Kirchler Quellenbad

The Thermal Badhotel Kirchler stands at Hintertux 765, at the very end of the Tux valley in the Zillertal Alps, below the Hintertux glacier. Its claim rests on the water rather than on the size of the bathing area: the operator says Europe's highest thermal spring rises a few metres from the house and has been used by the Kirchler family for more than 150 years. A dedicated pipe carries the water straight into the building, and the house states that no other hotel in Hintertux is supplied from it. The family dates its connection with the spring to 1847, when Johann Kirchler bought the springs together with the property that grew from a bath inn into a guest house with some 90 beds by the early twentieth century.

The water is described as carrying sulphur, carbonic acid and radon. It is used throughout the house for bathing and also as drinking water, and the operator says it is treated for the indoor pool so as to meet the requirements of the Austrian bathing hygiene law. Its softness - less lime than ordinary supply water - is one of the qualities the house advertises, alongside claimed relief for muscular tension, skin complaints, circulatory trouble, rheumatism and disorders of the musculoskeletal system.

The bathing arrangement itself is compact. There is one panorama indoor pool filled with the thermal water, and the heat rooms comprise a Finnish panorama sauna, a herbal sauna, a salt sauna and a steam bath. Cooling is by an experience shower corridor and an ice fountain, and three themed quiet rooms are spread over two floors. Outside the wellness area the house runs on its own farm produce in the kitchen, keeps a live webcam, and offers free parking, a free ski bus running to the glacier valley station roughly every five minutes in winter, and its own ski guides two days a week from early December to mid-April.

Access is the point a visitor should check first: the operator states plainly that the water of the spring is available to its own guests only, so the bath is a hotel facility rather than a public thermal bath. The operator gives no opening hours for the pool and no day-guest arrangement.