The Cove Lakeside Resort — Hotel in West Kelowna

Stayed at this "resort" just after May long weekend, and my experience was mixed. For the price I paid, I expected A LOT more. Cons: Room 321 (lake view, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms) was quite dirty. As soon as we walked in all we could smell was fried food. The previous guests must have fried something in the suite and never opened a window. The cabinets and stove were covered in grease. Cutlery and plates were stored in the cabinets dirty and with crusty old food on it, absolutely disgusting. Carpets are filthy, we had a crawling baby with us and after 2 minutes of crawling his clothes were black. We also found crumbs under the coffee table and behind furniture. The patio floor and furniture were dirty, couldn't really enjoy the view without stepping on dirty floors. There was a barbecue on the patio, but no propane tank, therefore unusable. There are 2 hot tubs in the hotel. One was closed, and the other one was "broken". We asked the front staff and they said they were trying to figure out how it worked. The water was lukewarm. The pools were not heated enough for the weather, therefore not usable or enjoyable. All day there were 10 people at a time (including children) sitting in the lukewarm hot tub because the pools were too cold. No housekeeping, even though you are paying for a resort fee. What exactly does a resort fee cover if you are not providing the bare minimum a hotel should offer? Nothing about this hotel is pet-friendly other than the fact that you can have your dog inside the room. The " beach" in front of the hotel is not well maintained and quite small/lame. They were cleaning the windows and patio railings while guests were enjoying their patio. I personally watched a worker shout at a guest sitting on their balcony letting them know they'd get wet if they didn't move back while they were washing windows. The Landing restaurant food was awful... I know it's not related to the hotel, but it's the only option on site.

Pros: Beautiful location and incredible views. Decent parking lot with lots of space. Good location as far as restaurants go - quick 5 minute drive to grocery stores and many restaurants. Friendly staff for the most part. Well-equipped room with Telus cable, wifi, AC and heating, and pretty much everything you may need to make a quick meal.

My suggestions to management: Room 321 needs to be cleaned, carpets washed and kitchen needs a lot of attention. Housekeeping and daily garbage pick up are the bare minimum if you are changing a resort fee. It cannot be that hard to figure out how to make the hot tub hot... This is a huge selling point of this hotel and it really disappointed. The pool can only be enjoyed in the summer if you don't heat it enough to be enjoyable. Another huge selling point as the pools are gorgeous and clean. Unfortunately all we could do was look at them.

Suggestions to guests: Don't stay there unless it's summertime if you are looking to enjoy the pool, it's not heated enough to enjoy. I stayed there for 4 days and I saw maybe 2 people go in and immediately out. I could not stay in the pool myself for longer than 5 minutes. From reading the reviews it seems like there are a lot of private owners. Your best bet is probably to book directly with the hotel. I'm wondering if I'd have had a cleaner suite had I not booked through Hotels.com (shouldn't even be a thing based on how much I paid for 3 nights but oh well).

Overall, I'd probably not try this resort again... I'd have to hope for a cleaner room and pools and hot tub actually being usable. I still think the price is not worth it, and the resort fee makes...

We had our ceremony in the Gellatly Garden, and our reception in the Grand Reserve at The Cove Lakeside Resort. Our planner at The Cove was Terry Pritchett. Terry was organized, responsive, professional and overall we enjoyed working with him. Unfortunately, The Cove did not provide the option for Terry or another coordinator to be on site for the wedding day so we hired Scarlet Oak Event Décor. Jaide and Kaylyn from Scarlet Oak were absolutely instrumental in helping with things like timing the ceremony procession and set up/tear down of our décor items. Our wedding would not have been the same if we had only relied on The Cove’s banquet coordinators.

Prior to three weeks before the wedding, The Cove was unable to confirm if our vendors could get access to the Grand Reserve earlier than 5:00 pm to start setting up when we planned to open the doors for our reception at 6:00 pm. This is because The Cove attempts to rent out the space for corporate events during the morning before a wedding. This put a lot of stress on us and our vendors to have contingency plan in case we could not get access to the Grand Reserve until an hour before the reception. We were finally able to confirm an earlier access time (12:00 pm) about two weeks prior to the wedding. The Cove also was unable to provide any storage for our flowers or décor items prior to our access time for the Grand Reserve.

While the Grand Reserve is advertised as having a capacity for 100 people, we had 85 guests with moderate décor and the room felt very tight. The round tables that The Cove provides will fit 8 adults comfortably, not 10 as advertised.

Patrick and Liz were our banquet coordinators and they did a great job adhering to our day-of timeline. Overall, the venue was beautiful, the food was excellent, and everything ran according to schedule. One big downfall we experienced was they appeared to be short of service staff on our wedding day. This meant that it took longer to serve everyone food and drinks, and clearing plates was quite slow.

When we received our final invoice from The Cove, there were several hidden fees that The Cove had not been fully transparent about when we booked. Some of the fees that we paid included: venue fee, AV fee ($270 for only a microphone and podium speakers), optional weather insurance (to reserve a back-up indoor ceremony space), SOCAN fee to play music and an 18% service fee that was not only on food and beverages consumed, but on top of all of the other fees as well. The invoice was extremely difficult to understand, and after spending several hours breaking down each fee, we found a few mistakes on the final invoice that required correction and items where we were overcharged.

The venue was stunning, and we have no regrets about having our wedding at The Cove. We just wished that we were made aware of some of the realities of the venue...

I don’t enjoy leaving this review as I reserve leaving reviews for good experiences, but this stay left us with a bad taste, and really put a damper on our family’s summer vacation

We have enjoyed many wonderful summer getaways to The Cove since 2008. Though we haven’t been in the last 3 years, we decided to book here again as we were up to meet the builders who are rebuilding our family home which we lost in last years wildfires that ripped through West Kelowna. This is the first time we’ve booked outside of the hotel and through AirBnB, which is allowed at this resort. This way we knew the exact room we'd get and it was important for us to have ground floor with our kids’ ages.

My parents boated over to have dinner with us and we were told they couldn’t moor at the marina as they have in the past, though there was plenty of room, so my 68 year old parents had to anchor their boat and swim in. The marina staff were wonderful and said they’d love to have let them but strata has decided not to allow any “outside boats” to moor for overnight resort guests or restaurant patrons anymore. We thought that was strange but we went with it and they swam.

What really ruined it for us was when our 5 year old had watched kids playing mini golf by the pool all week and begged his dad to play. They went to the front desk as we always have in the past to ask to use the clubs. They were told that AirBnB guests cannot use the clubs. When I said we’d be happy to leave a $100 deposit on our credit card and our Driver's licenses the kind gentleman working said he’d call the manager to ask. He was told no and said I could follow up with him when he was in in the morning. I went later in the morning to explain that we’d be happy to leave a deposit or whatever they liked as my son was really excited to play mini golf. For some strange reason the manager would not allow us to borrow the clubs (which are used onsite beside the pool) even though our son was fighting back tears. It was very odd that AirBnB guests are privy to use the pool, bell carts, and seemingly every other resort amenity but they draw a hard line at letting a young child on family vacation borrow mini golf clubs for 30 minutes. The manager said that next time we should book through the hotel so we can use them. Our experience certainly had the opposite effect of us wanting to book through the hotel.

We had heard The Cove wasn't what it once was which is too bad because it used to be so good. Most staff we encountered through the resort were great, as we’ve experienced over the years, but this strange encounter really had us feeling unwelcome and we will choose somewhere else to stay next time...