Cham exists because Chamonix deserved better than scattered listings, booking aggregators, and corporate noise. It's built by people who live here, for everyone — visitors warmly included.
We started this because nobody else was going to. The valley needed one honest, beautiful, useful home online — and the existing options weren't it.
Cham is a single home for the Chamonix valley. Live conditions. Every business that operates in the valley. A journal with real writing by people who live and climb and ski here. Events. A community layer for partner-finding, ride-sharing, gear, and housing. Everything you need to live in, work in, or visit the valley — without the noise of twelve different aggregators, booking sites, and Facebook groups.
It is a community project. Not a startup. Not a tourist office initiative. Not a marketplace. We're not raising venture capital, we're not selling your data, we're not taking commission on bookings. The plan is to be useful and to last.
Every restaurant, guide, gear shop, café, refuge, chalet, taxi, physio in the valley gets a free listing. Always. We may add optional premium features later — the core listing is free forever. That's a commitment.
When someone books a guide through Cham, they call the guide. When someone reserves a table, they call the restaurant. Cham doesn't sit between businesses and customers.
No paid placement. No "sponsored" listings dressed as editorial. If something on Cham is paid for, it's labelled. If we recommend something, we mean it.
The journal is written by people who actually live here. Community contributions use verified profiles. Anonymous noise gets removed.
No advertising tracking. No data sold to anyone. Privacy-first analytics. The minimum data needed, kept the shortest time possible.
This is not a project we plan to flip. It's owned by the community it serves, structured to survive a change of leadership, and intended to be running in twenty years.
Three ways. Run a Chamonix valley business? Claim your listing — it's free and takes ten minutes. Write, photograph, or know stories worth telling? Pitch the journal at the email below. Want to support the project? A monthly contribution at any level keeps the lights on and pays our editors fairly.
We're a small team. We read every message. Don't be a stranger.