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.  

I have returned to Sheraton St-Hyacinthe for the first time since staying there on the hotel’s opening date in June 2018.  This time the hotel was fully operational so I thought I would provide an update.

Room

I booked two rooms: a junior suite and a 2-queen room. I asked in advance via my ambassador to get connecting rooms.  I got the rooms as booked, connecting as requested, but no upgrade.  Higher categories of suites have connecting rooms as well (premium suite, executive suite) so it would have been possible to give us an upgrade but they did not.  Anyway I was satisfied with the setup so I did not ask for Platinum-Amb upgrades but it should be noted that they might not upgrade Plats proactively depending on circumstances.  The two rooms I got are the same as in my previous stay and as before I would say it’s one of the best hardware of any Sheraton in North America.  

Location

The hotel’s underground parking is now open.  Even though the hotel is next to a large shopping mall, the (free) underground parking is exclusively for Sheraton guests – accessible with the room key.  It is temperature controlled so on cold snowy days it is very convenient.  I suspect not many guests are even aware so they just park outside because the indoor parking was almost empty during my stay.  The hotel bridge link between the hotel and the shopping mall is now open (unlike in June 2018).  I found it useful to have access to the mall without needing to step foot outside.  The mall has 140 shops, a food court, and a very large grocery store.  That’s on top of the hotel being connected to the conference center.  It makes the location of the hotel ideal if you need to be in this area.  

Dining

Last time I stayed, the Club Lounge was not open but this time it was.  The décor is very attractive and the lounge was hardly used most times we went there so we had a private place to relax in the morning or evening.  Food & beverage is the main weak point of this hotel and they still have growing pains in this area.  The main problem comes from the fact that the hotel does not have its own restaurant: the Zibo restaurant is operated by a third party but they work in collaboration with the hotel as they are in the same building. The restaurant staff is responsible for in-room dining and is responsible for the food in the Club Lounge. The result is that Club guests and Platinum guests are important to the hotel, but not as important to the restaurant. There was no staff in the lounge most of the time and nobody coming to check if something ran out.  On one morning there were no more plates so we could not eat; I went back to reception to inform them and they called the restaurant to have someone go there.  One evening during happy hour they quickly ran out of food and we asked them to bring more. The second evening was even worse. Happy hour is 5:30pm-7:30pm but as of 6pm they only had small cubes of cheese left.  I saw one man come in the lounge at 6pm and by the time he left at 7pm no staff came to the lounge for the entire hour, so the entire time he was in the lounge he barely had anything.  If I was him, I would not be too pleased.  The next morning we arrived and once again no plates were available. I went to reception to ask for more plates, and someone from the restaurant came with more plates but the guy did not bother checking what was left on the buffet: there were no more fruits and someone was trying to use the coffee machine but the discard tray was full so the machine was out of order.  The restaurant staff just left the lounge after bringing plates despite seeing a guest trying to (unsucessfully) use the coffee machine.  I went back to reception again to inform them that we were out of food and coffee.  One other guest in the lounge briefly mentioned to me sarcastically “great service here, isn’t it?”.  

Every time I interacted with hotel staff regarding the lounge, they were very helpful, transparent about the reasons for the current situation, and apologetic. They also gave an ear full to the restaurant staff which did not do their job properly.  They explained to me that they are still learning at what times the lounge is busier than others, because sometimes even during the week there is nobody at all going to the lounge for happy hour so no need for staff. Personally I think the set-up of having an alliance with the restaurant is not ideal and they need better training and better incentives for the restaurant staff to serve hotel guests with more care.  But at the very least because hotel staff seem to genuinely take the hiccups seriously, I can be confident that the problems will not be swept under the rug and that they will try to find solutions.  That’s the main reason I am willing to give them a chance and return later to see improvements.

Food available in the lounge (although limited) was of excellent quality: dumplings, edamame salad, black bean paste, etc. One evening they replenished the pizza once on request, the second evening dumplings were not refilled even after a request.  Unless you are there at exactly 5:30pm it’s slim pickings for the moment but quality is there – it’s not exclusively junk food like some other Sheraton lounges in North America.  For breakfast one morning they had a burrito wrap which was excellent, other mornings was more traditional breakfast items such as scrambled eggs, potatoes, etc.

As a last comment regarding the unfortunate lounge situation is that breakfast ends at 9am in the lounge.  This is unusually early, particularly on weekends where many hotels extend breakfast until 11am.  This should be an easy fix.

Overall

Overall despite the lounge situation, I still recommend this hotel and I will be back.  The willingness to make things better is clearly there, unlike some other management teams in other hotels who do not care much.  That is not the issue here.  They just need to figure out how to make things work better between them and the restaurant.  In the mean time, I would simply recommend to non-Platinum guests that it is not worth paying extra money for a Club room until things have improved.