Don B.
Yelp
There are hotels, and then there are suite hotels, and there, standing out in a field all by itself, is the Rosedale on Robson. It's not a timeshare, it's not your standard suite hotel, it's not a boutique it's... what you get when you gamble on Priceline.
Normally I refuse to let Priceline choose my hotel, but with high rates over the Labour Day weekend, I needed some good news, and the 3-stars Priceline ascribes to this hotel had me reassured that the price was right. After the big reveal (once my money was paid), I Yelped the ROR and had that gut-check moment of "I knew I shouldn't have done this" queasiness. Oh man. 2.5 stars. What did I get myself in to?
"Well this isn't so bad," I thought to myself as we checked in. Our room was ready early, the front desk staff is nice, and the location is great - away from the main chaos of Robson, close to BC place and Gastown, lots within walking distance. Sure the lobby smells like... what's that smell? I can't place it. Must be something someone just cooked in the restaurant connected to the lobby. Never mind, because our room is clean, spacious and has a kitchenette in it. That's handy.
In fact, all of the things the other Yelpers said about this hotel - rude staff, dirty rooms, etc - are just not true! The staff are nice, the room is clean, the location is good, the noise is low. It's a great place for home base when adventuring in the city.
Sure that smell in the lobby isn't going away, but I'm sure it will be gone by tomorrow. I can't quite place it. It smells like meat of some sort, but also maybe B.O.? Anyway, we'll just head to the room and hook up to the free wifi... well, only one device that is. For any devices more than one, it's $5/day. That's kind of lame. But you can sit in the lobby using free wifi on any device, as long as you don't mind the.... smell. What IS that smell? Okay, nix the lobby idea, we can share the one connected device in our room.
The beds in our double-double are comfortable enough. The pillows work. While the air-conditioner is loud, fortunately it's cool enough we don't need it (really). So we can hang out in our room because every time we roll through the lobby... It's. That. Smell. Again.
Damn it's convenient to have a kitchenette in our room. We can go to the IGA and the liquor store up the street, stock up on cheese and wine, and have a little happy hour in our room. Because we can only imagine that the restaurant has the same smell as the lobby.
Well, three days are enough. Checking out was easy enough. They even offered us until 1pm to check out. That's nice. But we want to go exploring on our last day, so we ask them to hold our bags. Unfortunately this costs $1 per bag, and the two carry-on roller-boards have to be chained up outside. Yeah it's covered, but it's outside. And our laptops are in those bags. And the guy checking the bags is pretty rude about our concerns. So that sucks. But we get him to relent and keep our bags in the back office.
Dude, if you hadn't charged us $3 I would have tipped you more than that. Well, not when you were being rude, so scratch that.
At least when we came back to get our bags, they were there, nothing missing, and he was much nicer. Helpful even.
So yeah, the rooms were not like everyone else said they were. Actually quite nice rooms. And the staff? Mostly friendly. But damn. By day three the stank in the lobby was making us queasy. And we were happy to leave. If they could fix that smell, this would be a 3 or maybe 4 star review, but honestly it was a real turn off. I hear Febreeze works pretty good. They have that in Canada, right?
Oh, and the elevators are pretty slow.
I probably won't stay here again.