Hotel for one night after cruise and before flight home

[MudderBear]

Hello. Will be docking in Vancouver.....flight home isn't until the next morning (8:00am).  What is the best hotel option?  Downtown, or AT the airport?  Obviously, will have large luggage, etc. and want to spend the day sight seeing as we dock at 7:00AM.

 

Thanks for your ideas.

[Heidi13]

Lots of hotel options downtown and around YVR, so I suggest your best option is your personal preferences and how early you want to start.

 

Even though we live under an hour from YVR, for an early morning flight, we always get an airport hotel with shuttle service to the airport. In your situation, we would probably drop our bags downtown (Pan Pacific normally accepts them for about $5/bag). Spend the day touring downtown, Stanley Park, etc then have dinner. After dinner, we would then head out to an airport hotel - you can take Skytrain out to the airport, then call the hotel shuttle, or a taxi from downtown.

 

They have a Fairmont right at the airport, but we use either the Coast Vancouver, or one of the many Richmond options. Last few times we used the Coast, which is reasonably priced and only 10 mins from departures. Nothing spectacular, but clean and reasonably comfortable for a single night. Shuttle leaves every 1/2 hr.

[MudderBear]

Thank you.

[martincath]

I'd agree that Heidi's suggestion is very logical - there's no qualitative benefit to sleeping downtown before an 8am flight, so an airport hotel should offer noticeable savings without any wasted time if you stash bags for the day and only go out there once.

 

Do take note as your date approaches of any changes to operating hours of CBP at YVR, especially if your flight time changes to any earlier - with the extra time needed for Preclearance (and potential Covid screening in future) a lot of folks show up very early but for many years CBP have not opened until 4:30am, and at least the first 30 mins is spent dealing with the big queue of people who arrived before that. As soon as that queue is dealt with, the queue will be small until ~9:30am when folks start rolling in by the busload on cruise transfers. Even if there is more palaver in the future with additional screening processes, there's simply no point hitting CBP before 5am regardless of how nervous a traveler you are.

[MudderBear]

Thanks all.  I think I might book the Fairmont (I have anxiety about getting to the airport) .  Since I am months out I booked and got a good rate.  I'll check with stashing the bags at the Pan (obviously things can change ) once I get closer to the date (not till next year).  Thanks all for your help!!!