Steve V.
Yelp
On previous Toronto visits, I'd walked past the Holiday Inn many times -- Carlton Street was my old stomping ground -- but this was the first time I'd actually booked it. I like having something in the Downtown-Yonge district and near the Village, but, this being a Holiday Inn, I didn't expect much.
Well, I was pleasantly surprised. My check-in was bumpy; the well suited (both ways) clerk was, according to his ID tag, actually a trainee, and probably hadn't dealt with the ins and outs of third-party reservations and payments. (I had a flight+hotel bundle). They also charged x-amount-per-night to one of my credit cards against incidental expenses, a practice that I'm still not cuckoo about: if they foul up, considerable phone contortions become necessary.
My third-floor room had two double beds, which didn't leave a lot of floor space -- I had to position the luggage rack at the foot of one bed, in an inconvenient catercorner. The bed -- I only used one -- was supremely firm and comfortable. The small armoire contained a mini-fridge (but no microwave), and, mirabile dictu!, three or four small drawers for clothing. (These have been disappearing.) The table at the window was the only real work space: not a lot of room left after I parked my laptop there, but the close-up view of the restaurants across Carlton helped me feel at home.
The hot-and-cold breakfast buffet wasn't included in the room price -- as it is in the Holiday Inn Express hotels -- and at CAD 25 plus tax, I decided to skip it, which was a strategic mistake. The hot breakfasts elsewhere didn't cost much less, and the spread, as depicted on the hotel's webpage, looks absolutely mouth-watering. Next time.
On the sixth floor, there's a pool with changing rooms, and a small fitness room; a treadmill or two, an elliptical, a "horizontal" bicycle, and such. There's also a "patio" deck where you can lounge and order food and drink, though I skipped that in the intermittently scorching heat.
Housekeeping, provided daily, was more of a crapshoot than I'd expected -- they didn't come around at a consistent time. (It's a big hotel, and, I suspect, they don't always address the rooms in the same order.) One day, the maid came too early, and I had to ask for service at the front desk as I left for the day; another, I found the room still undone when I returned from traipsing about; when they did proffer service, I was in mid-Beached Whale mode, with my feet up, so I declined. (For me as a single traveler, it's not such a big deal, but it might be for you.)
Niggling complaints:
(1) The cable-TV system, as in many hotels, doesn't identify the program currently running, nor was there a "Guide" to tell you what'd be on later.
(2) The clock-radio didn't work right: it wouldn't obviously turn off! (The power button did nothing.) My solution was to crank the volume all the way back down, as one of the previous guests had apparently also done.
(3) The elevator bank on the third floor, where I was, has just a single "Down" call button, a nuisance if you're headed to the fitness room on 6. Sometimes, the car would switch direction, and sometimes it wouldn't. Perhaps the system was designed by a taxi driver....
Complaints aside, the Holiday Inn leaps to second place among my Toronto hotels (after the Courtyard Marriott, a few blocks up Yonge). And, as and when I should stay again, I will take advantage of the breakfast buffet!