Lech am Arlberg Kept Princess Diana's Ski Holidays Quiet for Years, and It's Still Built to Do That

Lech am Arlberg does not advertise itself the way St Moritz or Courchevel do. It is a village of roughly 1,500 residents in Vorarlberg, in Austria's far west, and for a long stretch of the 1990s it was where Princess Diana skied, often with her sons, in holidays that stayed largely out of the tabloids by the standards of the time. That pattern has held since: Lech's wealthiest regulars are generally the ones the press doesn't cover, not because nothing happens, but because the village itself is built to make it easy not to be seen.

Strict rules keep the village small

Lech has long enforced tight local building restrictions that cap new hotel size and limit development in the village core, a large part of why it has stayed low-rise and comparatively uncrowded even as neighbouring Zürs and St Anton grew around it. The centre remains largely closed to through traffic in winter.

A ski area that only recently connected

Lech-Zürs' slopes were only directly linked to St Anton and St Christoph's in December 2016, when the Flexenbahn cable car opened across the Flexen Pass. The combined network, branded Ski Arlberg, is now one of the largest interconnected ski areas in Austria, which means Lech's guests can now reach St Anton's livelier après-ski scene by lift and be back in Lech's quieter hotels by dinner.

Traveller tips

• Zürs, Lech's immediate neighbour, is smaller again and worth a day trip by lift or the connecting road, which closes in heavy snow.
• The Flexenbahn link means a Lech base no longer means missing St Anton's atmosphere entirely; it's a lift ride away.
• Book well ahead for the Austrian and German school holiday weeks in February, when the village's limited room count fills fastest.
• Vorarlberg's regional airport is Innsbruck, roughly ninety minutes by road; Zürich is the more common international gateway for the resort.