Sign in with Facebook
5 Stars - 3 Reviews and 1057 Opinions
The Fairmont Waterfront is located on the shores of Burrard Inlet, across from Canada Place Cruise Ship Terminal and connected by covered walkway to the Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Center. Naturally, cruise passengers and conventioneers fill the halls. The hotel takes care to cater to this clientele with special services, such as a bell staff to assist with porterage to the terminal and conference facilities that complement the convention center.
Rooms and amenities are those of a 5-star Luxury hotel and so are also the prices in its restaurant and bars. Yet, its staff is extremely friendly and helpful and makes one feel easily at home.
There is also a direct access to a basement-shopping mall, where one finds many shops and also Starbucks and other places for a relatively cheap lunch.
Unique Quality: The superb, unique quality of this hotel is its position on the waterfront across the cruise-ship terminal (and convention center). Having stayed there for one week on business, it was sheer fun to watch the huge cruiseships landing in the early morning and departing on the bay late afternoon.
Directions: Across convention center by the waterfront
This is a typical North American 5-star city hotel. Excellent large rooms with excellent views and decent service. It is a fair walk into the city centre, though. I wouldn't stay there again, but only to try out some of the other hotels. Over-all, it was good.
Directions: The hotel is located beside an enclosed walkway to the Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Center, and the Cruise Ship Terminal. It is a fair walk to the West End (15 mins) and Stanley Park (30 mins).
Very, very nice hotel. Perfect location, right across from Canada place. The one room I stayed at was spectacular.
Unique Quality: Nice outdoor pool, amazing views of the waterfront and Stanley Park.
Directions: Right near the waterfront, across from Canada Place
Canada Place is home to the Vancouver Convention Center and the Pan Pacific and Fairmont Waterfront Hotels. It is cool, but it is not really a tourist site, it is fun to walk down the "pier" and back, but that is about it.
This hotel is my first choice. Class all the way with an excellent spa. The rooms on the Gold Floor are spacious, elegant and comfortable. I enjoyed every minute of facial and massage treatments at the spa. Breakfast at the Globe was first-rate.
This is another North American standard 5-star hotel with decent large and sound-proofed rooms. Our problem was with the service. Generally it was slow; check-in and check-out took longer than necessary; we had to wait at least 15 minutes each way.
A major problem I had was upon arriving at the hotel in the rental car. Some guy in an airport uniform told me I had to move the car away within 15 minutes. As the porter hadn't even greeted me yet, I had no idea how long it would be until I could move out of there. My next request could be classified as unusual. I asked the hotel staff to arrange dropping off the car to the airport rental place for me or, failing that, arrange for the rental place to come and pick it up. It turns out this couldn't be done; it was if I was asking for a ride to outer space. Surely at an airport hotel, this wouldn't have been the first request for this, especially given this 15 minute parking restriction. An unusual request, but hotels of this class are supposed to deal with unusual requests. All over Europe and Asia, I show up at the front entrance of a 5-star hotel, and I don't have to think about the car again; they deal with it for me. Not at the Fairmont!
The Fairmont Waterfront is consistently providing me with exemplary service and attention to detail that is just unparalleled. Yes, I am a Platinum member with Fairmont’s loyalty program but I am confident that superior service is received by all.
On this stay I had requested an early check-in and arrived at the hotel at 11 am. While my room was not yet ready I inquired if anything might be available at that time. I specifically inquired about the Gold Floor and on an exception basis and as I was Platinum I was provided with a corner room on this floor. The Gold Floor has a private reception with concierge and offers evening canapés and deluxe continental breakfast in the lounge. Matthew, the lead concierge must seriously know EVERY detail about Vancouver, even where to locate premium French cheeses, and offered to call there to ensure they were open!! Talk about knowledge and service – great work! The other concierge were also very professional and friendly and definitely knew their stuff!
The room itself was spacious, spotless and otherwise nicely decorated. Within an hour of check-in, while out of the room a tray was delivered with 2 additional coffee packets, exactly as per my profile! Great attention to detail. The evening snacks in the Lounge were creative and delicious and included sushi, warm chicken skewers, deep fried prawns amongst other items. Turndown service was provided as per usual. A wake up call was requested and a personal call was provided exactly on time. On the Gold floor you can also request complimentary coffee and juice to be delivered to you as you awaken. The requested coffee arrived 5 minutes after the wake up call – what timing!!
The hotel is convenient to Stanley Park and is thus a great place to stay if you like to go out for a run. I did so and was super impressed by the runner’s maps (also one in the room), bottled water and towels that were provided in a station near the doorman downstairs. Very thoughtful. Also used the fitness centre, outdoor pool and Jacuzzi. All great facilities.
I had Sunday Brunch at Heron’s, the hotel’s restaurant ($32 CAD). Awesome views are complemented with superb cuisine including dim sum, sushi, lots of fresh seafood and at least 4 kinds of salmon. This is now my favorite brunch, the only weak point is the desserts which are better at some other brunches, notably the Edith Cavell at the Jasper Park Lodge. The morning following my brunch I had the breakfast in the Gold Floor lounge and it was of excellent quality as well. I was able to use the Business Centre to print off my boarding pass for my flight home that evening.
In conclusion, you simply cannot go wrong at the Fairmont Waterfront. If possible, do try the Gold Floor service, the staff are simply above and beyond any hotel staff I have had occasion to meet! Well done and I can’t wait for my next trip to Vancouver!!
My wife and I stayed at the the Fairmont Waterfront for 10 days in July.
We had a Portside deluxe room on the seveth floor which had a fantastic view over the Burrard Inlet, Stanley park, and the North shore mountains.
PROS:
On arrival at reception: Staff were friendly helpful and informative and check in was swift and troublefree.
The room: Well appointed, fresh, with outstanding views of the busy waterfornt area. Double glazing helped to muffle out the unwanted pile driving noise created by the construction work on a new conference centre extension being constructed next to Canada Place.
Room service/Cleaning : One of the few Hotels where the service works around the customer. The "Do Not Disturb" sign meant just that and was treated accordingly by the cleaning staff who worked around your itinery rather than the other way about.
Restaurant/Dining: First class throughout. Food plentiful to an excellent standard, served by attentive staff
Staff: At all levels of the service chain were found to be well presented, courteous, fluent speaking and not the usual "riff raff" often found in hotels of this type.
Health club/Pool: Excellent Tidy with plentiful facilities
Location: Good central location in a safe area.
CONS:
Room View : Tainted by the ongoing construction work for the conference centre. The work is in the early stages, and it is a massive extension so disruption can be expected for many months to come.
Room safe: Not available in our room. The hotel offers a safe deposit box which is accessed via reception. The access to the box is 24 hours and is well controlled, but if there is a large que at reception it can be a bit of a pain waiting to gain access - No doubt staff will think the same when they're dragged away from their normal duties to oversee the box removal.
CONCLUSION:
This was the first time we've stayed at a Fairmont Hotel - based on our experience it certainly won't be the last.
We stayed here for two nights at the end of our Canada / Alaska holiday having also stayed at the Rimrock in Banff, the Fairmont Vancouver Airport and Sutton Place, Vancouver.
We had expected this, from the reviews, to be the highlight of our stay but were disappointed to find a badly stained carpet in our Fairmont grade room, no room safe, and an altogether tired look to the room. On mentioning this to reception, we were told that all the rooms were in the process of being refurbished but so far they had only completed 4 out of the 23 floors. After refurbisment, all rooms would have a safe.
On the plus side, the beds are comfortable and being on the city side were quiet. Be aware that a media centre for the Olympics is being built next door and that piling work will go on for the next few months. This was very loud outside (the noise also being the subject of a TV news item we saw) and we were told by reception that some noise sensitive people in bayside rooms had complained - we were offered the use of earplugs if we had a problem!
I booked this last minute for new years 2004/05 and got a great rate, not on the hotel’s own website. I booked the most basic rooms in the hotel and they were huge for European standards, in fact I should have only booked one instead of two and the picture window views of the harbour are amazing.
Staff were delightful all the way through, even at 11:50pm on New Year’s night.
Underneath the hotel there is a small shopping concourse with hairdressers and food market, very good value.
The concierge are extremely knowledgeable and recommended a great casual restaurant “steamworks” less than 10 minutes walk and good shopping areas and Chinese cuisine. Ask about the hotel dogs that are available for guests to walk and the airport shuttle.
New Year’s Day we did a 12km walk through Stanley Park which helped to walk off those Canadian calories.
Good location, great views, wonderful staff
We will be taking a cruise to Alaska in a few weeks and have yet to book a hotel. The selections are many and confusing. I'm looking for a nice hotel not over $200. Our flight arrives around 4:30 pm the day before the cruise. Would you suggest staying close to the terminal or just staying in a hotel at the airport?
Shop around online and see if you can get a good rate at the Fairmont Waterfront- it's a great hotel (although skip the restaurant) and a great location. I've also stayed at Hotel Le Soleil, which isn't too far away, and I really like it. Last time I booked at Le Soleil I got a rate of about $130 on Expedia.
Take a look at the following hotels in the downtown area, they are in safe areas and not very far from the cruise pier. Days Inn and the Ramada both on Pender Street. Best Western located on Drake at Granville. Century Plaza on Burrard, The Holiday Inn on Howe.
Sonora Island Resort & Conference Center
Hotel Class
Sonora Island, British Columbia, V7B 1W4, Canada
Latest Vancouver hotel reviews
Sponsored Links
We've found that other people looking for this hotel also know it by these names:
Address: 900 Canada Place Way, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6C 3L5, Canada
Comments