Irwins Mountain Inn

We stayed two nights here on the outer edge of Banff (it's not huge) as park of a coach tour. Although dated, the room was clean and the bed cosy with everything we needed. Our room was ground floor, facing a car park so not glamorous, but still quiet and spacious. An in-room safe would have been helpful. I suspect modernising it , although parts of it were in dire need, would take away the charm. We even made use of the biglovely hot tub and the attached restaurant, which was good. Everyone was helpful and friendly and there were plenty of places to eat within walking distance. The bus stop to get into the centre is right outside and they are very frequent. All around you outside the mountains soar up. Banff is gorgeous.

This hotel is very dated - it needs tearing down and replacing with something that vaguely resembles a modern hotel. We booked thru a TA as part of a package so have no knowledge of the daily rate but what ever it was, it was far too much. The first impression is the darkness of the reception area and the overwhelming smell of chlorine coming from the ‘pool’. Then there’s the staff who seem to be there under duress and have little to no interest in hospitality. Once checked in, there’s the long dark ‘brown’ corridors to navigate – It was so depressing. The room we were allocated (248) was just poorly designed. It had two queen size beds so presume up to four can share a room but there was almost zero closet, drawer or hanging space. The extractor fan in the bathroom sounded like a 747 was about to taxi thru the room and the refrigerator compressor was so noisy that at times we couldn’t hear ourselves think. The light switches made no sense and seemed to be placed in the strangest of places and don’t expect any built-in USB sockets – That’s far too 21st century. We stayed three nights and on two of those, our ‘mag strip’ key cards stopped working so that meant a trip down to reception to get them replaced only to be told we must be handling them incorrectly (seeing other reviews on here suggests it’s a common issue!). We stayed in three different hotels on this trip and this was by far the worst. I would urge people to pay a little extra and go somewhere else.

Stayed one night at a great rate! Room was clean and quiet.