Best Western Richmond Inn Hotel and Convention Center

This is not the poshest hotel I’ve stayed in terms of how it looks, but it has excellent facilities and is all round a great place to stay. They were chosen Best Hotel in Richmond as well as Best Brunch by Richmond News readers for 2003. I’ve stayed here for a couple of weeks in 2003 and 2004 while I attended conventions for the show Stargate SG-​1.
Facilities include a shop with some lovely souvenirs, an Internet café, hair salon and an exercise room with saunas and a washing machine (which I only discovered after I’d lugged my bags several blocks to the local laundrette!). There is a pool and Jacuzzi in the courtyard but they are small. Reception can also fix you up with a safety deposit box (which I used and found quite convenient) and lots of leaflets for tourists. The hotel also has full conference facilities, and is close to local amenities such as a shopping centre and a cinema. They provide a free shuttle to and from the airport. On my first visit I arrived with a party and they were able to arrange to send two mini busses to take us all.
It’s also fairly convenient for Vancouver and the surrounding area if you’d rather not stay downtown. If you want to use public transport to Vancouver it’s about a 5 minute walk to where the bus stops. From there the journey takes about 30 minutes. (That seems short to someone who lives in London!)
My standard king-​bedded room cost me $ 125 CAD not including taxes of around 15%. This was high season, so you’d get it a lot cheaper in the winter. It was huge by UK standards. You could have slept 3 – 5 people in the bed, and the room as a whole had acres of space. There was also a big TV, desk area, separate seating area and a small balcony. Coming from the UK I did find having the coffee maker in the bathroom a little weird! But that was large too. The hotel is clean, and a newspaper is delivered to your door every day.
My wing on both trips (I think it was West) included the Turtle Bar and a nightclub on the ground floor. The first year this was no problem as I had a room several floors up and at the end of the corridor. I was closer to the stairs on the second and did hear them, plus the noisy ice machine! You may also want to avoid a courtyard room. They are more likely to be noisy, and if they are on the ground floor anyone in the courtyard can come stare in your windows! And though their advertising doesn’t say, some of the standard rooms do have a fridge. I was able to request one to store medication. It turned out to be full sized and very useful for food as well! I heard the ‘cots’, which were actually chairs that pulled out into a narrow single bed, were not that comfortable.
Catering: There’s a couple of restaurants which I didn’t use myself. I did however use the Thirsty Turtle bar in the evenings. They do a bar menu with very generous portions. Prices were less than you’d expect in the UK. The hotel also catered for a couple of parties at my convention. They did a nice range of buffet foods: sliced meats, breaded prawns, sausage rolls, fruit slices, meatballs. I did have a problem with the meatballs though. I did ask but the member of staff concerned didn’t know and it turned out they had mushroom gravy I’m mildly allergic to mushroom so that caused me some discomfort. (I’d dock them half a star for that)
Staff are friendly and helpful. I lost a screw from my glasses and had tied the joint together with dental floss. One of the staff noticed (I didn’t ask) and was falling over himself to find a screw in lost property for me. (That’s the half star given back for going beyond the call of duty) They also set up a table complete with tablecloths free of charge for me to advertise a sponsored hike I was doing a few days later. I thought this was great since that was actually the day I moved to a Downtown hotel and was checking out!
Conference facilities include a good range of different rooms. They are all in one wing on the ground floor alongside the car park (so smokers can nip outside quickly). Plenty of toilets and they provide stuff like a bar and catering.
Accessibility: It’s actually spread out over three wings, plus a fourth for the conference facilities, so you do have to walk a fair distance to get from your room to the conference rooms for example. The upside of this is that all the main facilities are on a level ground floor making it very accessible. There’s lifts to all floors and they do have accessible rooms. The corridors are carpeted which apparently does make it a little hard going for chairs.
Clientele when I was there was a mix. There were six hundred Stargate fans of course Since they’ve got great conference facilities I think you could expect a lot of business travellers. Air crew also stay there which is usually considered a good sign! It’s perhaps not a hotel for kids, since the pool is small and they don’t have family rooms as such. Possibly families with older kids would find it comfortable as a stopping off