Banff Aspen Lodge — Hotel in Banff

This hotel is located a few blocks away from the main downtown area. I would say about a 3-5 minute walk. There are no restaurants onsite, but there is a cafe on the ground floor. You do get free breakfast every morning from 6:30am-10am. It's not a very big space, but was not full when we went on Labor Day weekend. You do get free parking with 2 areas to park. There's underground parking, which has about 20 spaces and gate automatically opens when close. Then there's parking available in back, with covered and non-covered spaces.|Upon walking in, the lobby is not very big, but there are some seats available for you to sit at and there's an area with a fireplace with seats surrounding it. Check in was pretty quick and informative as they can also book your activities. The building has only 3 floors with a very small elevator. Not the fastest, but since it's only 3 floors, the stairs are an option also. They have a pretty good sized jacuzzi, a small cold plunge pool, dry sauna and a steam room. There are men & women restrooms and an area with clean dry towels. The jacuzzi hours are 9am-10pm. Most of the time, it was empty or maybe 2 people in it. And since this hotel isn't very big, it was never crowded at all.|The room that we were booked in was a 2 queen street view. It came with a balcony, which we didn't use, with a couple of chairs outside. I am able to hear the road noise, but luckily, Banff doesn't get. a lot of traffic, it's tolerable. The room is separated in to 2 sections almost like a co-ed dorm room. When you walk in the door, the bed is right there, then you walk past the bathroom/sink area and then get to the other queen bed. The 2nd queen bed area is much larger in space and has a chair and table and a full length mirror. There's a small fridge that was working when we were here, but had an odor of food that's gone bad. Not sure what it was as it was empty when I inspected it. It worked pretty well and kept our drinks cold. There's a safe that's pretty big that you can store a 16" MacBook Pro in it with no issues. The clearance in this thing was probably about 6"-7" high. There's also a Nespresso coffee maker with pods and tea in a draw right below it. A hot water kettle for your teas. They provide you with 2 robes that are pretty hard tbh. There are no microwaves though. The WiFi here is adequate with 25-30mbps down and 15-18mbps up.|The breakfast was ok and there are servers that will refill your coffee/drinks. Here are some of the food items: toast, hard boiled eggs, fresh fruit, yogurt, scrambled eggs, tater tots, beef sausage, chicken sausage, oatmeal & cereal. The food is not the best, but good enough to fuel you for the day. Plus it's free. The bathroom here is on the small side and the door pretty much barely clears the toilet when you open it. It's a shower stall. When you open the door, make sure you clear the floor of the floor mat as the door will catch it. The AC in the room doesn't get cold, even when I have it at 64 degrees. It's pretty loud, but works. We really needed it as it was about 75-80 degrees while we were here. Overall, would I stay here again, maybe depending on the price. But you do get a lot here. I just wished the bathrooms were a bit bigger. I don't mind that the 2 beds are in separate areas. I think this actually could be a good thing. Both areas had...

I had an amazing stay at this place during my recent visit to Banff. It's in a very central part of Banff, with one of the bus stops being only a block away and the hotel being right on Banff Avenue. I noticed there were a lot of reviews complaining about the parking space here, but I think that problem has been resolved; it's definitely not the biggest parking space I've seen among other hotels in Banff, but I didn't have trouble finding parking at all when I drove in around 4PM on a very busy weekend.

I booked a premium 1 Queen bedroom, and I thought it was a really good size. I believe the couch in the living room has a pullout bed, so this room could accommodate up to four people (I can't speak to how comfortable the pullout bed would be, however). I did find the layout of the room to be questionable; the bedroom is right next to the entrance, followed by the washroom area, and then the living room area. Because the bedroom space was quite small, it was a bit uncomfortable getting in through the entrance. I think a more logical layout would have been to make the bedroom space closer to the side facing out to the Banff Avenue. Also, there were some staples sticking out of the carpet near the tiled floor in the washroom area; I was lucky they didn't manage to break through my skin when I stepped on one. I did really like the balcony attached to the room, which had an unobstructed view of the mountains. Also, I found the bed to be comfortable, but the loud ventilation noise did interfere with my sleep quality.

The amenities in the hotel were much better thought out. I liked that they had a laundry machine and a dryer and also that they had laundry detergent ready for purchase at the front desk; it would have been nice if there was more than one washer and the dryer, but I did manage to use it. I really appreciated the outdoor space area with the hot tub, dry sauna and steam sauna. I spent hours reading while enjoying the hot tub. It was a very relaxing experience, and a great way to kill time while doing the laundry.

The staff at the hotel was very pleasant; I came by to ask a lot of questions, and they were always available to help and very helpful in general. I also appreciated the breakfast that was included with my stay; I felt they had a decent spread (eggs, sausage, bacon, yogurt, granola, fruits, etc) and everything tasted fine.

Overall, I really enjoyed my stay at the hotel, largely due to the nice amenities and amazing staff. The bedroom was good, but it had a few areas of improvement, such as the layout and the loud ventilation noise that stayed throughout the night. Staples sticking out of the carpet is obviously a safety issue so I hope they will address this as soon as possible. With that said, I would not mind coming back and staying at this...

This is probably my favourite hotel in Banff thus far. There are some thing service wise that would make it perfect but overall I was pretty happy with our stay!

A quick note before getting into too many details, the majority of the rooms in this hotel are open to the center courtyard which is open to the outdoors. This might be an issue for some in the winter but wasn't for us!

The rooms are very well kept and in working order. You get exactly what you pay for and everything you expect in a room is there. Beds are comfy and there is tons of room. HD TV, mini fridge, Nespresso, and safe were all provided. Rocky Mountain Soap Company shower products are a great local touch.

The hot tubs and steam room are excellent. They did get busy randomly throughout the day but there was always space when we wanted to use them.

The café onsite is nice for quick snacks and drinks. Staff there are very friendly and everything we had was tasty.

Rooms include free breakfast, Wi-Fi, and parking.

Now onto the little things that held this hotel back from a 5 star rating. Firstly, the free parking is very limited and there isn't enough for all their guests. If you can't find a spot, the only other option is paid street parking (per the front desk). The free breakfast is buffet style except for the beverages. We got our initial beverages and then never saw our waitress again to get refills. Rooms which include robes do not come with them. This was one of the features listed for the room but we had to request them and pick them up ourselves from the front desk.

Finally the pet policies (plural). We chose to stay at this hotel because we had our dog with us. They do not have any pet policy posted online, just a statement to call them. I called and spoke to their front desk who walked me through their policy and advised that dogs could be left alone in the room so long as a DND sign was displayed for house keeping and we informed the front desk in case of an emergency. Upon check-in, I was presented with a policy which stated dogs could be left alone in the room so long as they were crated and not making noise (which is fine). When we went to leave for supper and informed the front desk as requested, we were told "that's not really allowed" and after some back and forth they decided to "let it slide this once". There needs to be some training with their staff around which of these pet policies they are following. It would also be great if they could post the policy they chose to follow online as no copy was provided to me after...