Inside the £87-a-night Alpine hotel where Matt Hancock has whisked lover Gina Coladangelo

Nestled in the Swiss Alps in an upmarket ski resort popular with royalty is the £87-a-night hotel where Matt Hancock has whisked lover Gina Coladangelo for a romantic getaway.

The ex-Health Secretary, 42, and his former aide, Miss Coladangelo, 44, have been spotted in the posh ski resort of Villars just months after being caught in a steamy Covid-rule breaching clinch in his office.

The pair, who have continued dating since their affair was exposed, have been staying at The Villars Mountain Lodge, described on the hotel’s website as ‘resolutely modern and at the same time delightfully authentic’.

Boasting hot showers, a bar and diner, ‘cozy beds, ultra-soft pillows and soundproof rooms’, the hotel is located in Villars-sur-Ollon.

The village is a short drive from the popular resort town of Montreux and around a 90 minute drive from the city of Geneva.

With views of the famous Mont Blanc, the village, known for skiing and its eye-wateringly expensive boarding schools, is part of the wider resort of Villars – a favourite with royalty and celebrities.

In 2015 Princesses Marie and Athena of Denmark joined other members of the Danish Royal family on their annual ski holiday in Col-de-Bretaye near Villars-sur-Ollon.

It is also a favourite of former England rugby star Mike Tindall, the husband of the Queen’s granddaughter Zara Tindall. He once told the Telegraph: ‘Villars is very quiet so you get the slopes to yourself and there are no lift queues.’

Earlier this year the village, situated at the foot of the 7,000ft high Le Chamossaire mountain, also welcomed Swiss President Guy Parmelin, who visited for a holiday, while pioneering British chef Heston Blumenthal also lists it among his favourite ski resorts.

With a cable car station to the top of Le Chamossaire at situated the top of the village and another nearby to the peak of the 6,500ft Chaux Ronde, the area is a hotspot for ski-enthusiasts.

In February the village was the launch point for a new mass-testing scheme for Covid-19, which encouraged skiers to take part in voluntary testing.  More than 400 tests were taken in the first day, of which four came back positive. 

Alongside skiing, Villars is known to host some of the most expensive private international boarding schools in the world.

The £75,100-a-year Collège Alpin International Beau Soleil – whose alumni include ex-F1 driver Jacques Villeneuve and the Hereditary Grand Duke of Luxembourg – as well as the La Garenne School, Préfleuri, and the £83,868-a-year Aiglon College, once home to House of Cards actor Michal Gill, are all situated in the town.

The hotel in which Mr Hancock and his lover, Miss Coladangelo, are staying in is located at the centre of the village.

It is near to a row of swanky restaurants, including the Michelin Guide recommend Le Jardin des Alpes.

Dating back to 1870, but recently modernised, the hotel boasts high-pressure showers, ‘cozy beds’ and ‘ultra soft pillows’ as well as unlimited free Wi-Fi and a late checkout option. It also has ‘soundproof rooms’, a bar and diner, and ski hire facilities.

On its website, the hotel is described as ‘a place to live and experience a new art of living just a few steps from the mountains, but thousands of miles from traditional hotels’. 

And it has earned rave reviews on Trip Advisor, with one recent visitor saying: ‘Perfect, amazing energy, made with love and care. Beautiful setting with a big garden, beautiful design. 

‘You can see that somebody thought about every detail to be welcoming, friendly and beautiful. It feels like home in a big mansion.’ 

Others described the hotel hosting the Mr Hancock, who was earning around £145,000-a-year as Health Secretary, a job he resigned from after his affair with Ms Coladangelo was exposed, as ‘great value for money’. 

‘The staff are super friendly and breakfast for an addition is an excellent deal. We will go back for a longer break and hopefully stay there for weekends regularly,’ one wrote on TripAdvisor. 

Rooms are currently around the £87 to £120-a-night mark, depending on size, due to it being out of season for skiing in Switzerland, where the ski season runs from around November to April time. 

Last night pictures emerged in the Daily Express which appeared to show Mr Hancock and Ms Coladangelo heading out for dinner with friends while in Villars.

Mr Hancock wore a baseball cap, sunglasses and a face mask while Miss Coladangelo dressed casually in denim. 

The couple drove to the resort from the UK for what is thought to be their first holiday abroad together since their relationship was revealed in June. 

It was Mr Hancock’s second holiday in as many weeks after he was spotted hitting the surf in Cornwall with his children last month. 

The sighting comes just months after Mr Hancock was forced to quit the Cabinet when CCTV from his Whitehall office was leaked of him kissing his married aide Miss Coladangelo in breach of Covid social-distancing guidance. 

Mr Hancock’s kiss with Miss Coladangelo, a mother-of-three whose husband Oliver Tress is the founder of clothing shop Oliver Bonas, is alleged to have taken place on May 6 this year. 

After the footage emerged, Mr Hancock confirmed his resignation and said he wanted to ‘reiterate his apology for breaking the guidance’.

He said: ‘The last thing I would want is for my private life to distract attention from the single-minded focus that is leading us out of this crisis.

‘I want to reiterate my apology for breaking the guidance, and apologise to my family and loved ones for putting them through this. I also need (to) be with my children at this time.’

And a letter issued to the public read: ‘I am writing to resign as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.

‘We have worked so hard as a country to fight the pandemic. The last thing I would want is for my private life to distract attention from the single-minded focus that is leading us out of this crisis.’  

Following his resignation, the Prime Minister said he was ‘sorry’ to receive Mr Hancock’s resignation as Health Secretary.

He said Mr Hancock ‘should leave office very proud of what you have achieved – not just in tackling the pandemic, but even before Covid-19 struck us’.

Boris Johnson added: ‘I am grateful for your support and believe that your contribution to public service is far from over.’

In the wake of the scandal, Mr Hancock reportedly told his wife Martha, who he married in 2006, that their marriage was over and announced he would be spending time away from the spotlight to focus on his three children. 

And earlier in the summer, he was seen moving boxes, suitcases and clothes out of his marital home in London.     

Mystery surrounds the recruitment of Miss Coladangelo, who met Mr Hancock while volunteering at the student radio station at Oxford University in the 1990s. 

She worked on Mr Hancock’s failed Tory leadership campaign in 2019 and was secretly taken on as an unpaid adviser at the Department of Health last year before being made a non-executive director on a £15,000 contract. 

This year a Tory source said the pair had become inseparable, adding: ‘They always appeared to be incredibly close. Her status was always slightly mysterious but she went everywhere with him. She was in every meeting.’  

Friends insisted the extramarital affair only began in May, the same month that Mr Hancock and Miss Coladangelo were caught in the incriminating footage.

But others said the pair, who have known each other since university days when they met at Oxford, have raised eyebrows for some time. 

Miss Coladangelo was allegedly confronted as long ago as 2019 by ministerial aides who asked outright if there was any romance between the pair, something the twice-married mother-of-three flatly denied. 

Appointed Health Secretary in 2018 after spending 18 months in the culture brief, Matt Hancock has been a prominent figure for the Government during its handling of the coronavirus pandemic until his resignation on Saturday. 

Mr Hancock, who in 2018 became the only MP in British politics to launch his own app, took only eight years to rise from West Suffolk MP to Health Secretary. 

The Oxford and Cambridge educated father-of-three previously worked as an economist at the Bank of England and as chief of staff to George Osborne when he was shadow chancellor of the Exchequer, before becoming an MP.

Mr Hancock, who is said to have met Miss Coladangelo at university, had been married to his wife Martha for 15 years and they have three children together.

Miss Coladangelo told a BBC Radio 4 profile on the politician that the pair met at the Oxford University student radio station, Oxygen FM, where she was a news reader and he a sports reporter.

The marketing and communications director at Oliver Bonas, a British retailer founded by her husband Oliver Tress, told the BBC about how Mr Hancock had ‘told a white lie’ to his radio news desk after failing to make it to cover an international rugby match.  

She said: ‘He actually overslept and hot-footed it to the train but didn’t make it to Twickenham in time from Oxford, so had to get off the train at Reading, find a pub, watch the first half in a pub and then go to a phone box outside and report in.

‘So he told a white lie, pretended he was at Twickenham watching the rugby when in fact he was in a pub in Reading.’ 

The Cheshire-raised politician first attended cabinet after being appointed Minister for the Cabinet Office in 2015 by then prime minister David Cameron.

Mr Cameron’s successor Theresa May later promoted him to the role of culture secretary. 

He initially threw his hat into the ring to replace Mrs May in No 10 during the 2019 Conservative Party leadership contest, but withdrew from the leadership race part way through and was quick to throw his weight behind Mr Johnson.

He was among the handful of ministers to retain his brief when Mr Johnson took power in July 2019, making him one of the most prominent ministers when coronavirus rocked Britain eight months later.

The latest scenes come after Mr Hancock announced this week that he would be running the London Marathon next month to raise funds for a hospice.