DoubleTree by Hilton Edmonton Downtown — Hotel in Central Core

Their reviews were terrible, they likely lost the Hyatt brand, switched to Hilton, and created a new Google Maps business instead of updating the existing one. I just realized this as I’m writing this review.

We paid for a suite and asked for a quiet room, so we were put on the top floor at the end of the hall, which we appreciate very much, but right under the HVAC plant on the roof, and the furnace in the room was ridiculously loud and woke us up every time it kicked in, in the dead of winter, so we didn’t get much sleep. I wore ear plugs and put a second pillow on top of my head, but the HVAC plant and furnace were still just as loud due to the frequency and vibrations. The furnace access panel is screwed to the wall, and has enough old screw holes in it to show it’s clearly been serviced many times, but seems to need another one. I’ve also had landlords who paint better.

I can tell that this place was nice when it was first built. Lots of windows, and a nice view, which I love. Given the artistic geometry of the outside windows, I can see one of the window seals flapping in the breeze.

The mattress was good.

There are 6 lamps in the room, but only one little bulb by the door on a switch, so checking into the room in the dark is a long journey down a dark hallway, feeling the walls for switches that don’t exist.

There’s also an awkward absence of coat hooks / tree, or shoe mat, anywhere near the door. The coat closet is hidden in the wall, in the living room, around the corner. Shoes just make puddles on the tile floor in the hallway, beside the bathroom door. The little things that go a long way are missing.

The bathroom vanity seems to be second hand, it’s in rough shape, it extends longer than the wall it’s mounted to, weirdly encroaching on the toilet space, it’s not centred on the mirror, the baggie of old screws are is still taped to the bottom of the sink, and the old caulking is still in the basin.

The toilet is shoved weirdly close into the corner with the vanity, but there’s a whole square meter of floor space sitting empty on the other side of the toilet.

The shower leaks water from the tiles below the door frame, so water pools on the floor, and soaks through the little hand-towel-sized floor mat pretty quickly.

For the price we paid and the room class, we were hoping for at least an average number of towels, and slippers and bathrobes are pretty standard at this rate, but it was pretty slim pickings.

The included Wi-Fi is capped at 2 Mbps, and it’s an additional fee to get useable Wi-Fi.

The lamp on the desk has loose wires inside, so it shorts out when you adjust it.

Heated underground parking was really nice, worth the additional $35 / night in this neighbourhood.

The lounge / restaurant closes early on a Saturday night, so we had to find dinner downtown.

Won’t stay again, and will recommend the same to the family member who recommended this place to me.

Hopefully Hilton invests in some upkeep of this place, because it’s not enticing me to stay at any...

Had a short stay at this Hilton, overall the experience was good - rooms were clean, modern, nice bathrooms with good water pressure. We were fortunate in that we stayed on a slow weekend so the hotel was very quiet.

Staff were friendly, accommodating, and are in no way the focal point of any complaints.

There were a couple of cons with this hotel design that would prevent me from staying again, although not bad enough that I’d seek rectification:

Namely, this one is big, parking is expensive at 35$ a night, is the only option as I don’t believe there is a lot, and the underground entrance is very narrow and awkward. We were in a mid size sedan and questioned if we’d even fit through the door. Additionally, If you have a full size SUV or truck you effectively don’t have a parking option as there is no lot on site owned by the hotel that I could identify.

The location of the building isn’t great, not really within walking distance of anything other than the train station, and there seems to be a semi-constant homeless population hovering around often enough that they have a security guard posted up front.

The AC although present, is weak and points into a corner so 3 days of full blast non stop AC only barely kept the room at the temp we walked in at. Bit warm for us.

The bathroom door is a glass sliding door, which means there’s not a lot of privacy. Looks like all the double bed rooms have this, not a fan.

No free breakfast, I’ll never understand why hotels think people would prefer an expensive bespoke restaurant over a simple breakfast lounge. We’re not forced to eat there, so we got something cheaper downtown.

Again overall, it’s a nice modern hotel with all the right parts. But expensive and restrictive parking will 100% keep me from staying here again. For 2 nights I ended up with almost 80$ in parking fees. If I had a long term stay planned I’d have cancelled my reservation on site. For the difference in cost we could have stayed somewhere else in a better location - since I wouldn’t trust parking my car outside downtown even if that...

The rooms were nice and clean. The service wasn’t great. Only given two towels and the first day we didn’t get room service so we had no clean towels. Each room has a keurig but we were only given decaf pods, there is no coffee available in the lobby so if you want coffee you have to go to the second floor restaurant and ask for a to go coffee which I was charged $7.00 for. No drink or pop machines in the hotel so You have to go to the front desk and buy a small 500ml bottle of water which they charged $6.00 for. Our last night I went to the lobby to get 2 bottles of water at 12:30 am for the kids and they had no water left, only Gatorade, Diet Coke and apple juice. Told me there was a water fountain on the third floor and some cups, and to check back tomorrow for water. Went to the third floor and no cups. We were on the 11th floor so that is not very handy for when the girls needed a drink in the middle of the night. The worst part about this hotel is that unless you are driving a shopping cart then there is no way you are fitting in their parkade. They have no above ground lot so I was told to park in the lot beside the hotel. When I went to pay to park in the lot beside it costed $4.00 per hour. I moved my vehicle, if I would have parked in that lot it would have cost me $368 for the time I was there which is ridiculous. The front desk staff were not helpful at all and brushed me off when I asked for help with the parking app. Very disappointed in the service from the front desk and they clearly do not care about...