Best Western Plus Chemainus Inn — Hotel in North Cowichan

First off, the hotel amenities, the maintenance person, and the late night front staffer that helped me at 130am was excellent. This is also a long review..but I urge you to please read it through.

I am giving the 1 star review because this is what happened. Whoever reads this can decide if my complaint is legitimate or not.

My family (wife, 8yr old daughter and 2 yr old son) are staying in room 102. I was woken up at 100am (March 22nd) by a loud tapping noise outside the window. My wife and kids were sleeping inside the king sized bedroom.

I looked outside the window to see a constant dripping of water from one of thr above suites. I concluded it to be water dripping from one of the above AC units.

Imagine a faucet dripping constantly that won't turn off.

I went to the front desk to explain my situation.. this was now about 110am..115am. The maintenance guy was then called and I went outside the hotel with the maintenance guy to look at this. True enough, it was from the AC upstairs dripping water onto the window sill. What you see with the piece of wood and towel is the solution currently in place.

I am giving this 1 star because after speaking to the manager (Karla,I believe is her name) in the morning, I realized that she didn't care about the situation at all.

I did ask for a refund for this one night (only the one night) that my night was ruined. She mentioned that because I paid thru a 3rd party, she couldn't authorize a refund. Instead, she offered to move us upstairs to a bigger room. I told her that we have 2 kids and the reason why I wanted to stay on the ground floor is so that my kids can run around without bothering anyone downstairs.

I then called Hotels.ca to complain and Hotels.ca called the manager. The manager was adamant that apparently I was offered the room exchange at 130am and because i had refused at 130am, there is nothing more she can do. For the record, I was not offered a room change at 130am, only in the morning when I spoke with the manager.

OK... so.. apparently waking up my wife and 2 kids at 130am is also a solution. Remember that I have a 2 yr old with me.

By the way, Karla.. I booked with Hotels.ca NOT expedia.

It is an absolute shame that this hotel has a manager who clearly has no concept of customer service.

Maybe, I should have taken the room change and have no regard for the tenants below me as my kids run around.

To the owner: you tell me if asking for a 1night refund is reasonable or not considering the legitimacy of my complaint. I know you...

Pros and cons. Pros, staff are all very nice. Welcoming feeling from them. Good breakfast. This was our second stay. Bug caution - careful when booking what you’re getting. We stayed in May and have a great 3 bedroom, plus living room with pullout and kitchenette. One bedroom was set back and quite private, very imp as we have an infant who sleeps longer then our high energy toddler and naps when he doesn’t. Front bedroom wasn’t very soundproof with sliding doors but fine. At that time we asked to book in for end of July.. a room identical plus an attached regular room if possible (for grandma). Grandma checking in person two days before to confirm. When we arrived from the ferry with kids ready for bed, we got to our room and found only one bedroom… that really shouldn’t be sold as a bedroom because the top section was completely open offering zero sound or light blocking. It also had no bathtub.. totally useless room for a baby and toddler. We went back down but we’re told ‘the rooms have the same code’ and the hotel was fully booked so couldn’t change us. How does 2 bdrm plus pullout have the same code as one ‘bedroom’ (not bedroom.. area with half high drywall around it). For the tub, they made us put her room on our card so we could get keys and use the tub for the kids. We struggled this trip with both kids getting woken by each other all night (baby wakes periodically, then toddlers woken by her cries, then he’s up and has to be put back down which further disturbs her). I could literally hear my husband roll over in the next area. I felt like we were very clear from our initial booking through about the room we were booking and the charges for these rooms should not be the same as they are not comparable. The staff pointed out the pool when we were upset. It’s an older basic pool. Nice to have but nothing special. Fine hotel. Good staff. Major room fail that had a huge negative effect on us. Paying for same but way less of a room. Check your room bookings in detail if your expecting something. Bedroom doesn’t mean a...

On July 12, 2023, I made a reservation for a room that was listed for $232.00. When I didn’t get an email confirmation for the reservation after over an hour, I called the hotel again. When I did eventually get the email, the price had jumped up to $245 - $13 more. Instead of calling back for a second time that evening, I decided just to bring it up in person when I checked in. Unfortunately, when I did, the desk clerk simply said “there was nothing she could do”.

When we got to the room, the clock was flashing the wrong time and we were unable to set it to the correct time. I called the front desk and asked how to set it. The clerk didn’t know and said she would have someone fix it. But, even after a second request, that never happened. Other issues were that the TV remote did not work properly, and there were three unpleasant stains on the carpet between the two beds.

When I checked out in the morning, I spoke to the person at the front desk and again, she said there was “nothing she could do”. In the past, I have always been very happy with this hotel, however, I certainly cannot say the same this time. With taxes, the bill for one night totalled $281.00. For one thing, I certainly did not appreciate the arbitrary price hike and, call me old-fashioned, but I think if you’re paying almost $300 for a hotel room, you should at least have a clock and a TV remote that work, and, preferably, no stains on the carpet.

Will we spend that kind of money to stay there again?...