|
Guest Reviews of the Listel Hotel Vancouver
27 September 2011
Suites much better than standard rooms. Stayed first time in same week
and got an upgrade to a suite which was fantastic! Stayed later again in
week returning to Vancouver and had a top floor room which was tiny! And
poor views from back of hotel overlooking back street and some houses!
Clean and ok though as a stop over. Plus great cloud 9 revolving
restaurant just a walk away down the road.
Guest Reviews of the Listel Hotel Vancouver
25 September 2011
This Listel is in a sort of border zone between the up market shopping
of Robson Street and the more neighborhood West End. The rooms were
simply but stylishly appointed. The internet/phone package was separate
from the rate-I prefer a more inclusive rate, but that is obviously not
the way the business is going. Parking, not listed in rate info, was
about $35/day with taxes, and the hotel is strangely far from the light
rail lines, which avoid this side of downtown. Liked the art in the
hall. Wish they could remodel the exterior, which still has a Best
Western vibe, but the room was fine. Desk staff was pleasant. it's 4
stars for the under $200 rate we got; if we paid more, I'd rate it
lower.
Guest Reviews of the Listel Hotel Vancouver
22 September 2011
IT MIGHT BE some people's cup of freshly percolated coffee and this
hotel might be typical of any located in the centre of a city, but it
wasn't what I needed when I stayed in Vancouver for two nights.
Adding value to a hotel is difficult once you have got a comfortable
bed, plenty of pillows, a decent TV and double shower curtains in every
room. If you go down the boutique route, which is what the Listel has
done, then you buy in a lot of poncey statuary, hang a lot of poncey
limited edition prints on the walls, put in some arty chairs that are as
comfortable as a park bench, put the curtains (inexplicably) on the
outside of the nets and call yourself a museum. You redesign the lobby
so it doesn't look like a hotel and leave your staff wondering whether
you want them to be friendly or aloof. You put a small mini-mart in each
room (including a hotel branded bottle of chocolate sauce branded as a
Romance Kit for $22.95 not including taxes).
After all, you can charge over the odds for everything because they are
staying in a 'museum' and you have got to pay for that artwork somehow.
Internet access is a good example. You can't use the WiFi because,
thanks to the condominiums that surround the hotel, there are literally
one hundred wireless networks competing for the bandwidth. You have got
more chance of getting a signal from SETI than you have from the hotel
WiFi. You can borrow an Ethernet cable from Reception at which point
your speed will go up from 0.12Mbps to 2.14Mbps but you have to put down
a deposit of $20 for the cable, which is my point. Why $20? Why not $50
or $5 (which would be the cost of replacing the cable)? Everything has
been priced just below the level at which you would refuse to pay and
well above the level that it ceases to be good value.
Now you might say that it is refundable and set at that level to remind
you to give it back, which is fair enough, to which I would retort "Have
you ever tried to plug an Ethernet cable into your iPhone or iPad?"
I know parking in cities is a problem. In London most people don't keep
a car and use public transport. If you are on a holiday where you have
just driven half-way across Canada in a car you don't have much choice.
Parking at the the hotel for two days cost $70, once you have included
tax (nothing is ever quoted inclusive of tax, as a rule of thumb it adds
20% to everything). This is just below the point at which you might park
your car somewhere else and the hotel reserves the right to park your
car somewhere else for you, including on the street.
When you arrive they tell you your car will be in secure parking, then
when they give you the ticket it says that it is not guaranteed to be
secure, it might be parked on the street, it might get damaged and you
give up all rights to sue them for their negligence and lack of duty of
care and no employee of theirs in the world has any authority to say
anything different. Notices of this kind (excluding liability for
negligence or lack of duty of care) are not legal where I come from. If
you are reading this and you are from the hotel, then I hereby absolve
myself from negligence in writing this review under the laws of British
Columbia. How do you like that?
You can stay in this hotel despite all of the above. It is in a good
area to explore Vancouver. It is reasonably quiet before 8am (we were on
the back). There is a nice Italian restaurant (Zefferelli's) a hundred
yards up the road. The staff are friendly and you can pick up and drop
off your car as often as you like, but there is something about the
whole city rip-off experience that is profoundly depressing. If I was
coming to Vancouver again I would stay out of town at a car-friendly
hotel and commute in (the traffic is not so bad), parking is easy at the
tourist spots and if I wanted to go see a museum - I would. |
