Sandman Calgary City Centre

We stayed here for two nights. Staff were soooo helpful with early check in and holding our bags after check out before we caught our plane home. Rooms were clean (we had a corner room). There were multiple seating options in the room. The lobby was ALWAYS busy. I had a look at the gym and pool but didn’t take photos. The gym needed more fans. The pool and hot tub looked warm and inviting but I didn’t use it. The LRT free transit zone is just outside the hotel and you can access the +15 Skywalk from the hotel so its location was good for accessing most of downtown Calgary (if you don’t mind walking a bit).

Nice hotel but not in a very nice area. Room was big with a large bed and 2 pillows with cases on stating soft and firm, nice touch. Iron and board, tea and coffee kit, fridge, microwave, safe. Small bathroom with a rain shower head only and no shower caps! Luckily I had one from another hotel. You could hear the trams passing & people outside, even though we were on the 11th floor. The restaurant within the hotel was very nice, we had a good dinner and drinks and found the staff very friendly. The area has a lot of homeless people and was the dirtiest place in Canada we had seen on our trip. It’s also the only area we felt uncomfortable in especially when walking past the small park area by the hotel on the Saturday afternoon to hear and see people who were acting as though under the influence of some form of substance. It took about 10 minutes to walk to where the main part of the city. From the hotel is the +15 Skywalk which we had planned to use on our last day prior to going to the airport as the weather was horrendous. Unfortunately when checking out and leaving our cases at the hotel we were informed it’s not open on a Sunday.

We stayed here for our first night in Canada at the beginning of a tour. The hotel itself was tidy and the room clean with everything you needed except an in-room safe. The beds were comfy and we turned the a/c off at night. Moxies restaurant was attached for convenience but we found it uninspiring. The hotel is at the furthest extent of downtown, with the main tram station right outside. Although this was convenient, and not particularly noisy, both the station and the small park beyond seemed to attract vagrants and there were a lot of security guards in the area moving them on. They seemed mainly harmless, but it made for a seedy location, although walking just two blocks in the other direction brought us to a river park with a peace bridge, which was lovely. The hotel also connects directly to the +15 skywalk which joins almost every building in Calgary so workers do need to suffer the icy sidewalks in the winter, something to explore on its own. For us, the best parts of Calgary were the Stampede Grounds and the olympic park, both out of town.