Le Germain Hotel Calgary — Hotel in Calgary

I’m going to do a compliment sandwich here. Because although I do have positive things to say about this hotel, I can’t lie and say I didn’t have disappointments as well.

My husband and I just checked out of the hotel. We came to Calgary for our anniversary and were really looking forward to trying a hotel we’ve never been to before.

So let’s start with a positive: -lovely hotel. Nice to be next to the Calgary Tower. -Modern, nice layout. -Good room options for sure.

Let’s move to the negative: -when we first got to the hotel, we didn’t notice anything except for lack of slippers. No big deal, do hotels even do this?! I can’t remember if they do, as we obviously don’t go out much! -I go to take a shower, and see probably half a dozen long black hairs on the ground and several in the shower that I cleaned up. Not my hair, and my husband is bald so not his either lol. -the main large rain shower head only half worked. I used the small, lower one instead. -I go to crawl into bed, as it’s late, and accidentally pull back both sheets and see underneath there are a bunch of short black hairs. To be clear, the sheet on top was clean. But honestly, I just didn’t want to sleep on a bed with hairs for my anniversary in a hotel we paid $230 for.

(Hopping over to positives now) -the staff were so kind and quick to accommodate us. They moved us to a new room down the hall that ended up being an upgrade. It was late and we were tired, and they were ever so helpful.

(Back to a few negatives) -our new hotel room, although an upgrade, also had issues. We had a difficult time locking the door. The deadbolt just wouldn’t lock! My husband had to physically lift the door up on the hinges to get it to lock. Not sure if I could have on my own, as I didn’t try. -we couldn’t pull the blackout blinds all the way down on one of the windows. It stopped almost a foot from the bottom and wouldn’t go lower. -the smaller shower head in this shower wouldn’t “lock”. For example, when I turned the water on, the water pressure would push it up and it would face the roof. I had to carefully balance it after a few tries but halfway through the shower it shot up. Couldn’t fix it! I could have used the big rain shower head that worked well in this room, but didn’t want to get my hair wet. -small but annoying, there were no plugins on my side of the bed.

Ok ending things on a (somewhat) positive note -the staff did give us 10% off of our stay and we didn’t pay for the upgrade (although honestly, I didn’t care about the upgraded room. If I had wanted it in the first place, we would have booked it. We just wanted a nice place to stay.) They said they would have reimbursed our parking, which was $50, but we didn’t get valet parking. So instead we just got $20 off our stay.

TLDR: -disappointed in our stay. Some aspects were nice, but it was death by a thousand cuts that lead me to a 2/5 stars. I was genuinely sad we didn’t have a nicer stay for our anniversary and felt disappointed we paid $230 for it and only got a 10% discount for all the things that went sideways. It just...

IF YOU LIKE SMOKED MEAT AND BACON, AND CAN APPRECIATE A VALET SERVICE THAT PUTS FOOD IN YOUR CAR WITHOUT BEING ASKED, THEN THIS IS THE HOTEL FOR YOU! Although I would love to give this hotel more than one star, my recent experience at "one of the best hotels in Calgary", was both disappointing, and confusing. The purpose of my trip was to surprise my wife with a birthday getaway. After reading the reviews on a number of hotels, I liked the ratings and the comments people left regarding their stay here. We checked into the hotel around 8pm Saturday night. Despite there being a valet, I asked where there was parking as the horror stories about these services leave me feeling uneasy. The front desk staff said that there was public parking for $10.00/hour, so the $30 valet seemed like a great deal. We dropped off our car, went to our room - where we stayed until we checked out the following morning. Our car was brought to the front for us, just as valets do, but when we got in, there was a horrendous smell. Sitting on the back seat was a box of take out from their restaurant. We didn't eat at their restaurant and we certainly did not order take out for our car. The box was full of smoked meat, bacon, and I am not sure what else as we were immediately enraged and went back inside. We confusingly showed the hotel staff what we found in our car. To be fair, the staff seemed just as confused as we were. After being interrogated by the staff, with questions like "did you order food and have it delivered to your car?", to which we replied "who even does that?", we came to the conclusion that CLEARLY somebody was in our vehicle who should not have been. We drove to Calgary, so we had to ride in our stinky smoked meat car for 3 hours home. After speaking to the manager, who was less than willing to accommodate our experience, we were told that it wasn't a big deal, as it was just human error. No, it was not human error, because one of your staff intentionally took my car keys for no reason, and took food to my car. There is no documentation of anyone actually asking for food to be left to stagnate in my car during the night. This was a violation of privacy to say the least, and the accusatory staff have not made it any better.

In the end we were told that we would receive some of our hotel charges back, which we have, but the whole experience was mind boggling. More so the excuse after excuse received. Was it a nice hotel? The room was nice. Was it worth the hassle of having to get my car cleaned? Absolutely not. Am I confused on how this is the best hotel in Calgary? Yes Would I ever return to this hotel? NEVER. Would I order smoked meat and bacon from their...

First time staying in Calgary the location was very good across the road from the Tower, just round the corner from the mall and lots of resturants but I quickly learnt lots of hotels are in this area and Downtown Calgary is relatively small so location isn't really relevant to choice. Maybe I'd feel differently if there was snow on the ground. ||I booked a basic room it was really thoughtfully designed, contemporary and spacious. I liked the layout, it reminded me of a recent stay at Sparkling Hills in Kelowna (a spa hotel). It certainly isn't your usual basic room, a real delight. ||I actually booked this hotel when I took a look at the Charcut restaurant menu (it actually swayed me to cancel the Fairmont across the street and rebook here) and it did not disappoint The staff were run off their feet but did a great job at breakfast. ||Unusual for a hotel today, they still had a mini bar. A good mini bar which I really appreciated. If a little dangerous when you look at the menu cost. I didn't care, they had what I wanted and you pay for the convenance. ||So what didn't I like about the hotel:|- the bathroom window have a slit you can see through. Which means if I'm looking into the neighbours lounge, doesn't that mean they can see me in the shower! Yep I showered in the dark. |- Funny, they have a mini bar but don't want you to have disposable water bottles, so they have big ceramic water jugs on each floor....but then then don't clean the flasks each day, the plan doesn't make sense.|_ It was nice to have both a coffee and a tea option but they didn't replace the tea each day. Given the higher rate I didn't love that. |- I had used my credit card in many places pre and post this stay but the machine didn't work at the hotel and they made it very clear it was my fault, it wasn't. |- The website said the bar opened at a specific time, it did not, so you have to go out for a refreshment. |- I didn't sleep well, some issue with the sheets, I grabbed some towels/robes and was finally able to get off to sleep. ||What was the surprise: on arrival in the room they texted to say text back if I need anything. I needed transport back to the airport and they made sure that was a breeze. Made up for some of the hiccups above. ||Would I choose this hotel again? Probably not but I'm not sad that I gave it a shot, they really are close to...