I had a really disappointing one-night stay here earlier this month, booked on an AMEX FHR rate at nearly $1,000 CAD:
- For several days prior to my stay, the Accor app was showing I had been upgraded from a Lakeview King to a 2BR Lakeview Suite — which I was thrilled with. This disappeared an hour or so before check-in, and at the front desk I was told no upgrades at all were available despite this suite still showing as available for the night online. While obviously upgrades are not guaranteed, this already left a bad taste in my mouth.
- When I got to the room, there was no welcome amenity (an FHR benefit) — a further indication the room may have been swapped at the last minute, since both the Banff Springs and Jasper Park Lodge had amenities waiting on arrival. Delivery was attempted three hours later, while we were out with no privacy sign, but only a note was left and we had to call for re-delivery. The amenity itself was nice — cheese, grapes, and a ~$20 bottle of wine.
- The room itself was very worn. The views were great, as expected, but the room was clearly un-renovated and the bathtub had a giant peeling hole in the enamel, the chair was stained rather badly, and the makeup mirror in the bathroom didn't open properly and was clearly dirty/rusted.
- We had dinner reservations at Walliser Stube. The food was excellent, but we experienced multiple basic service fails: our server completely ignored us for a solid 10m after being seated, we were incorrectly brought another table's mains when we hadn't even gotten our cocktails yet, and our server mixed up my order with my partner's when placing silverware.
I could have overlooked a lot of this at a different price point, but for $1,000 a night and $100+ per person for dinner, this was a really disappointing experience. I complained and ultimately got 10% off the total bill at checkout, but still left feeling frustrated — especially compared to the excellent experiences I had at sister properties in Banff and Jasper on the same trip.
The offending bathtub
The welcome amenity — quite solid, but with bungled delivery