The Franklin Hotel

Horrible experience. The code that we received to get in was wrong. Bookings.com was not helpful and held us on the phone for a long time. They told us that we would get rebooked somewhere else. Over 2 hours later still no answer from anyone. We lost our money and sleep.

My sister and I had room #301 for a week: a large space with a king bed (very comfortable mattress), a three foot long desk in between two tall narrow shelving units (noisy mini-fridge was on one of the shelves), and a hard-back wooden desk chair - we got a kettle with two mugs and some cardboard cups, and tea bags. The other half of the room was supposed to have (according to the room photo on the website) two modern style armchairs, with a side table between them, a nice tall lamp in the corner, and a luggage rack - instead there were two bland, uninviting old couches, one super long and the other was a loveseat. There were three lovely tall windows in the room, but unfortunately they were "filmy" and only one of them opened slightly. The remote control to the modern looking thermostat was nowhere to be seen - the temps ranged from 21C to 22C, so we were lucky. Tara was our go-to contact, and she was very responsive when we needed something (garbage pick-up, clean towels, etc). We had asked for a lamp for the desk (the only lamps in the large room were the sconces on either side of the bed!), and a second hard-back chair for the desk. We were given the tall lamp pictured on the website photo (which worked out well for us) and an old wooden chair that had seemed better days (the gentleman bringing us the chair was quite appologetic about it). The bathroom was large, with two sinks and a walk-in shower. We concluded, after trying many variations of the controls, that the rain barrel shower head did not work, but the second shower head worked very well thank goodness. The shower tile floor can be slippery. We were warned about the lack of an elevator, and the stairs were fine. The hotel's location, on Water St, is right in the middle of the downtown area, with all the restaurants and gift shops and places to see nearby! Looking back on our experience, we made it all work for us. We left behind the two stemmed wine glasses we had bought at the local Dollarama, definitely enhancing our week-long stay!

We found the Franklin very last minute after a nightmare with the Airbnb apartment we’d booked elsewhere. Accommodation options in June are limited and so we weren’t holding our breath and definitely landed on our feet. The Franklin is excellently located, the room was spacious, comfortable and spotlessly clean, shower excellent and bed huge. Staff we met couldn’t have been more friendly or helpful. Overall excellent value and would stay again.