Fairmont Tremblant = No Improvement Since Last Stay
In the past I have not hesitated to go back to a hotel where I previously had a subpar stay, when I thought circumstances might have changed in light of new information. For Fairmont Tremblant I had a negative experience earlier this year but for a few reasons I gave them another chance. Unfortunately based on my latest stay I must reiterate my thumbs down for this hotel after another stay which did not meet expectations.
We arrived at the hotel around 2pm which is later than the promised noon check-in when booking with Amex Fine Hotels & Resorts. The front desk agent showed me the list of Amex FHR benefits on a printed sheet and right in plain sight on the list was the room upgrade upon availability. All room types were still available for our short 2-night stay based on Fairmont.com so I was very surprised to hear that we were not getting upgraded; to try to smooth things out we were told we had “the best entry level room in the hotel”. Because I still had my experience from April fresh in memory I challenged my room assignment knowing the hotel was far from being full. I asked about the lack of upgrade and after a visit to the back office the agent came back with a very modest upgrade to a view room. Nothing irks me more than hotels trying to go around the rules, even worse doing it twice to me in the same year even after an e-mail exchange with management back a few months ago so it does not look like anything has changed. If I had said nothing I was not getting an upgrade at all (again) and even with asking I got nothing more than a view. Ugh. My upgrade at this property pales in comparison with the proactive upgrades we regularly get at Westin or Homewood Suites in Mont Tremblant - sometimes even 2-bedroom suites.
Anyway, I often accept subpar elite treatment in towns without competition such as Charlevoix, Lake Louise, or Montebello, if I really like the hotel, but I am less likely to do so in Mont Tremblant and if I am being jerked around or being deceived; unfortunately a property like that is not the best fit for me.
After check-in I realized that I did not receive my Accor Platinum welcome drink vouchers and I went back to reception to get them. Wine is fairly expensive at this hotel with many wines being over 20 CAD for a glass, but thankfully with the vouchers you can have an 8oz glass of wine not just the 5oz version, and they also allow pretty much anything else from the menu with these vouchers.
Even though ski season has started, the Gold lounge is still not open. Our view room was on the 7th floor which is the gold floor during the winter. Yes the view was nice, but except for first timers in Tremblant I am not sure it’s worth paying extra for the view without having access to the gold lounge. I thought back in April that the entry level room was bland, but the Gold room might actually be worse. It felt more outdated and I was not a big fan of the structure around the bed. Both my room from April and my room from this stay were about the same size and both equally subpar with no special features to give a wow feeling. The shower is in the bathtub in the gold room (like in the standard room) and the tub was draining very slowly so the tub would fill up during the shower which would need to be fixed by maintenance staff. The temperature controls betray an older hotel which has not been renovated recently and the room felt very hot. We opened the window but the wind kept closing it back, so we ended up sticking a small towel in the window frame to block it from closing and to keep the room cool during the night.
The Platinum welcome amenity was “sucre à la crème” and a small bottle of cider, quite small when the hotel knows there are two guests in the room. Obviously as they did not seem to intend to upgrade us because the amenity was ready for us in the standard room, and they had someone bring it to our new room after check-in.
Service at this hotel is maddening. Not only the lack of upgrade is not something I appreciate very much, not receiving our drinks vouchers proactively, but in addition there are issues with the Life Experiences certificate redemptions which is entirely the hotel’s own doing. It was a mess during my check out a few months ago so this time I asked the day before check out to process my certs right away and not at the time of check out. This has been no problem at all in other Fairmonts where we stayed in the last few weeks (Charlevoix, Québec City, Ottawa, and Montebello). Unfortunately this property is the worst of this group in terms of service, they flat out refused to process my certs one day before check out, claiming risk of “fraud” (?) and told me to bring the certs the morning of departure despite acknowledging that these redemptions take time and can be tricky. They know it’s problematic to handle on short notice, yet unlike other Fairmonts they refuse to handle these vouchers ahead of time; realizing the existence of a problem and not taking measures to fix it is not exactly stellar service. The next morning I brought the certs before breakfast, and when I returned one hour later they said they were unable to get it done because they had not been paid by Amex FHR yet for my room. After arguing they said they would try again, and in their defense when I went back to reception for the third time before check-out they handled it to my satisfaction so the end result was good, but it was painful to get there.
Enough with the negatives, on a more positive note about service, housekeeping was flawless taking care of the room exactly at the time requested and being generous with amenities refills.
For this stay we had the breakfast buffet and I can say it was good quality except for smoked salmon which looked bad and did not taste very good. It was nice to get baked ham with maple syrup, there was good quality and variety of fruits including different kinds of berries. Overall the breakfast was on par with other Fairmont hotels in the region such as Montebello and Charlevoix but perhaps a notch below Fairmont Ottawa which is more luxurious. My overall takeaway about breakfast is that it is clearly better than at Westin Tremblant (and worlds better than Homewood Suites) but you need to pay for it at Fairmont via a special rate or Amex FHR. Not only the food is better at Fairmont, but also the restaurant is far more attractive than in Westin.
Overall I was not particularly happy with this stay so I think I am going to put this property back in the dog house for a while. The strong point of this property might be the Gold lounge but it’s open for such a short time of the year that more often than not we cannot even book a gold room, not even early in the ski season in late November or early December. Upgrades are not only stingy but also appear to circumvent the rules which is a black mark for me. It is not smooth to get an upgrade, drinks vouchers, Life Experiences vouchers credited, etc. I could forgive one bad experience but it’s been more than two so it is not just an isolated case.
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