Stayed here for 3 nights this past weekend. 1 bedroom lake view suite, made use of the 3 SNUs I earned from 5 nights in 2bd lake view last year. The SNUs actually chopped off about 900CAD a night. I let SNUs expire a couple years back because I couldn't find any good use so this was a welcome surprise.

This is my third stay here and this may be controversial with certain frequent guests of the hotel but the service really is awful for a hotel of this price. It's never anything malicious, it's just endless incompetence and human error that piles up. Even by North America standards, it's well below 5-star hotel level. When I first stayed in 2022 I attributed this to post-COVID but it hasn't gotten any better. In fact, it may have gotten worse.

Some examples:

1. Failure every day of housekeeping to pack away the sofa bed which was communicated to the VIP suite team in advance along with request to have it taken out again during turndown. Every day, after housekeeping, sofa bed was still out. Each time, complaint made to VIP team that the sofa bed wasn't put away, and yet the same issue occurred the next day throughout the whole stay. This is something so basic that would never happen at a luxury hotel in Asia.

2. Moved dinner from 8 to 8:30. Asked VIP suite team at the time to tell housekeeping to move turndown accordingly. At 8, knock on door for turndown. What is so hard about this?

3. We had to move rooms on second night due to an issue with noise (see below) and this involved moving from 519 to 619 late at night. To hotel's credit, senior rep in charge of guest experience got involved next day and they ended up putting a flat $300 credit on our bill as apology which was nice. However, at check-out, the VIP suite team kept me waiting 40 minutes for someone to come get our bags because, in their incompetence, they sent them to room 519.

4. The bartender at Walliser last year was amazing. This year, complete clown show. I asked for a singapore sling and he didn't even know what that was. If that was my employee they would be removed from the role immediately. That is an IBA cocktail and one of the most famous drinks in the world. To have him not even know what it was; it was such an awkward situation, it reflects badly on the hotel's standards for employees. Also, they couldn't even make it because apparently they don't have cherry liqueur anymore. Both of these things are an embarrassment for a luxury hotel. Later went to Fairview lounge and they did know what it was, and were willing to make it with a substitute and it turned out pretty good, but that shouldn't be necessary.

Regarding the renovations:

The renovated suite was very nice. However, anyone planning to have someone staying on the sofa bed in the 1bd suites should beware the AC situation. That main room is much larger than the bedroom; it is consistently 2-3C warmer. Despite the rooms each having a thermostat, they cheaped out on the electrical system and the two AC units do not operate independently. One of them acts as a master unit and if it shuts off due to reaching the cooling target, so will the other even if the temp in that room is still 8 degrees above target.

This means you cannot keep both the bedroom and living room at ideal temperatures. You either have to accept constant AC in the bedroom all night and temps a bit lower than you'd like, or accept too hot to sleep temperatures in the living room. Maintenance was unable to do anything to fix this, they just came and wasted our time messing around with it for two hours, clearly no knowledge about how their systems actually work. Incompetence.

The AC unit was barely sufficient for cooling the living room. The real failure here was under-speccing the cooling needed for that room despite it being considerably larger than the bedroom.

Also, they clearly messed up with insulation on the cooling lines because the room had water leaking from the roof above the bathtub and from the AC unit in the bedroom in 519. Reported this to the front desk but this is a pretty bad situation for a room that was just renovated. The leak above the tub definitely predates my stay too; there is considerable cracking in the ceiling where it's happening.

We had to move due to noise on the second night, some extremely loud high pitch noise being emitted from a mechanical closet at the end of the hall. Of course, this was late at night and the "technician" dealing with it didn't even know what the machinery in the closet was and had to get on the phone with someone slightly more competent. It must have been related to cooling because our AC broke entirely when it started.

My experience with the 2bd lake view suites has been much more positive in terms of room quality, climate control, etc. Unfortunately, those are real expensive these days. I look back wistfully on my 2650/nt with 5th nt free PSTF rate from last year. That's never gonna happen again.

Still, you're paying for the location, views, and now with the renovations, pretty good hard product. It's just so nice to have direct access to so many good hikes. Have a nice breakfast, go hiking, then come back and take a warm bath or shower immediately. It's too bad Basin wasn't open during my stay. That sure would be nice to go to between hiking days.

I don't know if I'd come back again though unless I can snag a steal of a deal on the 2bd lake view suite. I am curious about the normal 2bd suites though because the pricing is very compelling if going in a group, but I truly think the quality standard for the renovations they did in the majority of the hotel was not as high as it was for the 2bd lake view suites that were renovated some years ago.