Horstman House — Hotel in Whistler Resort Municipality

A three-night stay at the Hortsman House in Whistler can easily be described under three headings. 1. The Good. 2. The Not So Good But Bearable, and 3. The Unbearable. . The Good. Our condo consisted of a living area, a kitchen, and a separate bedroom with an adjoining bathroom. Built to a far higher standard than your typical hotel room. It was black-light spotless. No sounds could be heard from surrounding units. The Not So Good But Bearable There was no daily housekeeping service. Room manual stated it had been stopped because of the Covid crisis. There is no Covid crisis now. So what started as a necessary Public Health measure now seems more like a cost saving measure to lower costs by hiring fewer workers. Suites are cleaned only after the guests check out and in preparation for the new arrivals. The room guide binder could do with some user friendly editing. Full of rules and do’s and don’ts and threats of $250 fines if not obeyed, it looks like an orientation manual for some military unit or prison. What happened to friendly welcomes to new guests thanking them for staying there and assuring them their comfort was the hotel’s number one priority. Parking spots too narrow. During our stay there was a short heat-wave. None of the condos in the building had air-conditioning. But strangely the corridors where guests would spend so little time had it. Our unit had one bedroom window and patio door. Neither provided relief from the sauna like temperatures. There were two fans available, one a table top and the other free standing. All they did was keep recirculating the hot stale air and create a lot of noise, making falling asleep very difficult and creating very restless nights with lots of tossing and turning. The result was very poor sleep quality of short duration. The three nights of sleep deprivation produced the usual symptoms, namely waking up feeling exhausted, generally under the weather physically, and struggling to get the motivation to get up and on with the day. It got so bad that we had to resort to going for long car rides so we could benefit from the vehicle’s air-conditioning, or find some type of restaurant or coffee house (with iced-coffee of course) in Whistler to escape the heat for a bit. Here we were paying hundreds of dollars for a room that we were being forced to avoid at all costs and for as long as possible! While we were still able to do the things we had planned, the tiredness and feeling of general malaise due to the sleep deprivation seriously impacted our ability to enjoy them. Our stay in Whistler was a retirement celebration and our full focus should have been on that. As the days gave way to evenings, feelings of dread grew as we knew we would soon have no choice but to return to the Horstman. For hundreds of years the primary cooling technology everywhere was opening windows and doors to create a breeze. Even before the year 2000 few homes in coastal BC had air conditioning because temperatures were milder and open windows sufficed. However with climate change over the past 20 years the weather has become more extreme and unpredictable, with record high temperatures and heatwaves lasting weeks. These changes have not only decreased comfort levels, they have also become a health hazard. Yet the Horstman House continues to rely on the cooling technology going back hundreds of years. Not only is this uncomfortable, it also carries a health risk! Upgrading the Horstman to current day technology and air-conditioning for every suite would, no doubt, be costly, But when it comes to protecting the health of its guests no cost is too high. It is a necessity, not a luxury. Whistler changed from a winter skiing resort to a year round resort years ago, but the Horstman has not kept up with the technology upgrades this requires. While we understand the Horstman cannot control the weather, it can, and should be, doing a lot more to mitigate its effects. Unfortunately this will be our first and last stay at...

This hotel is probably one of the worst hotels in the whole of whistler!!!!

We stayed in the horstman house on blackcomb way in upper village, BC. This hotel is deserving a two star because it truly sucks.

First of all, to start things off, even though its self-check in when the front desk is not open, it should be open during their promised hours! We are staying for 5 nights, but so far the front desk is off duty every single time. The front desk service is just fine and they have a nice front with a game room and a pool table.

Despite being the only one there on the first floor, it’s still horrible!

Moving on to our second point, the ROOM!!!!!!we don’t have an air conditioner in our room and our room is also so smelly! The previous travelers of this room cooked bad fish and now it stinks.

Now third, what’s even worser, the fire alarm went off this morning and the support should be there during an actual emergency, but they weren’t! So we called the chamois front desk and they were so rude, they said:wait until 9 am so the front desk comes!? BUT how the heck in the world do i wait 40 minutes for front desk when the alarm goes off! What if it’s an actual emergency? That’s how worse the front desk service can get if they are not even there. That’s not acceptable but luckily we are golfers so we went out for most of the day, we didn’t have to suffer, we believe could’ve been even worser.

And finally, we want to point out the parking lot, screw that! I totally like how they keep the lot safe by giving us a 1 million numbers code and eventually confusing us into parking into the wrong lot. Also, there was this stupid jeep that was parking on the line and so that made our parking spot really tight. Tried to contact the front again and you can guess what’s gonna happen, they weren’t there!

Very bad, need lot of...

CURRENTLY staying at this hotel and have had some issues thus far. Our booking was initially lost and they had no record of our booking when we arrived. We waited roughly 20 minutes for that to be sorted which was no problem. We got placed in the last room in house, so got lucky! After that our keys did not work, and the receptionist, who was quite kind, came up to check the door to see if it was really not working, and it was not. The lock needed to be reprogrammed by a contracted company which added roughly another 1+ after leaving our belongings in the room BUT we did receive a phone call once the job was done and after that everything has worked perfectly fine. As the hotel closes their front desk for after hours, it is required to contact a sister hotel " The Chamois" for any assistance. Hotels get busy, that is understood, but it has been about 1 hour being placed on different holds trying to get through to the desk. It might not be priority from this location, but the length of time on hold with no call back option makes me assume so. So anyone looking to stay here, our take away so far: It is a fine hotel. Looks alright, no complaints about style and even has a nice communal area to hang with people in the lobby. The pool is running with some Covid Restrictions, awesome. Our room was clean- all amenities are in place. The negatives are that communication between bookings, maintenance, and between the hotel arrangement of the two units MUST be addressed. These issues thankfully were not too serious for us, but trust me, in a different scenario you could find yourself in a nightmare walking to another hotel in your skivvies with nobody to call. Please note this is a review for our CURRENT stay and will not judge our experience here based on this one encounter but we do hope...