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Introduction Sheraton Saint-Hyacinthe is now officially open since June 1st, 2018. They opened their doors earlier in May for groups only, for example the Tories had their national convention here a few weeks ago. I stayed a couple of nights for their official opening and as expected for a new hotel, there are a few issues that they will have to take care of, but the hotel has the potential to be one of the best Sheratons in Eastern Canada at least, and the top Sheraton in all of Canada at best. For the former statement, I have seen enough Sheratons in the area (from Ontario to Newfoundland) to be quite confident about it, for the latter I have not seen many Sheratons in the western part of the country so I would not bet my life on it, but I would not be surprised if it was the case down the road if they fix a few hiccups. Location Saint-Hyacinthe is about 30 minutes east of Montreal without traffic, and considerably more at rush hour. If you are visiting downtown Montreal as a tourist or on business, then this is most likely not where you want to stay, but this suburb has been developing enough to build a 17-story hotel I guess, which I would not have thought. It is directly attached to a new convention center so I am assuming the hotel will be used extensively for local meetings; Platinums will possibly be less frequent than other hotels. There are lots of restaurants within walking distance and right off of highway 20. Room The hardware of the hotel is excellent. Most Sheratons I visited in North America were built several years ago and are not very modern so this one was nice in contrast. I booked three rooms and two of them were Club rooms on the 16thfloor. The room looks crisp and has good design. Unfortunately I do not have pictures of that room type. The third room was upgraded to a junior suite. The junior suites are the rooms xx07 on each floor up to the 16thfloor. Mine on the 16thfloor had an accessible shower – I would suspect it’s not the case for all the junior suites. That room is in the middle of the hotel next to the elevator shaft. I could hear noise from elevators going up and down from the bathroom, but fortunately I could not hear anything from the bedroom. The junior suite has a microwave and small fridge, along with a sink in the living room. The bedroom is a separated from the living room by a wall but there are openings on each side of the wall without a door; they could have added sliding doors within the wall (like for the bathroom) to allow more privacy in the bedroom. The living room has an L-shaped leather sofa (not a sofa-bed) so clearly with the lack of doors to the bedroom, the room was designed for a couple not a family with the intent of someone sleeping in the living room. Looking at the floor plan, the junior suite is equivalent to about 1.5x the size of a standard room.The duty manager showed me the executive suite on the 16thfloor, which was not quite available yet and not open for bookings. That room is in the corner of the building and it has large windows on two sides of the room with great views. The bedroom is completely separated from the rest of the room with a door unlike the junior suite, and the bathroom is larger than the junior suite as well; the dining table is also bigger than in the junior suite. They only have two such rooms: 1502 and 1602. To close off my remarks regarding the rooms, the two main problems I experienced are due to the hotel being new. The AC was not working very well during the first night and even in the morning the temperature as still as high as 23C despite setting it to 18C the previous evening. The next day we asked staff to check AC, and it was indeed better, but only marginally so. If they don’t fix this soon they’ll get lots of complaints during the upcoming summer months. The water was also problematic. Water pressure was quite weak in the shower and the water temperature not stable. We were out of cold water several times so the shower would suddenly get too hot. Dining The Club Lounge was not opened yet which was the main disappointment of our stay. They were incorrectly selling Club rooms online so I did not expect the lounge would not be open; they dropped the ball. They told me it is only a matter of days before the lounge would open. I was given a tour of the lounge and it looks very nice. It is located on the top floor (17). It is not very big, but it has a nice roof-top terrace which is impressive. I am looking forward to stay there during warm weather maybe later this year. The other way they bungled the Club Lounge not being open is that they give us vouchers for breakfast and drinks, but they turned out to be not as useful as advertised. The breakfast vouchers were valid in the restaurant but they only allowed two items on the a la carte menu with these vouchers: oatmeal or eggs & choice of meat. No coffee, no pastries, no fruits, no yogurt included. We did not even use the vouchers on the second morning given how much the final bill came up on the first morning. And for the evening, they did not allow the drinks to be taken to the room because they do not have an alcohol license yet so drinks had to be taken in the restaurant which does not belong to the hotel. We were with children so ended up not using vouchers at all in the evening. Given that we expected a lounge, the stay turned out to be bad value for us relative to expectations. But I would not consider it a reason to not return – just a poorly thought no-lounge compensation which is only a temporary issue. Amenities On the third floor you can find the pool, fitness, and “green roof”. We did not use the swimming pool but it looks ok. The gym obviously has new equipment. The green roof was not fully completed yet but it looks like it will have expansive seating there; an interesting concept. On the ground floor the common areas and the future bar are inviting.