Blue Horizon Hotel — Hotel in Vancouver

Open since Canada’s centennial year, the Blue Horizon is located in Vancouver’s trendy West End neighbourhood. What’s more, it’s situated on Vancouver’s version of Rodeo Drive – Robson Street. Thus, as far as location is concerned, the Blue Horizon is incredibly difficult to beat. Why? You can practically walk to all major attractions in the city: Stanley Park is just 15 minutes away; dynamic Coal Harbour is less than 5 minutes away; the Pacific Centre mall is 10 minutes away, ditto the Bill Reid Gallery; Gastown is about 20 minutes away; and there are a plethora of shops and restaurants within the immediate vicinity (think MUJI, Ramen Danbo, Chicko Chicken, MACU Tea, Kobe, Black + Blue). If you wish to travel further – and visit places in Metro Vancouver – then the SkyTrain is also a mere 10 minutes away @ the Burrard Station. In short, you don’t have to travel far from the hotel.||The Blue Horizon has all of the amenities modern travelers have come to expect: Meeting space, pool, Business Centre in lobby, restaurant, free WiFi and updated rooms with charging ports, Smart TVs and blackout curtains. Staff are also friendly and very easy to deal with.||We stayed at the Blue Horizon because it offered a fair price and was relatively close to St. Paul’s Hospital (my elderly grandmother wanted to be close to her husband who’s in the hospital awaiting surgery). Anticipating his discharge at the time, we requested – and received – an “accessible” room at the time of booking. I have to say, for an accessible room, the accommodations were excellent: The room was very large, well-appointed and had numerous features – especially in the bathroom – to assist those who might not be fully able-bodied. We ended up staying for a week and checked out just after the New Year due to continued surgery date changes for the dear old man (I love Vancouver, but costs really start accumulating if you’re here for an extended time on your own dime).||Overall, I enjoyed our stay. The staff were friendly; the room was comfortable; Abode Restaurant served very good breakfast (see my separate review on this site); and the hotel’s location was ideal on a number of fronts. The only criticism I have is in regard to their “deposit” policy. I initially felt kind of humiliated. Some context: Due to the nature of our visit, everything was booked at the last second (just 2 days prior to our arrival). Thus, I booked the room with my credit card and also booked airfare. My sole credit card is very cheap and only has a $2,000 limit. Total cost for airfare and hotel actually brought me OVER my limit; however, I immediately made a payment through my bank. It usually takes 2-3 days to go through. Thus, when we arrived to check in, the poor card didn’t have sufficient space to also cover a “deposit.” I explained that my payment likely hadn’t cleared yet on my card and asked if I could use debit or even cash. The short answer was “no, we need a credit card.” Again, I explained I had no other cards. After some time, I was granted an “exception” and allowed to pay with debit. While I’m thankful for the “exception,” that whole process was rather humiliating. Other hotels – Sutton, Hampton, Hyatt, Accent Inn – offer flexibility with regard to deposits or incidentals. Why can’t Blue Horizon? Whether you’re using credit or debit, the hotel is still getting the cash! Okay, rant done. Besides that, though, as I said, our stay was otherwise very good and I would definitely consider...

I’ve been coming to Vancouver for a week of work once a month for the past half year, and have stayed in a number of hotels at around the same price point as this one.

Blue Horizon is heads and shoulders better than other places at similar nightly rates. It is cleaner, more modern, and it is clear the owners have continued to invest in maintenance rather than running it into the ground.

I found it through fairhotel which lists unionized hotels, and I honestly think that this makes a difference in the staff too. At every other hotel I’ve stayed at over the past 6 months, the staff just didn’t seem as….invested in customer service. I didn’t have any particularly unusual requests so I didn’t really see them going the extra mile, but unlike my other stays, I left feeling pretty certain that if I had asked for something outside the normal needs of a guest, they would have done their level best to make it happen. The staff here just didn’t seem….miserable, if that makes sense. Kudos to the owner and/or management for creating that kind of culture.

My only complaint (and this is minor, and really just a heads up for disabled folks like me) is that the padding on the mattress is a little worn and not as paddingey as it could be, which resulted in some joint pain in the morning. That being said, I was given a 2 bed room rather than the single bed I booked, and I discovered that the other bed’s padding was still in good shape, so I just took the first bed’s blankets and used them to add some extra padding to the slightly better bed and I was fine. This should not be a factor for anyone who doesn’t have very particular bed needs, but I thought I’d put it out there for those of us who trawl hotel reviews for info on their beds before booking because our bodies are a little more broken than normal.

I’ll be back - thank you all so much for helping my chaotic work week in Vancouver a lot more relaxed. I am...

The hotel assumes no responsibility for theft or vandalism in parking areas, but they still charge for parking.

All payments in this hotel are made on check-in date and cannot be paid in advance. The hotel front desk staff said that room prices during payment on the check-in date might differ from the price shown on the date of booking on online booking sites, especially for rooms which are booked way ahead of time. A customer might be forced to pay a higher price on check-in date due to price change. Upon arriving at the hotel, if you disagree with this unethical behaviour and decide to cancel your booking, you will still be charged for 1 night price as penalty.

Their point of sale (POS) system is not integrated with their payment terminal. This means the front desk staff must manually enter the amount into the payment terminal and could very well make a mistake in charging your card. The hotel charges a refundable damage deposit of $200 which is excessive.

The rooms can be freezing cold throughout the day regardless of the temperature setting and the maximum temperature customers can set is 23°C. The hotel claims to provide high speed internet, but in reality the internet is very slow, internet disconnects repeatedly very frequently (after which you have to manually reconnect each time), and sometimes there will be a total internet outage for several hours.

This hotel is geared towards extreme monetization. For example, movies watched in the ensuite TV could add extra fees to your final room bill. This hotel does not provide breakfast with room booking.

All of the above shortcomings become worse when we consider the fact that this hotel charges exorbitant room rates but yet provide...