HAMPTON INN - SUITES BY HILTON

The rooms are large and clean which is good. The reception desk is staffed 24hr as I arrive at 2am in the morning (thank you westjet for the 6 hr delay!). Its got a buffet breakfast with an average selection, nothing special. The hotel is not close to areas like waterfront or the west end but it is across the street from BC Place (CFL games) and a 10min walk to Rogers Arena (canucks games and concerts). If you stay in rooms facing east then you will see BC place.

Hotel is a 16-floor high rise located next to BC Place with studio and 1 bed units. The fitness center and sauna is on the top floor while breakfast (6-9 weekdays, 7-10 weekends) is on the 3rd floor. As others have said, the dining area is a bit small during peak periods of breakfast. Parking is ~40 CAD per night underground and there is a separate restaurant on the 1st floor (District Bar). Location is really good and staff in person are reasonably friendly. The only Diamond benefit was 2 waters in room (but ANY other water consumed would be extra $$) - but it might be that all guests get this. On the flip side, management doesn't respond to requests (surprisingly given how active they are to respond here) and no exceptions are made for anything, it seems (details following). As a Diamond, they declined any late checkout beyond 11am (even asking just for noon) and also said they didn't have rooms for early check-in. On check-in, I asked if I could pay into a 1-bedroom (not even free but paying since a standard room reward was only for the studio) ... the front desk person saw a room and said "let me come back" and when he returned to ask a manager, they said 'no'. The worst was when I booked 4 months before, I didn't realize all rooms in the summer around WC were non-refundable (my fault but as a long-time Diamond, outside of Vegas I had never seen a non-refundable points reservation) but within 12 hours, I noticed in the email receipt and also that I might need to slide the trip one day later so I called and the front desk said 'will ask management' (I understand that hotels don't want cancellations the week before, but booking 4 months early and asking to just move one day forward within a day of reserving doesn't change their total room capacity nor create a last-minute opening). I wasn't as upset about them saying no since they are entitled to but I had to call again and again and each time it was "I sent it to management" & "waiting to hear back" & "still waiting" over several days ... finally, after about 7 calls and 4 days, the front desk person said "uh, they won't let you do it" --- a simple courtesy reply of "sorry, no exceptions" right away would have been preferrable to wasting all this time and getting no leeway (or simply having someone from management have the 2 min to call me back when they had my information from the outset). The additional facts that they wouldn't let me pay for an upgrade or provide any Diamond benefits on arrival (described earlier) were not a surprise in light of this but just the reason I found this to be a very disappointing hotel experience. One other small annoyance was that with 2 elevators, you have to budget 5-10 min to get out or to breakfast during the busy AM hours and many others have written this already. In short, lack of communication and flexibility for a long-time Diamond was the reason for a bad experience. Breakfast was fine but just very busy. With 80+ reviews here on TripAdvisor, I can't recall a worse experience to share.

DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT book a pay-in-advance room at this hotel. Their rates drop, and they will not provide a price adjustment. I never book pre-pay, but did so by accident three weeks ago. Now, the room rates have dropped over 30 percent, and they will not adjust the room price. I even tried to get credit toward a second room, but they would not do that.