- [Chris] A video review
of the Fairmont Vancouver Airport Hotel
in Vancouver, Canada.
I'm Chris, this is the traveling princess,
and in this video,
we're going to tell you everything you need to know
if you're considering staying at this hotel,
including the areas around the hotel,
the common parts of the hotel
and the inside of one of the rooms.
This room, a two double bedroom overlooking the runway
here at Vancouver Airport.
Now just a little bit about this hotel.
It is located in Vancouver Airport,
right above the U.S. departure terminal, super convenient.
They have their own little 15 minute parking area
where you can park your car while you check-in,
bring your stuff to your room.
So if you're a returning your rental car,
'cause you have an early flight,
you can totally bring your stuff up to your room
and then do that.
Right now the camera
we're shooting in the room
from the bathroom into the room,
there's kind of these things (doors shut) that'll close off
the bathroom from the room
that the traveling princess is playing with.
So I'll show you more about the room in just a moment.
But first let me show you exactly
where in the airport this hotel is located.
The Fairmont Vancouver Airport
is located right in the departures terminal
of Vancouver Airport for flights bound to the USA.
It has its own entrance from the outside
where you can park for 15 minutes if you're checking in.
Then from the airport it has
its own escalator, elevator and staircase.
Departures is level three.
The bridge to the Fairmont is level four.
So once you come up the escalator
or the elevator, or the staircase,
then you'll go over this bridge.
You can see the check-in counters
for Air Canada and United are just down below.
There's kind of this neat long chandelier thing.
Just to the left you can see the fitness club
that we'll take a look at a little later.
Then as you come in the door,
the check-in counters are right over here to the left.
And there's a lounge right here in the back
that right now has live music in it.
This evening they said there was live music in the lounge
until 10 or 11 at night.
It kind of reminds me of something
out of "Lost in Translation",
this, you know, airport hotel that has live music.
They also have in hotel COVID-19 testing.
This is the seating area in the lobby
if you're waiting for some people.
There are some meeting rooms in the back
and then these are the elevators up to the room.
And then when you get out of the elevator
to the guest room floors,
the guest room floors are all quite cheery,
brightly lit hallways, not too tall ceilings,
but a pretty cheery hallway to get to your room.
Now that we've seen everything around the hotel,
let's check out the inside of one of the rooms.
This is 703, a two queen bedroom on the seventh floor.
Now as you come into the room,
it just looks and feels nice right away.
There are two beds right here.
There are some nightlights on the wall.
There's a little chair over here on the side
with a table and a lamp.
I will point out the travelling princess
knocked this over once already,
but it's a nice kind of marble table.
We've got these windows closed,
but I'm going to show you what that looks like
outside the window right now at night.
And a nice view of the runway.
And then if we look at it in the morning, the next day,
Vancouver Airport right now doesn't have a lot of flights
going out of it at night because we're shooting this
in November 2021 pandemic time.
Okay so from this corner seat,
let me show you around the rest of the room right here.
There is a small desk with an interesting lamp
just right on the desk.
I wish there was some overhead light in this room.
The room itself is actually kind of on the dark side.
One chair here, no wheels on it,
so you just kind of push it around.
Some power ports over here.
Let's come and take a look at what we've got
inside this thing.
And I know it's dark to see in here,
but there is a mini fridge right here.
And then there is a Keurig coffee machine.
There's a tea pot.
There are wine glasses.
There is a personal care kit.
We'll check out what's in there later.
And there's all sorts of teas.
In particular, the teas here, Lot 35 Teas,
these are the same teas
you'll find at the famous Fairmont Empress in Victoria,
really fancy teas.
And then one here that looked like it used to be home
to a mini bar, but it isn't any more.
The room is big.
It has lots of space to store stuff.
They helped us up with our luggage earlier.
So that was really nice.
So just off the main part of the room is the closet,
it's illuminated, which is nice.
There's an ironing board, an iron,
nothing else like umbrellas or things like that
'cause I guess they don't really expect you
to be walking from here.
Now, back at the front entrance to the room,
there's lots of space where you can put stuff.
We had a lot of stuff, stroller, car seat,
so lots of extra room.
This is a connecting room,
so you can get these to connect to another room.
So I said I'd show you this again later,
this is the bathroom that adjoins into the rest of the room.
So you can open and close these things
in case you don't want people to see in the bathroom.
There's a large soaking tub.
I really like this.
There's a big counter for the sink right here.
You can put lots of stuff on that too.
There's a big walk-in shower right here
that has an adjustable head.
I really like this, particularly for washing little ones.
That's nice to have a special shower area.
And finally, there's a separate room
for the toilet here as well.
Overall, just a really nice big bathroom.
I wish almost all hotel bathrooms looked like this.
We recently stayed at the Fairmont Empress,
where we had those teas that you saw earlier,
and I wish their bathrooms were this big.
Now that we've seen everything around the hotel
and the inside of the rooms,
it is time for our final rating and conclusion.
And you might be thinking to yourself,
Chris, you don't look like you're in the hotel anymore,
where are you?
Well we are back at home.
We stayed there because we had
a really early morning flight out of Vancouver to come home
and so no time to do this in the hotel room in the morning.
But it's the next day and so it's all fresh right here.
So on a scale of one to five Topher's,
the Fairmont Vancouver Airport Hotel
gets four and a half Topher's.
It is the best airport hotel we have stayed in anywhere.
And let me tell you why.
Pros, the location is great.
It's not like some airport hotel
that you have to go down a super long hallway
to get to the airport or take a shuttle.
It is literally right above the U.S. departures terminal,
you just take the escalator down from the lobby
and you are there.
We were flying into Air Canada,
which was literally right there,
like that escalator
that you saw me going up at the beginning,
it was maybe 50 feet from that
to the Air Canada check-in,
so that was super amazing.
The staff was super great.
They helped us with all of our luggage on a cart,
and hotels do that,
but they were just extra friendly about it.
Really wanted to help us.
I think I refused their cart about three times.
They were like, "we really want to help you,
we really want to help you,
'cause you look like you have a lot of stuff
and a baby and a stroller,"
and it was totally the right answer.
The room was also super quiet.
We didn't hear any airplane noise.
It is perfectly soundproof.
The beds were comfortable.
The air conditioning worked well.
Our room was nice and cold
and the bathroom was nice with good water pressure,
easy to take a shower,
easy to bathe our traveling princess.
And so overall, just a really great hotel.
Now you might be asking what's the con?
The price.
I mean, it's expensive.
You know, we could have stayed at a Marriott
that was a 10 minute drive away for like USD$120.
This hotel while we were staying there in November
of 2021 was USD$220 per night.
So it was expensive, on the pricey side.
So that's the con.
You know, what would it take
to get five Topher's as an airport hotel?
Be cheaper.
I mean, I liked everything about it, frankly,
so I would definitely stay there again
if I had an early morning flight
in or out of Vancouver Airport.
Okay, open.
(doors open)
Thanks for watching the video we hope you enjoyed it.
If you want to see more of our videos,
you'll find the links on the screen,
including our whole Vancouver travel guide series,
so as usual we won't say goodbye
because we'll see you in one of those videos.
- [Traveling Princess] Bye bye.