Day use hotel near airport?

[phillies fan]

With a 10:30 pm flight out of Vancouver, we are interested in any day use hotels in Vancouver, preferably near the airport.   Plan is to check in after getting off the cruise ship (9 am) and spend a quiet day there instead of at the airport.   We'd likely check out around dinner time, check in at the airport and have dinner there before our red-eye flight.   Thanks in advance to those who can help out.

[martincath]

The Fairmont at the airport is the only hotel I know that definitely offers day use rooms - but frankly at the rates Fairmont hotels charge you'd be cheaper paying for a full day/night in a downtown 3*!!!

 

It's not something that I recall coming up very often at all, since Vancouver is so chock-full of things to do most folks with a late flight are trying to arrange tours to maximize sightseeing - but since day rooms are hardly unique to cruising, I suspect you will get significantly more responses using a general travel site rather than cruise critic - try TripAdvisors Vancouver forum if you want other folks' experiences, or just Googling for reports of which hotels offer such a service (e.g. I plugged in the phrase 'day room Vancouver BC' and up popped this site, listing three hotels near the airport - and weirdly enough, one in Whistler...)

 

One very relevant bit of info that will likely make you change your plans - a flight that late is not pre-cleared at the airport, so it's pointless going too early. Two hours preflight will be more than enough even for very nervous travelers - which means dinner downtown where you will pay less for better options makes a lot more sense than dinner at YVR, where there are very few options and the rates charged are significantly higher than the downtown branches of the same restos. We don't have any 'you will not be screwed over by pricing at YVR' guarantee unlike other airports!

 

Maybe you have some babies or seniors in the party with mobility or medical issues who just can't handle a day being out and about - but unless you've already spent a lot of time locally, it would be much wiser having come all this way to take advantage of the day and see some awesome and unique stuff. Storing luggage at the Pan Pacific hotel is dirt-cheap ($5 a bag) and takes care of your baggage while you sightsee - and we have more things to do than all the AK ports put together...

[phillies fan]

Thanks for your post and response to my question.  I appreciate your ideas.

 

One pressing concern, which you were mindful of, is that my wife has some mobility issues.   She would not be able to walk around Vancouver, as wonderful as that would be.   

 

We were fortunate to find a day use hotel downtown where she can rest for the day while I enjoy Vancouver again.   

 

Your comment about eating dinner downtown and then heading out to the airport is especially helpful and is one we'll pursue.

 

Thanks again for touching base on all this.   

[martincath]

You're welcome, and I'm glad you found somewhere downtown - actually if you wouldn't mind confirming which hotel (and if it's a fixed rate for day use, the fee) it would be useful as a couple of other folks have been asking the same question. Us locals just don't need this kind of service!

 

A suggestion to give your wife a chance to see some of the city - you could book HOHO tickets. Depending which hotel the nearest stop could be right outside - and if you're somewhere too far to walk to the stop, she could sit and have a coffee at the pier while you took your bags over to the hotel in a cab then came back (the HOHO stop at the pier is right outside). There's nothing that say you MUST get off at any of the stops, but as long as she can walk even a hundred yards there are many stops that are right outside the relevant attraction. Unlike with a regular bus tour, there would be no required timetable forcing her to hustle on and off the bus - so as long as she can manage to wait for the next bus, 20-30mins in summer, and climb up a couple of steps the logistics work. There are even trolleys with wheelchair lifts. NB: I don't know if the new LandSea HOHO has any accessible vehicles, but they're more expensive and have fewer stops than the older WestCoast HOHO which do have accessible vehicles, so I'd stick to the latter if you do decide this would work for you.

 

Of course a private tour would be even more flexible - but maybe you don't want to drop several hundred bucks on touring!

[phillies fan]

Thanks for getting back to me.   We have done the HOHO tour on our last visit to Vancouver.   It was a great experience, but I fear my wife's mobility has diminished enough since then to prevent us from using it again.   I certainly agree with your assessment of how convenient it is.

 

We used the hotelsbyday.com site and are booked into the Hyatt Regency in downtown Vancouver for the day.  Day rate is 250 CAD.   This will allow my wife a quiet place to rest up for our red-eye home and me a chance to enjoy downtown Vancouver, one of my favorite cities.

 

Other sites we found helpful, but did not take advantage of are toursbylocals.com which had a variety of tours.   Given that the ones that most appealed to us traveled to many of the same places that we visited last time, we decided to look into the day use hotel instead.   There are a good number of interesting tours offered on that site.

 

The other site, for luggage storage, is porter genie.    You check in your luggage with them at the cruise ship terminal and tell them when you'll meet them at the airport.   They were very prompt in responding to my initial email.   Certainly worth considering for those in need of that service.

 

Thanks again for your response and interest.    

[martincath]

You're very welcome - and thanks for confirming your day hotel details, which may be of use to others. Porter Genie is starting to get noticed locally, but while we've had quite a few folks state that they planned to use them very few have then followed up with a review (although the couple that have both reported they were very happy with the service).

 

I'm not surprised you didn't find any 'off the beaten track' Toursbylocals listing; whenever I've scanned the site it does seem to be mostly the popular spots that everyone knows about. But do note that these are suggestions, not the only places that a given guide know well - pretty much all the guides are long-term local residents and while they may only advertise the 'packages' that are most popular, no doubt they can also give you some much more niche tours on request (back in my guiding days I knew one lady who gave tours of historic fire stations, talk about a niche product! Then there's the NYC guide who tours hidden hotel lobbies - the really swanky spots that don't really advertise their existence and cater to the super-rich).

 

Since you're going to be on foot, I'd recommend looking into some of our less-mainstream walking tours - for example the local Architectural Institute offers some insanely cheap group walks in summer (I always Google architect groups whenever I'm traveling to a decent-size city, as many of them provide similar tours); various volunteer-run historical and sociopolitical societies give tours of historic homes, graveyards, cultural sites, and general neighbourhoods outside the downtown core where the HOHOs run at various times of the year (e.g. the Heritage Foundation). If you're a beer fan there are minibus and bike tours around a selection of the many local breweries that have popped up in the last ~five years since the booze laws were relaxed. We've even got some nice 'self-guided' neighbourhood and park tours that the Parks board put together, here, and public artwork tours here.

[gwesq]

On 5/28/2019 at 8:23 AM, phillies fan said:

Thanks for getting back to me.   We have done the HOHO tour on our last visit to Vancouver.   It was a great experience, but I fear my wife's mobility has diminished enough since then to prevent us from using it again.   I certainly agree with your assessment of how convenient it is.

 

We used the hotelsbyday.com site and are booked into the Hyatt Regency in downtown Vancouver for the day.  Day rate is 250 CAD.   This will allow my wife a quiet place to rest up for our red-eye home and me a chance to enjoy downtown Vancouver, one of my favorite cities.

 

Other sites we found helpful, but did not take advantage of are toursbylocals.com which had a variety of tours.   Given that the ones that most appealed to us traveled to many of the same places that we visited last time, we decided to look into the day use hotel instead.   There are a good number of interesting tours offered on that site.

 

The other site, for luggage storage, is porter genie.    You check in your luggage with them at the cruise ship terminal and tell them when you'll meet them at the airport.   They were very prompt in responding to my initial email.   Certainly worth considering for those in need of that service.

 

Thanks again for your response and interest.    

I didn't realize there was such a site - thank for mentioning this. We are staying at the Hyatt 3 nights precruise, so maybe we can swing something with that hotel for the postcruise dayroom. Have an 11 PM flight.       

 

  I see that the Pan Pacific allows for luggage storage - that might be a way for us to go also.   Can someone tell us what kind of walk it is - we'll have two large suitcases and probably a backpack & a carryon or two.  Is there a shuttle from where we disembark to that hotel?

 

philliesfan - I am another one who is now in SW Fl.  Still haven't gotten over 1964 collapse.  

[martincath]

On 7/7/2019 at 1:46 PM, gwesq said:

...I see that the Pan Pacific allows for luggage storage - that might be a way for us to go also.   Can someone tell us what kind of walk it is - we'll have two large suitcases and probably a backpack & a carryon or two.  Is there a shuttle from where we disembark to that hotel?

No shuttle needed, because the PP hotel is literally inside the same building as the pier!!! When you're walking off, just look for signs (ask any of the many workers guiding folks to the relevant taxi/tour/limo/exit to sidewalk routes) for which elevator will take you up to the hotel (it's at the street end of the pier, so the first couple of elevator banks don't take you to the PP).

[Herman The Cat]

Great suggestions. So, seems like Fairmont at the airport and Hyatt Downtown have day rooms? Has anyone found any others?

And arriving at airport 2 hours before a flight to the US is plenty of time? Our flight is at 11:30pm.

If we don’t get a day room, can we check/store our luggage at the Pan Pacific for the day? Is there a charge or just a gratuity?

Thanks in advance!

[hallux]

37 minutes ago, Herman The Cat said:

And arriving at airport 2 hours before a flight to the US is plenty of time? Our flight is at 11:30pm.

Should be PLENTY of time.  I was there a little over 3 hours before my flight and had to wait for check-in to open.  You don't go through US customs/immigration due to the lateness of the flight, that happens at your first layover in the US.

 

38 minutes ago, Herman The Cat said:

If we don’t get a day room, can we check/store our luggage at the Pan Pacific for the day? Is there a charge or just a gratuity?

$5 CAD, gratuity is your discretion (I actually didn't even consider that when I was there but didn't have anything smaller than a 5 to give them anyway)  Get there early, apparently the room fills up.