I have stayed at Fairmont Tremblant and Westin Tremblant before, but this time around I booked at Homewood Suites in order to compare.  Homewood Suites is normally cheaper than others and my takeaway after a 2-night weekend stay is that it is indeed a notch below the competition but that it can make sense for some travelers.  

Location

Mont Tremblant is quite compact so no hotel is in a “good” or “bad” location, but if we have to split hair then I would say Homewood Suites is probably in one of the better spots.  You can easily walk to the ski slopes and it’s right off Place St-Bernard.  

Room

As Fairmont Platinum, under Accor I now only get a one-category room upgrade, and as Marriott Plat+Ambassador I usually get very generous upgrades at Westin.  I was curious to see what kind of upgrades Homewood Suites give to Hilton Diamonds. I booked the basic room (Murphy Bed studio) and without asking I received a 2-bedroom suite which is their highest room category.  So they are clearly generous on that front, possibly even more so than at Westin where sometimes I get a 2-bdr suite but not always.  

The layout of the Homewood Suites hotel is a bit odd. My room was on the ground floor at the very end of the hotel, but in order to reach that room you actually have to take the elevator from reception to the 2ndfloor, walk the hallway and then take another elevator to go back down to the ground floor.  The reason is that the hotel is quite long and many rooms sit above some shops and restaurants which are located on the ground floor.  The alternative was to reach my room by walking outside, cut through the pool area to bypass all the shops on the ground floor, and re-enter the hotel about 30 meters down.  The room itself has strong points and weak points.  The highlight is the great living / dining area with high ceilings and ski-resort style décor including a fireplace.  It’s a very nice place to spend the evening with family or friends.  There is a small kitchen with full size appliances which can be convenient.  The downside is that bathrooms are a bit small and nothing special (shower/bathtub combined), and the bedrooms are also small especially when comparing with how large the living room is.  One bedroom had two twin beds and the other had one so in total there are three beds but they are all small and not intended for a couple. I would much rather have a room with queen or king size beds.  In addition the living room has a sofa bed so in total you can sleep at least 5 people  there.  One other downside is that being on the ground floor I felt that privacy was a bit lacking because people walking in the pedestrian area outside could see us inside the room so you would have to draw the blinds down for privacy.  

Dining

This hotel does not have the standard Homewood Suites Manager’s evening reception.  Breakfast is provided for free to all guests, although I found it to be was considerably subpar.  The problem is that since it’s free, almost all guests go to breakfast, and between 9am and 10am it’s very crowded (even in the shoulder season in October) with long queues to get food in a cramped space with low ceilings.  They frequently ran out of food and staff were struggling with refills.  To be honest it’s day and night with the Westin breakfast.  I guess this is the problem of giving free breakfast to everybody – it can be harder to offer a decent product.  The breakfast at Westin is only free for Platinum members so most of the time I go there it’s fairly quiet and quality is better.  On a future stay if I stay at Homewood Suites again, I might even consider walking to Westin (across the street) for breakfast despite not even being a guest there, and pay for my breakfast rather than get the free version at Homewood Suites, which I almost never do in any city.  The alternative would be to go to breakfast at Homewood Suites when it starts at 7am rather than go at the tail end a bit before 10am, but Tremblant being a holiday spot, not many people want to wake up early just for breakfast.  

Overall

Overall it’s a decent hotel if you care about having a good room size.  I have not seen the standard rooms but looking at the floor plan, I suspect they are bigger than the basic rooms at Westin so if I went to Tremblant during high season where guests cannot get an upgrade anywhere, then the basic room at Homewood Suites might be better.  Also Homewood Suites is usually cheaper than Westin by a moderate margin so depending on dates, the breakfast being unpleasant at Homewood Suites is not necessarily a deal killer – you can save money on the room and just go eat somewhere else. This is what I would recommend particularly to folks who only have status at Hilton and who want to earn Hilton points and stay/night credits.  This property is not perfect but it’s good enough if you set your expectations accordingly.