of theirs, they tried!) but we went with him to sort of partake in the activity anyway. Baby club was good, although our daughter only spent a few hours there.

Amenities

The pools are really really nice. There is a large outdoor pool, a baby pool (with small slide) and a water play area, then a separate teen pool with net, a triple slide and then a long flume. Annoyingly you need a keycard to get from one area to the other, but the pools are really fantastic. 

The spa area is also very nice, with two infusions in the afternoon (16:30 and 17:30)

There is a large indoor play area for kids. This had a small football area, climbing and bouldering wall, trampolines and a games wall. This was really good, although we found some of the screens a bit excessive (e.g. on the trampolines). It felt like the tech was there to be “impressive” rather than really serving a purpose. On the trampolines the kids can just jump and talk to each other.

Other Notes

Our room didn’t have a separate kids sleeping area and wasn’t very big - I probably wouldn’t go back to that room category for a longer stay. Update: on our second stay we had a panorama family suite which was wonderful and much better suited for a family.

All the sections of the dining room were nice - panorama perhaps had the best view (although a bit further from the buffet)