Pan Pacific Toronto — Hotel in Toronto

Overall, a “good enough” hotel stay, with a clean, spacious room, comfy king bed and breakfast. ||Lackluster check-in experience: ||We flew in from NYC and we were glad that we had an early check-in. However, both staff at the front office lacked warmth. I had actually chosen this hotel because of GHA. Imagine my disappointment. There were neither welcome amenities nor birthday treats for GHA Titanium guests. If only I’d scheduled and timed it differently, and chosen a different GHA hotel (eg Pan Pacific Vancouver) to celebrate my birthday!||The room:||We were upgraded to apparently the last available room with a King bed…only after I corrected the assumption that we wouldn’t be keen on an upgraded room with a King bed as we had initially asked for two beds. ||The room had a personalised message of welcome on the TV screen as we entered and it was spacious and well-maintained, with both a shower and a bath tub. Toiletries were provided, with dental kits available on request. However, shower caps, slippers, cotton buds and cotton pads were unavailable. Plastic and paper cups instead of drinking glasses were provided, but it was something quite common even in the better North American hotels. ||Laundry service:||Clothing sent in by 9am was delivered to the room by evening. However, express service (at extra charge) was unfortunately unavailable. ||The staff: ||The most professional and most delightful staff were those in the lobby bar/restaurant: Jenny, Lily, Kai, Lisa, Annie and Jolanta. Jenny was the first amiable staff who took the initiative to chat with us. Lily exuded warmth and coordinated with Lisa to ensure a nice yet quick breakfast to help us make it on time for our day tour. Kai was gentle and attentive. Jolanta told us a little about her beloved Poland, and Annie ensured we had a muffin, croissant and orange juice to grab and go for our early morning flight to Vancouver! Kudos to the entire dining team!||Another attentive and friendly staff was duty manager, Nimesha. ||Perhaps some front desk staff require further training to be more welcoming and customer-focused. It was rather ironic that the hotel’s business card at the front desk had a tagline that declared/promised “Sincerely yours”right above the Pan Pacific logo. Alas, both female staff at check-in were unsmiling (even rather smug) and communicated with us sans warmth and sincerity. (It’s in the eyes.) They provided gauze and plasters but sadly lacked empathy and concern when my friend injured her finger, and it was bleeding copiously. The bellhop also didn’t take the initiative to help as we struggled with our heavy luggage upon arrival, and needed serious prompting. (It’s all in the body language.)||Facilities:||The outdoor swimming pool is open only in summer. According to some Canadians we met, the Japanese restaurant that has since closed down used to be popular, and while the Persian restaurant is said to be still in operation, it looked deserted and abandoned when I tried to check it out. ||Rebranding:||According to some chambermaids, the hotel was fully booked that early May weekend. We stayed for five nights and saw participants of the national squash tournament and their families milling around over the weekend. At other times, the hotel seemed rather quiet. ||Apparently the hotel used to be Prince Hotel, followed by the highly regarded Westin Hotel. It is now rebranded as Pan Pacific Toronto, with a decent exterior and lobby, and fairly sprawling grounds. Interestingly, the shower in our bathroom still bore the Westin logo. It’s sad to see how Covid-19 has impacted the hotel and F&B industries even to this day. ||Location:||When booking an Uber ride from the airport, you have to key in the address of the hotel. Simply keying “Pan Pacific Toronto” won’t work. The hotel is 20 minutes from downtown by car, sans traffic; it is at least 30 minutes at other times. Booking an Uber is easy; it is available within 3 minutes. ||Overall value:||Compared to Pan Pacific Vancouver, Pan Pacific Toronto is very reasonably priced. But it is also a far cry (like night and day) from Pan Pacific Vancouver and other Pan Pacific hotels in other parts of the world, in terms of the facilities, location and especially the level of customer service. However, there is still potential. Maybe Pan Pacific Toronto just needs some time to rebrand and get on its feet after taking over the property from Westin around the time of the Covid-19 pandemic. ||Good enough, not great: ||All things considered, this hotel was good enough for us, but certainly not great. Thankfully, the lovely staff at the lobby bar/restaurant saved the day. ||Attention, potential hotel guests: ||This is not like the typical Pan Pacific hotel at the moment. GHA titanium members, please manage your expectations; don’t expect much and you won’t be underwhelmed like we were. However, if you’re just looking for a clean room with a comfortable bed, and a decent breakfast, in a place 20 - 30 minutes from the city centre…with patchy service throughout your stay…then you should be just fine. ||It’s good enough...

Got the suite for a few days as we were getting married nearby and wanted to be near the event venues. This hotel is NOT a five star hotel, not in service, amenities, cleanliness, quiet, or comfort.

Front desk staff are really unfriendly, and don't even say hello when you get to the desk, just ask for your ID right away. They are unhelpful at best, and rude at worst.

This hotel's policy is that ANY late check-out is subject to the price of HALF A NIGHT'S STAY at your room rate, and even then only until 2pm. This is shocking for a supposed five star hotel, where we were staying for our wedding, had brought many guests with us, and booked a huge suite for a few nights. We had also called a few times prior to checking in to see if late check-out was going to be available on our room, and no one on the phone told us this policy, only that it was subject to availability. We had to argue and plead for nearly 20 minutes to finally got late check-out until just 130.

This hotel is NOT QUIET. The night before the wedding, a nearby restaurant or park was having a party with bass booming through the forest and right into our windows. It was shaking the room windows and neither earplugs nor white noise blasting on the tv could block it out. It was awful, and doubly awful that the hotel lied about how quiet it's supposed to be. It finally stopped after midnight.

We got the suite with a balcony. The balcony was disgusting. It had two sad rickety chairs and the decking was covered in green mold and algae. It needed a good power wash and repainting.

The suite was similarly very sad. A huge suite with basically the same furniture from all the other rooms plopped into a room twice the size, which makes getting a suite kind of useless if there isn't the correct amount of furniture to match. There was nowhere to set down your things, and the room was ugly, dated, empty, and uncomfortable.

Same for the bathroom. What is the point of getting a suite if the bathroom is the same size as the room bathrooms? The bathroom was comically small, a single sink and the same old dated bathtub, again totally mismatched with the giant empty room.

Honestly I felt like our room was an old conference meeting room with a washroom attached, and someone at the hotel was like "hey why don't we throw in some old furniture and charge double for this room?"

The bed used ill-fitting fitted sheets that didn't fit all the way down the sides of the mattress, so several inches of the clearly old mattress was fully visible. Gross! The mattress itself literally had springs poking out of it. The pillows were king size, but the pillowcases were regular size, so at bedtime we were greeted with an old yellowing pillow poking out the end of each pillowcase. Double gross! We had to call for the correct size pillowcases.

The only pros of this dump that I can think of are the valet, security, and room service staff, who were the only friendly people we interacted with who actually seemed to want to be there. And, since the bedding is so old and scratchy, they still use the old style of a full duvet cover on the comforter, whereas newer hotels will sandwich the comforter between two sheets. And the ravine view is nice, but I'll thank the City's parks department for that.

I have stayed at a lot of hotels are not gorgeously renovated, but they have excellent and friendly reception staff, flexible policies, and cleanliness to make up for it. They are also not $500+ a night. This hotel lacks in every category and I can't believe it's a Pan-Pacific and advertises itself as 5-star. What a waste of gorgeous property...

Updated Below:

I booked a double Queen for 10 nights for our family of four. We arrived at the hotel to find out that they didn’t have our room and only had a 1 king bedroom. The front desk staff were not helpful at all and were very content to let two of us sleep on the floor. I understand that things happen but there was zero effort to try and fix the situation. Cots were not available, no offer of a second room or anything to try and make the situation better. The only thing they offered was to cancel our reservation if we wanted to try and find another hotel at 11pm at night. I have a group staying at this hotel and I booked 210 nights. So far there are five other rooms in the same situation. No point in paying the extra money to stay at this hotel. I would find another hotel if you are visiting Toronto. Not the best way to start a family trip.

UPDATE - We are just finishing our 10 day visit at the Pan Pacific. Overall it’s been a very disappointing visit despite our best efforts to enjoy ourselves as best we could. I did try to speak with the GM (Charles) and after waiting for 30 minutes for him in the lobby I was told that he was too busy and that I should email him. That told me everything I needed to know and didn’t bother to email because the truth is that they have no interest in even trying to make things better. They did switch us to the correct room the next day but only after I returned to the front desk the next night and went through the whole song and dance again.

We had to move rooms again at one point in the middle of the night because the AC wasn’t working and was pumping hot air. Credit to the hotel they did help us quickly to get into another room so really just the inconvenience of having to change rooms in the middle of the night. Other problems… the patio door didn’t open, the room smelled like it had been smoked in, the AC doesn’t work well to begin with, our room was only cleaned a couple of times despite requests to have it cleaned, we had to request to get towels and other things like toilet paper which never really seemed to be readily available from housekeeping as apparently the towels are always in the laundry. I get the feeling from the staff that these issues are more normal than exceptions which also explains why the GM doesn’t feel the need to hear from the guests or even try to make things better. This hotel was probably pretty nice back in the day but is just a fall from grace now. I have stayed at other Pan Pacific Hotels and Toronto simply doesn’t meet the standards set by the other hotels.

I know that Charles, the GM, responded on here but it is disappointing that I had to write a review in order to get him to even say sorry. Do your guests a favor and find time to hear from them during their stay when you can actually make a difference and help to make the stay as good as possible. Your hotel does not have to be perfect but your effort to treat your guests with...