Nice Hotel, but Bad Value
By A Yahoo! Contributor, 07/29/09
The benefit of this hotel is that it is separated from the more crowded and chaotic downtown area yet downtown is still close and easily accessible. Stanley Park is essentially right in your 'backyard'. Yaletown and Gastown (including Vancouver Lookout, Imax, etc) are a bit far to walk to, so expect to drive and pay for parking or take public transit to these areas. Vancouver is extremely bike-friendly so I would recommend renting a bike (plenty of rental places on Denman St near the hotel). You can easily bike all over the city and Stanley Park in a day.
While the hotel itself is nice, I felt it was a bit over-priced. The entire staff was very courteous and helpful and the beds were heavenly. However the hotel 'nickels and dimes' you on everything. They charge little fees (phone calls, internet, automatically charging for newspaper) which will run up your entire bill very quickly. Hotel parking is in a parkade right across the street and I felt it was extremely expensive per day. Also be careful because our car got broken into while parked here. When reserving a room, we selected to have the 'marina view'. The majority of our view faced the high-rise section of the hotel and the roof of the lobby. You had to really stick your head out of the window (there was no balcony either) to get the marina and mountain view.
While the location of the hotel and the inside of the room were very nice, I would not stay here again. I don't feel it was a good value, especially with all of the fees they add--parking being the worst.
