Strathcona Hotel — Hotel in Victoria

Was looking forward to visiting this heritage site in Victoria, but found the whole experience to be less than stellar. There were 2 separate room bookings (paid separately, carpooled to the city) and while my partners father was checking in to his room with one front desk agent, my husband was patiently waiting for the other front desk agent to finish with the folks that arrived prior to us. When they were done, he approached the desk and waited to be acknowledged which didn’t happen. After about 5-10 mins of him standing in front of her she said “oh sorry! I thought you were together” and proceeded to check us in. During check in, the front desk agent argued with us about the parking fees, and tried to charge each room for 2 days of parking, even thought we carpooled in to the city in 1 vehicle. That left a poor taste in my mouth but I figured maybe it was the end of their shift change and gave the benefit of the doubt.

We were staying on the 4th floor, and upon exiting the elevator were hit by a strong scent of urine and mildew. Again, I chalked this up to an older building.. they come with their quirks.

When we finally got to our room, we again noticed there was a funky smell (note: dog poop). Being an older building, we wanted to make sure we didn’t pick up any unwelcome travellers in our luggage and did the standard mattress check for bedbugs. While we didn’t find any bedbugs, we did find a blood spot on the mattress protector at the head of the bed and one of the bed pillows smelled strongly of vomit (this is where the smell was coming from). My partner threw the pillow out in to the hall and went down to the front desk to voice the displeasure about the bloody sheet and stinky pillow, we were advised that they would change the bed sheeting out entirely for the next day. We were also told that there would be a waiver of our parking for the 2 days (we did not pay for parking. This was covered by our in-laws on their room bill. That fee was also waived due to mis-advertising their queen room as one that came with a couch AND a bed. It came with a bed only, no couch. They needed this couch as the two staying in this room were siblings - brother and sister).

Please note that we paid $400 a night to stay at this location. The bill totalled over $900 for 2 days.

The window in our “premium room” opened in to an alley that could possibly have been home to some urban outdoorsmen sourcing out their preferred vice and or murdered tourist.

We went to sleep and woke up the next day, entirely stripped the bed including the mattress protector to ease house keeping’s labour load and allow for a faster re-dressing of the bed. Upon return, the room was nice and tidy, well put together. I decided to check to make sure they had changed the offending bloody mattress protector, only to find that they had put it back on the bed, with the blood spot at the foot of the bed. I was horrified at the fact they blatantly put the same cover on the mattress so I called down to front reception and stated what was promised the day before - new sheets/linens/removal of the offending mattress protector. The hotel manager and house keeping manager came up to inspect, and advised they only have enough mattress protectors for each bed in the building but would see if they could source one out to replace the bloody one. They found one and called up and said they would replace. We left the room to let them do their thing, only to realize they were stripping the mattress protector off the bed in another room to put on ours. Did they put the bloody one in this other room? I wouldn’t put it past them at this point.

Finally, we had “clean” linens though the pillow that smelled of vomit did not get replaced with a new/unflavoured pillow. We hunkered down for the night and upon waking, realized that housekeeping had taken all the towels out of our room during the cleaning and did not replace any of them. Thankfully this was realized before we had a shower and had nothing to dry off with.

Overall, the experience was very poor for...

Exceeded our expectations! The rooms have been recently updated and are feel more luxe than we expected.

There are not a ton of good photos of the new rooms on the website or Google reviews. Many photos are pre-reno. But the ones with grey walls and modern furniture are the most up to date.

The bathroom, in particular, is very clean and modern. Fantastic water pressure and hot. Our fav detail is the bathroom has a motion activated nightlight, it's really cool!

The bed was so comfortable, we slept very well, out like a light. It is a medium firm innerspring mattress - not too springy or hard or hot - just right. Loved that there was an extra blanket tucked away, too. Sofa in the room is also comfortable with supportive cushions.

The linens, towels, and soaps were all serviceable. Not bad but not as luxe feeling as the room. Some of the towels were on the scratchy side, while others were softer (seemed to vary based on how heavily they'd been washed). I'd also personally like 4 body towels per room - kept having to request more from the front desk, and cleaning service kept taking them each day, lol. I'd also love larger bath towels. Thjs is something that bugs me at almost every hotel, but those little towels do not wrap around most adult bodies, especially larger ones. There were no bathrobes, which would be another nice touch. None of this dealbreaker by any means, but something for management to consider to up their game.

The room was quiet!! We weren't sure since it's on a busy street with the nightlife below, but not an issue. Our room did not have a view, but it was also tucked back from the street.

The staff at the front desk were friendly and helpful. The biggest help was we arrived at 11:30am, hoping to just drop our bags, and they had a room for us!!! Omg what a small luxury to be able to go change and unpack after traveling all morning. They also held our bags the day of checkout and can refrigerate held items for you.

The location is unbeatable. It's just a short walk to anything downtown. There's all the bus lines right outside. It's next to a few banks, so it's easy to get currency. Drugstore across the street. Next to the library and lots of restaurants. (Don't sleep on crust bakery around the corner - go early).

We would totally stay again. It was a great experience.

Best advice to management would be beef up the website. It's a little sparse compared to many hotels in the area. Get the photos of the updated rooms front and center, there's lots of old photos floating around review sites. We were a little unsure what we'd be getting and if it was a for-real hotel or kind of an afterthought to the pubs. Glad we booked....

We arrived in Canada on July 11 for a family trip and checked in at 11:40 PM. We had booked a room through Hotels.com for USD $320 that could accommodate up to six people. Because we were in a hurry at the time of booking, I made the reservation as soon as I logged in, and only my name was entered, showing that the room was booked for one person. However, since the price was the same whether it was for one or six people, I didn’t update it.

After we checked in and my four kids were bringing the luggage into the hotel, a female staff member suddenly appeared and started yelling, saying that the reservation was for only one person and that we couldn’t bring so many people, demanding we pay an extra $20 per person. When I explained that I had booked a room for up to six people, she said that since they were expecting only one person, we would normally need to pay an additional $20 per person, but she would waive it this time.

I didn’t want to argue in front of my kids, so I turned away quietly, but once we got to our room, my children were in tears, and I was so upset that I couldn’t sleep. I double-checked and confirmed again that the price was the same whether we booked for one person or for six, and I still don’t understand what additional preparations they would have provided if they were expecting six people. If they had simply asked us to pay the extra $20, we would have done so, but I don’t understand why she felt the need to yell at us in front of our children.

The next morning at checkout, I spoke with the manager, who was very apologetic and gave us a $100 restaurant voucher, but our first trip to Canada had already been ruined. This hotel is not suitable for families, as it was impossible to sleep due to loud music and drunk people shouting from the...