Fantastic luxury hotel in Calgary

Advantages: Location, customer service, food
Disadvantages: Expensive!

...I recently had a short stay in this hotel whilst travelling with work. I was very impressed! The hotel is rated as a 4 star but I would say that it's actually on par with a couple of 5 stars that I have stayed in and certainly better than several other 4 star hotels that I have reviewed. About the hotel: The Westin is located in down town Calgary. The location is excellent but then Calgary is a pretty small place! I walked to the Calgary Tower in under 15 minutes. There are over 500 rooms. Check-In: I was pleasantly surprised to find the reception staff were actually waiting for us with our room cards already arranged for us. After a 9 hour flight this efficiency was most welcomed. The reception area is quite small but cosy unlike some hotels where it is very grand and daunting. There is a Starbucks on the left hand side of reception...

Katieshaz 12.08.2009 · Read review
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Review of The Westin, Calgary

A hotel in downtown Calgary.

Advantages: Suite hotel in downtown Calgary with great food
Disadvantages: Some traffic noise

...Our travel agent reserved a suite for us at the International Hotel in Downtown Calgary for the first night of our Canadian holiday. Opened in 1970 with 248 suites, it was only 6km from the airport and reached in about 15 minutes by taxi, but the estimated time on the airport shuttle bus was 1 hour as it stops at several hotels en route. Calgary has a structure of avenues and streets in grid formation and the hotel is on 4th Avenue Southwest, close to Chinatown and two blocks away from the Light railway for getting around the city. Reception, was bright and comfortable settees and chairs were around the long narrow area. Check in was quick and easy and a credit card was needed for incidental expenses, in no time we were directed to one of the lifts and would have been zooming our way to the 7th floor and our suite if we had realised...

jo145 13.08.2008 (14.08.2008) · Read review
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Review of International Hotel, Calgary

Calgary - The Gateway to Two Worlds

Advantages: Safe, friendly, good transport
Disadvantages: Extremely cold winters

...Calgary, is situated in the Province of Alberta, and nestles between the edge of the Great Plains and the magnificent Canadian Rockies. This makes it a perfect spot for a huge variety of holidays. You can spend your entire holiday exploring the city and surrounding area, or use it as a stepping stone to a ranch holiday or tour through some of the most spectacular scenery in the world, through the Rocky Mountains. The City of Calgary experienced rapid growth due to beef cattle raised on the plains and the lucrative oil industry. The high rise buildings in the heart of downtown were funded by large corporations moving in to capitalise on the weatlh. Calgary's population is approximately one million, making it Canada's third largest city and it has the fastest growing population. From the UK, there are regular flights direct to...

aliree 14.11.2004 · Read review
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Review of Calgary (Canada)

Historic elegance in Calgary

Advantages: Elegant, comfortable hotel with superb service
Disadvantages: Can get very busy with events and groups

...Having particularly enjoyed a stay at the Fairmont Royal York in Toronto, we were keen to try its smaller sister in Calgary. We stayed for 3 nights at the end of a superb Rocky Mountaineer train journey from Vancouver to Calgary. First impressions of the hotel were very good, with a helpful welcome from the concierge who arrange for our bags to be taken direct to the room. Check in was very friendly and efficient, possibly helped by the fact that I am a Fairmont Presidents Club member - hotel loyalty schemes always seem to be worth joining. Our room was a "double double" of very good size and clearly recently redecorated. The bathroom, although clean and functional, could probably benefit from an update in the near future. Furnishings in the room were very smart and comfortable and there was the usual TV/games/internet facility...

mashpuma 16.04.2007 · Read review
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Review of The Fairmont Palliser, Calgary

Fairmont Palliser - Calgary. Cow towns best?

Advantages: Grand comfort, good location, great price.
Disadvantages: No airport shuttle bus.

...We stayed in the Fairmont Palliser, Calgary last weekend after a week long Ski holiday to the Rocky, Purcell and Kootenay mountains. (6 mountains in 8 days - just to make any skiers reading jealous!!) It was a great place for some luxury after skiing all week! We didn't really use too many of the facilities as we only stayed one night but the public areas of the hotel are exceptionally grand but not at all stuffy. This is Calgary, after all! One thing I would say is that the prices advertised on Ciao for a stay here are a ripoff. We paid C$130 (~£75) for a queen room on a Saturday night. Our room was very clean and comfortable. Not particularly large but had enough room for us and our gear. The bathroom was a little past its prime, with paint peeling a little from the ceiling but the towels were very clean and the provided toiletries...

NomisG 11.03.2008 (12.03.2008) · Read review
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Review of The Fairmont Palliser, Calgary

Luxury, Ramada Calgary style!

Advantages: Loads
Disadvantages: None

...The Ramada Hotel in Calgary (Canada) is a personal favorite, and when in Calgary, I wont stay anywhere else, indeed, I am willing to travel an hour or so just to stay there! My son loved it too (But not as much as the theme hotel in Edmonton (Different room every night!) The Ramada Hotel Downtown located in the booming metropolis of Calgary and only one hour from the beautiful Canadian Rockies to the west. Its within walking distance of the local attractions, city businesses and the shopping malls nearby. The hotel advertises as having 200 rooms, but it has 201, strange, but true! IMAGINE THIS As you walk through the doors from the street, you are met by immaculate cleanliness, and a high standard of service, as you can expect with the Ramada group. Often, as the cab pulls up outside, a doorman opens the cab door...

gt5952 18.11.2007 · Read review
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Review of Ramada Hotel Downtown, Calgary

HI-Calgary - the roughest youth hostel I have stayed in

Advantages: Cheap, friendly
Disadvantages: Rough

...Calgary city centre has several youth hostels; we stayed at HI Calgary. This is located in 520-7th Avenue, on the outskirts of Downtown Calgary and about a 10-15 minute gentle walk from Calgary Tower and the shopping areas of town. The location is two minutes walk from the nearby C-Train (this is a tram) stop which runs through downtown. This stop is the outermost limit of the centre zone that allows free travel, which is extremely useful because wandering around the city gets tiring after a while! This part of town is rather rough. There is a large park outside the hostel where people would sleep on the benches. We saw several people who were under the influence and acting in a quite belligerent manner, which was a little intimidating. You have to walk quite a long way to get any shopping in as well, which is a nuisance. The hostel...

beckyXX 15.10.2009 · Read review
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Review of HI-Calgary City Centre, Calgary

Travelodge Calgary Airport - its nasty!

Advantages: None to speak of.
Disadvantages: Dirty, noisy, no food, BAD location, creepy staff.....

...Oh boy! Where to start. We stayed here on the first night of a recent ski holiday. We wanted somewhere close to the airport and cheap as we picked up our hire car to head to Radium, BC, early the next morning. The hotel is not particularly close to the airport and is in a terrible location next to an industrial park. The only food in the area is from 'Boston Pizza' and is not particularly good and is definitely expensive for Canada. Well, our room was small - the queen bed suspiciously so - didn't feel or look particularly clean was noisy and all in all pretty poor. Good job we 'only ' paid C$100 (£50) for the night! (See my review of the Fairmont in Calgary to see what onother C$30 gets you). I would not have wanted to eat here - even if food had been available. In the morning we even decided to leave without showering because...

NomisG 11.03.2008 · Read review
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Review of Calgary International Airport Travelodge Hotel, Calgary

TAKE A BOW CALGARY, YOU WERE FLAMING BRILLIANT.

Advantages: Loads to do. Compact downtown area. Fly direct from UK
Disadvantages: VERY cold in winter/spring.

...…This one’s for Stevethesleeve who prompted me to continue writing my series of Canadian travel ops. So here goes… Well it seems appropriate to begin with a little history of Calgary, which sits in the prairies, on the banks of the Bow River, and is only a stone throw from the beauty of the Rocky Mountains. In 1875 a group of North West mounted policemen came across the area in which Calgary now lies, and decided that it was the ideal site for a fort, and so the city was born. It was know back then as ‘The Elbow’, or ‘Bow River Fort”, and then like in so many other Canadian places, a certain officer named Colonel James Macleod called it ‘Calgary’ after his Scottish Highland birthplace. In 1883 the first railway arrived, and by 1884 Calgary had a population of around 4000...

Shufflebum 01.04.2002 · Read review
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Review of Calgary (Canada)

* CANADA - Part 3: CALGARY *

Advantages: Very nice and clean city
Disadvantages: -

...So, finally... the third part of my CANADA row... C A L G A R Y... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ... lies in the west of Canada, more exactly said in Alberta, only few kilometers far away from the Rocky Mountains. In 1988 the Olympic Winter Games took place in Calgary; it's also famous for the oil and natural gas finds in the year 1914, or by the Calgary Stampede, the largest Rodeo of the world. Circa 97o.ooo inhabitants live in Calgary! HOW TO COME THERE? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In the winter there are few nonstop connections from Europe to Calgary. From Frankfurt there is a daily connection with Air Canada to Calgary (codesharing with Lufthansa), Air Transat also offers flights from Frankfurt and London-Gatwick, Manchester and Glasgow. Otherwise one can fly to Toronto (or to an American hub) and from there with Air Canada to Calgary...

Rini 01.04.2005 · Read review
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Review of Calgary (Canada)