This is an older small hotel that has managed to be renovated into a quite pleasant hotel. It shows its age in a few places but much of the hotel is also renovated and up to date. Excellent location. Not your typical North American hotel, this feels more like your typical older three star hotel in Europe. Service was good, bad was comfortable. Excellent value for a hotel with some character.
There's no point staying at delta or radisson which are three minute walks away. Good price, good rooms with new bathrooms, convenient, decent bar/restaurant on site. It may not be the finest most perfect hotel but I'd absolutely stay here again.
My husband and I stayed just for one night here as I had an orientation at SIAST.
The parking was sketchy (very tight with large cement pillars and the alley itself was quite shady).
The lobby is beautiful!
Really enjoyed the history of the hotel, expecially the elevator! The big 'stick out' buttons, the rotating dial to tell you what floor the elevator is on.
Winstons was packed that night but we stared some people down and got a seat eventually. Nice appies and drinks with great service even with the amount of people there!
Room did its job. Nothing jaw dropping. A little small and cramped with a queen size bed, the side tables and desk. Fairly tight sqeeze between the foot of the bed and the 50 inch flatscreen that was dangling from the wall with the channel box sitting precariously on top (might want to find a new location for that stuff)
Bathroom was good. Shower worked good for me (just a sugestion...perhaps a grippy/sticky mat of some kind in the tub....I nearly wiped out!)
There was a georgeous dining room/resturant that we unfortunatly did not get the chance to sample.
Sad to hear there was no complementary breakfast (not even the token toast, dried out muffins, fruit and juice kinda thing).
Wonderful location.
Overall I would definatly recommend for a short stay and if you are not one of those hoity toity hotel go'ers!
Lobby very attractive and fun to have a good English style pub downstairs serving interesting beers! Can only check in after 3pm so don't arrive prior to that (or you could have a pint). Room was rather small especially when compared to the very wide hallways and TV did not work. That being said it is neat to stay in a historic hotel but at $132CAD it is expensive. Downtown location fantastic though. There is limited free parking behind the hotel access through the alley.
We stayed here for 3 nights. My husband had a conference to attend and I went along to keep him company (71/2 hrs. drive each way and boring) This old Hotel has a lot of charm and has been renovated to try to keep the style. It does smell a bit old but we didn't mind.The beds and bedding comfortable and nice. It is well located so I could walk to anything downtown area and river walk. There is limited free parking a big plus downtown you need to leave your keys with the front desk in case they need to move your car??. They desk staff could have been a little more welcoming and at least give you the standard " hi welcome to the blah blah blah I hope you enjoy your stay" but they didn't .The mall was two blocks away lots of restaurants and a beauty school across the street ( you can book an appointment and get hair and beauty treatments for a very reasonable price.) We did not try the Restaurant on site (Rembrandts it looked nice but menu was a bit pricy except for breakfast) We did eat at Winston's pub on site and they had some great specials. Thursday was fish and chips or Shepherds pie for about $8-9 both were really good.
We stayed at this hotel for 4 nights, having had our reservation at another hotel get lost in the shuffle. We called and left a message and then panicked and I booked online (using my credit card), as it was an exceptionally busy weekend in Saskatoon and empty rooms were few and far between. We arrived and checked in, and were offered a room on the front of the hotel, away from the pub. A good choice as the pub is very busy.
The smell of the carpets on the first floor hallway is really something else, a combination of dust and mold I think. Eventually you get used to it and fortunately the room did not smell.
However, the first morning we were trying to sleep in when construction commenced on the room across the hall. Would have been helpful if they had mentioned that when we were trying to pick what part of the hotel to be in.
The room was very clean and as other reviewers have mentioned, the bed was great and the bedding fantastic. When we tried to watch the television, we could not get it to work. A visit from maintenance and we learned that the last guests must have stolen the remote control and the HDMi cable! They replaced both for us right away.
The parking situation is a bit strange, but we had no issues with leaving our keys at the desk and were grateful that other guests had left theirs when they had to move a vehicle to let us out.
We did at one point get locked out of our room. We went outside for a cigarette and had only one smoke and a lighter, no wallets or anything else. We were sent into the pub and given free drinks while they contacted maintenance to come and look at it. I think they may have offered us free food as well, but to be honest the pub food was disappointing at best and we stuck to drinks. The lock had seized but they used graphite and got it open and we did not have to change rooms (which had been mentioned as a possibility).
Our last night we were trying to get a nap in before hitting the clubs and the smoke alarm battery decided to start chirping. We did call the front desk and were told that it was too bad as the maintenance staff were off until the next day. So...we piled up a few pieces of furniture and yanked the battery (don't worry we told the desk when we checked out).
When we checked it it started to get confusing. At check in, as I had already used my credit card for a pre-auth, my card was declined. So my travel partner used his, and I was very clear that it was to be billed to mine. I was given an invoice that stated it was billed to my card. However, my friend realized that it was billed on his. A few phone calls later and it was determined that they had charged his, rather than mine. It seemed that the front desk staff were very confused and it was a real ordeal to get this information.
Would I stay there again? Probably not. Do I regret staying there? No, it was an adventure.
