Inn at Laurel Point — Attraction in Victoria

If you like to sleep when you visit a hotel, keep looking. ||||My husband and I are from Victoria where we both worked in hospitality + customer service for 12 & 15 years. We relocated to a smaller town on the island when our first daughter joined us in 2021. ||||We now have a 2 year old and I’m 8 months pregnant with our second. We were excited to find an opportunity in our schedule to visit Victoria (where we met) one last time as a family of three, kind of a baby moon.||||We usually would book at the Parkside or HGP, but both hotels pools were closed so we decided to stay somewhere with a pool for our tot.||||We had hoped for an early check in which was not possible, which we understand as that is luck of the draw. Our daughter was quite tired and grouchy after a day of travel & keeping busy with no nap. At check in we found the lobby very pretty and the staff friendly. Front desk informed us that we received a comp. upgrade to a “beautiful room on the 3rd floor” Well, that was exciting! I wondered why but wasn’t going to argue that.||||We took our tired grouchy tot upstairs to find a basic room that was no different from the room that we had booked aside from having a “partial view” instead of an “obstructed view” we didn’t really care much about the view, which is why we booked obstructed. With a child who goes to bed at 7, the curtains close early. What we needed was something comfortable & practical for our family, a king bed and a pullout for our daughter. It had that, but let me tell you - this hotel NEEDS to replace their mattresses. My body was so sore. We both found the bed very uncomfortable and worn. It was like sleeping on plywood with lumps and valleys from previous guests. I expect to sleep on a quality mattress when I book a stay at a hotel that identifies itself as high end. Aside from the mattress, the room was ok. Nothing spectacular. We booked in the laurel wing which is apparently their inferior, lower quality wing. Something we didn’t know when we booked, so if you stay here keep that in mind.||||The heater was extremely noisy. The bath robes were very small and worn out. Shrunken looking and appeared to have been laundered many times. My husband who is a 6’ size large couldn’t tie his up. The curtains were impossible to close and there was a chunk missing from the bottom corner of our room door, no door sweeps or attempt to keep out noise. The room seemed clean enough and we got a decent rate so we decided to make the most of it instead of switching hotels, but it wasn’t what we expected. In hindsight, we wish we had left the hotel sooner.||||This is because the thing they failed to mention was that the upgrade they kindly gave our family placed us above a very loud event.||||Our room was above loud music, people screaming & partying well into the late night/early morning. Our toddler usually goes to sleep at 7pm and I at 8:30. By about 10pm the noise was just getting worse so I decided to call the front desk to see what to expect for our evening. She offered to move us directly across the hall. No thanks, we just finally got our young one to sleep. What is the point to wake her. pack up and move across the hall on the same floor at 10pm when all night people (party guests maybe?) were running up and down the halls on our floor yelling and slamming doors and partying in their rooms. I didn’t think we would get her back to sleep if we woke her up. The sound proofing is severely lacking. We finally fell asleep at 12-1am or maybe later and had a broken sleep on our plywood mattress until the rooms alarm clock from the last guest went off at 6am waking up our toddler for the day. Salt in the wound. The first thing she asked was if she could go home. We packed up and checked out early so we could all head home to get some rest from our vacation. It totally ruined our second day in Victoria to be running on such little sleep, none of us had energy to do anything. ||||I was and still am heartbroken that our last trip as a family of three was ruined by the careless decision to put a family with a young child above an extremely noisy event. Not only that, but to disguise it as an upgrade was cruel.||||Embarrassingly, I ended up in tears talking to front desk about our stay when asked. They said sorry, and “if you choose to come back we will upgrade you to the other wing, would you like your bill emailed or printed?”. ||||Even if we wanted to (which we do not), we are unable to return because soon we will have a newborn. I mentioned this to them and they said “well maybe it will be a long time”. I’m not sure why they think we would want to spend our time and money to stay there again. The promise of an upgrade is not too enticing after this experience and this “upgrade”. ||||I also brought forward my surprise at the lack of transparency about events/noise level in rooms and was responded with “we are a full service hotel”. I would NEVER have booked here if I knew they would be hosting a huge event that we would be placed directly above. I have worked in hotels when I lived in Victoria that disclose noisy rooms, as they should, because it is the right thing to do. I hope they change this policy for their next guests.||||I am surprised that no supervisor came to speak to us. Maybe because it was Sunday, or maybe because we were Laurel Wing guests? I’m not sure. But we definitely will not be back, nor can we recommend this hotel. I’m so disappointed that we chose to stay here. I emailed guest experiences the feedback from our stay and have not received a reply so that tells me that it is not...

We had a lovely stay. We did the Bed and Breakfast package with the Butchart Garden Tour add on. -The view was amazing 🤩! -9/10 staff were kind, friendly and took service to a higher level. Only one evening concierge made us feel awkward/stupid for asking a question regarding room service. -The restaurant was pretty ok. Husband’s bacon & toast were consistently burnt. One of my eggs benny was under cooked and the other over cooked. -next time we go, and we will return, we won’t be getting a room close to the elevator. We could hear it any time anyone was using it. So it made us think the sound proofing wasn’t super. -We did find dried/not cleaned “bodily fluids”on the curtains. Let me add that we witnessed the house keeping team clean other rooms. They were extremely thorough! I was impressed that they take the mattress right off the frame, they clean the windows, they mop the decks. Even though we found something disgusting, I wouldn’t hold that against them after seeing how they clean. -The linens were brilliant white -The towels were that supper fluffy, ultra bleached clean feeling. -The free soaps were the loveliest scents!! Citrusy and herbal and very refreshing. My husband couldn’t wait to wash with it or wash his hands enough with it. -the sliding glass door to our room was impossible for me to use. My husband could open it. It needed some grease. -TV had ALL the channels we could ever think of needing. Great verity. But we used our laptops 95% of the time. -Free Wifi was included in our package -our room had a fridge. Extremely small, but no extra cost to use. In room coffee/tea (not the restaurant or room service) they could have been more generous with the coffee (the Nespresso pods). The tea they offered was terrible. Only four creams offered. I’m sure if we had got room service every day this wouldn’t have been a problem, but we also didn’t have the money to tip the room service every day. Our average per day rate was $680.00. I felt for that average per day room rate the house keeping tip should have been included. The gratuities were already included (18%) for everything else. We verified this when we first checked in. -we didn’t have much time to explore the garden they have. Our room over looked it. It’s beautiful. -we were always rushing to make it to the pool. Pool closes at 10pm. -we witnessed a couple of conferences being held. We’re not sure but maybe a wedding was being held there. We definitely met the bride and groom. They looked like they enjoyed their stay and their wedding.🥰 Made me think we should get our vows renewed at Laurel Point Inn. -I really enjoyed the paintings, art work and sculptures all over the hotel and restaurant. A lot of First Nations art work and I think some Asian art (but I could be wrong on that). -they were doing some kind of window replacement around the hotel and we hardly noticed any construction noise or work. We did meet up with a team of six and they were the sweetest, goofiest guys ever! They even explained to my husband how they are removing the glass and safely breaking it, because we were hearing this crackling noise and couldn’t locate it. He said it was the glass in this garbage can. And sure enough it was this massive pile of broken glass. And then he (in a fun tone) explained how they remove it and THEN break it safely. Seemed like they enjoyed their jobs😊. -I’m glad we did the Butchart Gardens add on, but I would NOT recommend. Average price to get in is about $40 or $50. Takes about 4 hours to get through. The other visitors were rude. Quite a few were ruining the experience for other visitors. Lots of teen age men yelling. A lot of Indian tourists were walking shoulder to shoulder disrespecting women and forcing people like me to either get stuck by them or others get pushed over and off the walking path in to the flowers/plants. These visitors made taking pictures impossible. They were freaking animals. Oddly enough, THEY screamed regularly “STUPID PEOPLE”! I am disappointed that the staff didn’t eject them from...

We've stayed here 4-6 times over the past few years. This was our go to hotel in Victoria but we'll likely be looking elsewhere in the future.

We had a ground floor room in the Erikson wing. We had the corner room (166) with privacy and so we had the curtains open. I was not dressed so it was surprising to find the gardeners walking by. I immediately went to get dressed. I went to the front desk and informed them that they should inform ground floor guests when the landscaping company would be working, so guests could have their curtains closed for privacy or to be dressed. The front desk apologized

When we checked out, we were asked how our stay was and I reiterated the landscaping issue again. I did this because the day after the incident, it happened again. I brought this up so they could know that this isn't ok. Instead, I was asked if they should note in my file that I only want a non ground floor room. How does that solve issues like this? Because if you had professional window cleaners working that day, wouldn't you be informing guests that someone would be cleaning and draw the curtains for privacy? Or the same notice they had on the website and at arrival that they were under renovations and what hours there could be construction noise?

Unrelated, there's a person working the front door that was extremely cold but not to old white ladies (we witnessed this on more than one occasion). My partner and I had asked staff to fill our hydro flask several times throughout our stay. Each time they did and even asked if we wanted hot or with ice. The person at the front door told my partner that they would not be refilling it and that we should fill it ourselves at the water station by the seating area (we didn't see that). So we literally drained the remaining amount of water. We had come back that same day (water station was empty) and asked another front desk staff to fill our water and she did so, and asked again if we wanted it hot or with ice. The unfriendly (bald, white, older gent) employee and the front desk staff at checkout are the only two employees I've encountered at this hotel (in all my visits) that did not exemplify the customer service we're used to here. Everyone we encounter throughout our stays from housekeeping to the hostess at Aura to the server at Aura to the other front desk staff have always been the reason we stay here. Those two genuinely fall short of the excellent service we've...