Mürren chalet apartments & rentals: how to choose
Chalet apartments are the normal way to stay in this valley, especially for families and for anyone here longer than a weekend — and the paperwork side is genuinely easy, because Switzerland has nothing like the licence numbers and night caps that Paris, Geneva or Montreal impose. What decides your stay here is the building, the altitude and the shopping run, not the legality. Read the box below anyway: there is one rule that does affect what you can book, and one small charge that will appear on your bill.
⚠︎ What the rules here actually are
Being straightforward about this: there is no national short-term-rental licence in Switzerland, no registration number to hunt for on a listing, and no annual night cap on holiday letting in Mürren. Holiday apartments here are an ordinary, long-established form of accommodation, and the local tourist office lists them alongside hotels. Two things do apply. First, the federal Second Homes Act: in municipalities where second homes already exceed 20 per cent of the housing stock — the category every Alpine resort commune falls into — new second homes may generally no longer be approved, but the Act explicitly permits dwellings that are operated as tourist accommodation. The effect on you is supply, not legality: the stock of holiday flats up here is essentially fixed, which is why good ones go early. Second, the municipal visitor’s tax — CHF 5.60 per adult per night, CHF 2.90 per child aged 6–16, under-6s exempt — is owed on every paid night and is collected by your host, so confirm whether the quoted total already contains it. Rules do change; check the federal page below rather than relying on this summary or a listing’s own claims.
Rules change — confirm the current requirements: Swiss Federal Office for Spatial Development (ARE) — Second Homes Act.
Who a rental suits
A rental is the obvious answer for families and groups, for ski weeks, and for anyone who intends to cook — with almost no shops in the village and mountain-restaurant prices above it, a kitchen you stock in Lauterbrunnen or Interlaken is the single largest saving available in Mürren. It suits couples less well on a two-night trip, where a half-board hotel removes the shopping problem entirely and costs less than the cleaning fee plus the groceries.
Verify before you book
- Which village the listing is actually in. "Mürren area" is used loosely for Gimmelwald, Stechelberg and even Lauterbrunnen — and those are different altitudes, different lifts and, in Stechelberg’s case, a place you can drive to.
- How far the door is from a lift station, and how much of that distance is uphill. You will walk it with luggage and with shopping, in the dark and possibly on snow, several times.
- Whether the visitor’s tax and the cleaning fee are inside the quoted total. On a short stay in a small flat, those two together move the real per-night number more than the headline rate does.
- Which windows face the valley. In Mürren the Eiger–Mönch–Jungfrau aspect is the product; a flat that faces the hillside is a different, cheaper thing and should be priced like one.
- Heating, and a drying room or heated boot storage if you are coming in winter — apartments vary far more than hotels do on this, and wet gear with nowhere to dry is a miserable week.
- Kitchen equipment in real detail if self-catering is your reason for booking. A hotplate and one pan defeats the purpose when the alternative is a CHF 30 plate of Älplermagronen.
- Check-in logistics and key handover, since many owners live off the mountain and cannot meet a delayed guest — and the last cableway does not wait.
Where to look for rentals
Mürren itself has the largest concentration of holiday apartments on the shelf, mostly in chalets a few minutes from one lift station or the other. Gimmelwald has a small, characterful and considerably cheaper supply in working farmhouses, with the caveat that it has no shops at all. Lauterbrunnen has the deepest and best-value inventory in the valley and the only meaningful grocery shopping, which is why many families base there and treat Mürren as a day out. Wengen has plenty of apartments too, but choosing it means committing to the other side of the valley.
Check live rentals & availability
Browse current Mürren-area rentals on Vrbo — check which village the address is actually in before you compare prices.
Check Mürren rentals on Vrbo →Some booking links are affiliate links — if you book through them we may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. It never changes which options we recommend.
Prefer half-board and no shopping run? Compare hotels →