| rev:text
| - Except for its central location to shops and restaurants, this Sofitel hotel lacks high-end quality amenities (the king size bed and pillows were overly worn and flat and what I believed to be a "lounging" chair in my "luxury" room are substandard -- the furniture seemed like they were from Ikea) to be charging high end rates.
The lower rated and less expensive Le Westin has far superior beds and bedding and it has an indoor pool and Jacuzzi -- I should have went back there!
I'll never stay at this Sofitel again! As for location, the area where Sofitel is located is hotel row -- there are tons of other hotels, offering better amenities are lower prices and equally or better location.
My supposedly 400 square feet room (which I paid extra moneys through Expedia) feels cramp and the shower is smaller than what is advertised on this hotel's website! (But the water pressure through the shower head is very robust and great for water massages.) Misleading and deceptive advertising -- the bathroom shown on this Sofitel's website is for the more expensive Jr. Suite! No wonder there is no description or caption on the website photos.
I got lucky and stayed in a room on higher floors (after my second night at a lower floor, very noisy because of constant rain dropping on the rooftops over the second floor), providing me with some nice views of Montreal's burgeoning skyline and glimpses of Mount Royal. But if you're stuck on lower floors or get a room overlooking busy Sherbrooke Street, you'd be looking at an office building directly on the opposite side of the street and an ugly tall, large hotel to the left on the opposite side of the street.
Hotel Omni, where I stayed years ago, has many rooms that provide lovely views of Mount Royal and at much lower prices and the Omni is a short walk away from Sofitel on the same side of Sherbrooke Street West. The staff there is equally nice and professionally helpful. And the bathrooms are much nicer with Victorian decors.
The staff at this Sofitel is exceptionally professional and accommodating. I rate the entire staff an A but the hotel itself deserves nothing more than a C+. The in-room "free" WiFi is slow (and annoying and inconvenient because you have to re-register each day to use the free WiFi -- I lost some work when the connection was severed at about 3 pm one day) but a guest can pay up to C$10 to C$20 plus a day for a faster in room WiFi connection and local phone calls are C$2, resulting in C$86 charges for the five days I stayed there! (I think local calls are free at Le Westin hotel.). It might have been cheaper if I had used my US AT&T hosted iPhone to make local calls to restaurants and shops. And the worst part is that this hotel keeps charging me twice on my credit card for each transaction, compelling me to clear it up with management -- extremely annoying!!!!!
This is a very small hotel compared to Le Westin, Hyatt Regency (which I rank higher than this Sofitel) and Hotel Omni which has classier rooms, nicer furniture and common areas. I'd stay at any of those hotels on my next trip back to beautiful and culturally sophisticated Montreal! The people in Montreal, whose downtown is very much a college town mostly because of the venerable, sprawling McGill University, are diverse and very friendly even if one is not bilingual in French and English.
I've never done this on Yelp but this is my first recommendation to advise folks to stay away from this Sofitel! (I had a lovely and smooth stay at the Sofitel in Nice, France!). Why couldn't it have been the same at this expensive Sofitel!
Montreal is a wonderful diverse place for foodies (but don't go crazy like me otherwise you'd end up spending way too much money at overrated places and funny looking food)! You'd find great food everywhere you turn in downtown Montreal, whether "underground" or above ground eateries and new and long-established restaurants.
But I'd shy away from staying at this overpriced hotel and its overpriced restaurant -- it does a huge disservice to the global Sofitel brand! Expedia did a very poor job of verifying the quality of this hotel; if it had done an inspection, it would have found out how much this hotel is in need of a complete remodeling and how badly all of the furniture and beds need to be replaced.
Renoir Restaurant, this hotel's restaurant, too is way overpriced but the food is good, the ambiance is modern and nice but the views of outside is horrible -- you're looking directly at an ugly, large hotel (it looks like an old tenement building in NYC with iron balconies that resemble fire escapes) on the opposite side of the street; ironically, that hotel might have been better for me to stay for much less money. The grilled octopus was tender and lovely but the fish I ordered was too oily and the accompanying eggplant was slathered with way too much olive oil! The Chablis didn't cut the excess oil on the food.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)