La TUMU Boutique Hotel — Hotel in Toronto

Avoid at all costs.

The description (elegant boutique hotel) is far from reality. This is a house on a very busy street, neglected facade, and once you pass the cheap entrance door after unlocking it with the provided code, you find a family house converted into a cheap motel of sorts.

This is a virtual hotel, in the sense that there are no humans or reception desk, and you interact with support via an app. This could be a fine modern concept, except for cases where you might actually need help. Read on to find out why this might be a problem.

I was supposed to stay for 3 nights. I found out my room was on the ground floor, with a window facing the noisy street, with poor noise isolation. The corridor layout is such that the house entrance (for guests) is exactly behind the bed head, guaranteeing you will hear guests coming in and out at all times of day and night.

The toilet is set up in such a way that it feels pretty much next to the bed, with no door, noise or smell isolation. Boutique experience I guess.

This can be a colorful neighborhood: just outside the entrance, a local was installed, smoking his crack pipe, evidently set up for the night. I wondered how loud him and potential friends could be, meters from my thin window.

Bathroom, bed, couch, all seemed nice enough. But with the promise of noisy nights ahead of me, I decided I couldn't stay in this room, and left about 5 minutes after entering this hotel.

I gave the staff a heads up immediately via the app: told them I left the hotel, told them will not stay that night, that I will not stay the two other nights, and explained why.

Support was polite, but not actually helpful or (quite possibly) empowered to help. Over the next few days I had a few interactions with them. My main goal was to get a partial refund, at least for the unused two last nights. Or something. A commercial gesture of sorts.

Unfortunately, the impersonal support was implacable. After promises to check with colleagues on this case, I was pointed once more to the cancellation policy and told I wouldn't qualify for any refund. Technically, factually correct -- but is that a good, recommendable guest experience?

So, there you go. Given that there are plenty 3 stars commercial bland hotel chains around (plain, boring, but providing actual support and a sound sleep), should you really risk staying at the Sonder Wellesley? I have made up my mind, what...

This is one of the worst rooms I've ever stayed in and would absolutely not recommend staying here.

I booked the room knowing that it was on the cheaper end for Toronto, so whilst I wasn't expecting anything particularly luxurious, what we got was far worse than I could have anticipated. Myself and a friend booked a double room and were given a 'unit' in the basement of the property. As soon as we entered the room, we were hit with a strong smell of damp, damp bedsheets and noticed that the floor was extremely dirty. I immediately complained to Sonder and asked for a different room, but they said there were none available. They immediately gave us a $150 refund and offered to get someone to come round that evening, but I had to explain that damp is not something that can be fixed in an evening. We then had to request a dehumidifier and air freshener was sent to our room.

Whilst this was provided, it is absolutely unacceptable that any guest should have to request this at any point. Essentially, Sonder clearly know about the damp problem on this floor (I am not sure about rooms on the upper floors) and just hope that people put up with it. We noticed that the air con unit was covered in black mould and after we checked out of the property, both myself and my friend developed chesty colds.

I sent another complaint email to Sonder explaining the above and was given another $200 refund, but I still do not believe this to be an adequate response and it's clear that they are just going to continue renting this disgusting room out to other guests. We originally paid £$1122 dollars for this state of a room for 4 nights, and with the refund this went down to $770.11. This is still a ridiculous amount of money to pay for a dirty, damp room where we barely managed to sleep due to the summer heat and ended up with an illness that lasted for the rest of our 2 week holiday. Shame on Sonder, I will never book...

Prepare yourself that it is not the traditional "hotel" but an Air BNB style building with rooms locked with codes to enter and no front desk. Code and info is sent 3 days prior to your check in. Although no front desk, communications with staff was easy enough and accommodating when necessary.

Keep in mind that this is a single room dwelling, good for a single person, or a couple. Enough for you to shower and sleep, which is all what we needed it for. Also there is no elevator, which may pose difficulties to someone older and with luggage. But we stayed on the 3rd floor and we're spry chickens lol so that was no issue for us.

The best part of this place is the location (5 min walk to gay village, 15 min walk to the Eaton Center, and 15-20 min bike ride to the waterfront - bike ride shares are right next door to rent), AC, and being able to grab essentials when needed, as well as having a ROKU set up for TV for when winding down.

The only few things that I wish could change is having a mini fridge, even with the few nights stay, having cold water or cold snacks during a hot summer would have been nice to have! As well as the shower was a bit difficult to understand at first and didn't drain very well causing a build up of water while you shower.

Other than that, we enjoyed our stay and felt like it was a good value for what we needed as...