Hotel in Vancouver near airport?

[takemeaway2008]

Coming in late from the East Coast, probably won't be collecting luggage until 10:30 PM. We have two nights before the cruise. I'm wondering if it would be best, at that late hour, to get a hotel by the airport. Will we be able to get around on public transportation? Thinking of doing the hop on hop off bus. 

 

How would we get to the port? Uber? Taxi? 

 

Thanks

[Heidi13]

When departing YVR we usually stay at the Coast Vancouver, which is just across the river from the airport. We find the rates reasonable. They have a shuttle to the airport, but not sure if they do pick ups. Lots of taxis available at the airport and the rates are fixed, based on destination.

 

To get downtown, you could have the hotel shuttle take you back to the airport, where you can catch Skytrain, which will take you downtown. Vancouver also has lots of buses in addition to Skytrain.

[martincath]

I'd stay downtown - that way your full day and the morning of embarkation will avoid the delays coming in from the airport. Even if you choose an airport hotel that's within 10mins walk of SkyTrain you're looking at 40mins each way, longer if SkyTrain is on the evening schedule - and a hotel with a shuttle adds potentially an extra 30+ minutes (they all have just one vehicle to the best of my knowledge, so if it just left you have to wait until it gets back from it's airport run). Considering you need to make that trip at least three times, that's at best two hours and easily three or more wasted of your very limited time.

 

Whereas heading downtown only once on arrival means a really quick drive if you take a cab (CAD$31 to almost all downtown hotels, including all the cheaper ones), hit the sack as soon as you arrive, and when you wake up far too early next morning thanks to your bodies still being on East Coast time you can walk right outside and start sightseeing (parks are your best bet early, most places with admission gates don't open until 9am in Vancouver) without having to fight your way into the morning inbound commuter SkyTrain crowd.

 

Cabs from airport hotels do not get fixed pricing - so it's either metered all the way, at least $40 from most airport hotels, or else the wait for a shuttle back to YVR then getting a fixed rate cab there and wasting more time to save a few bucks. Ditto if you are not transit people - airport hotel + cab each way to sightsee = may as well have spent the cab fares on a downtown hotel! Plus, the single best value hotel in the region is the YWCA Hotel downtown - they have fixed seasonal rates, so no jacking them up just because a cruise ship is in next morning... and they consistently rank in the best 20 or so hotels in the city on TripAdvisor and the likes. Unless you plan to spend a lot of time in your hotel room and want a fancy one, it's an excellent place - clean and safe - but also extremely popular, so go check your dates have not sold out already... NB: they're renovating this year, ETA is June to be finished, so depending when you are coming you may find fewer rooms than normal but on the up side, freshly renoed ones!

[takemeaway2008]

5 hours ago, Heidi13 said:

When departing YVR we usually stay at the Coast Vancouver, which is just across the river from the airport. We find the rates reasonable. They have a shuttle to the airport, but not sure if they do pick ups. Lots of taxis available at the airport and the rates are fixed, based on destination.

 

To get downtown, you could have the hotel shuttle take you back to the airport, where you can catch Skytrain, which will take you downtown. Vancouver also has lots of buses in addition to Skytrain.

 

Thanks for your advice. Coast is one of the hotels I'm looking at. 

 

 

 

[takemeaway2008]

2 hours ago, martincath said:

I'd stay downtown - that way your full day and the morning of embarkation will avoid the delays coming in from the airport. Even if you choose an airport hotel that's within 10mins walk of SkyTrain you're looking at 40mins each way, longer if SkyTrain is on the evening schedule - and a hotel with a shuttle adds potentially an extra 30+ minutes (they all have just one vehicle to the best of my knowledge, so if it just left you have to wait until it gets back from it's airport run). Considering you need to make that trip at least three times, that's at best two hours and easily three or more wasted of your very limited time.

 

 

Thank you for your advice. My travel agent pretty much said the same thing. 

 

Now looking for hotels closer to down town. We'll suck it up and take a taxi but then we shouldn't have to worry about traveling far after that. 

 

 

Edited January 16, 2019 by takemeaway2008

[Northern Aurora]

We have used the Hilton Vancouver Airport twice and were very satisfied both times.  Their shuttle picks up essentially outside of baggage claim (you do need to cross a street).  In our situation both times we were flying out of Vancouver early in the morning the day after disembarking in Vancouver, so we wanted to spend that night post cruise near the airport.

 

But when we stay downtown pre-cruise we love the Pan Pacific, and highly recommend it.

[Tourist1292]

We will also arrive Vancouver 2 nights before our cruise. We just booked an AirBNB near the Chinatown. It is much cheaper than hotel for us with a group of 6, at least in mid May. Everything is in walking distance from there. A lot of things we will even shop there before the cruise to avoid checking in luggage on the plane. Costco is there too.

[martincath]

15 hours ago, Tourist1292 said:

We just booked an AirBNB near the Chinatown.

I can certainly understand you being hesitant to share an exact address publicly, but unless this is a 'one room inside an apartment that the owner is still living in with us' AirBnB there's a far-from-negligible chance that you have booked an illegal short-term rental. If you want to PM me the listing, I can check some local sources to try and confirm it's legit for you.

 

The rest of this is background on the rules/enforcement thereof in case you want to do your own research rather than forwarding the listing number - you can skip it unless you're interested!

 

We finally got legislation in place last year legalizing short term rentals, and the criteria are very restrictive on apartments rather than houses. Very few houses near Chinatown, at least for my definition of 'near' that is, and certainly there are virtually no houses inside Chinatown - and if you don't own a house the legal ways to rent your place are very hard to comply with. Depending on whose reports you believe anywhere from a small % to a majority of the previous illegal multiple renters are still doing that, with either the same license number used illegally on multiple properties or a totally spurious license number in a similar format to the official one. Realistically the only way you can legally rent your whole condo is while you are on vacation yourself, if it's the only home you own and you do so for only a very limited time each year; any whole-condo listing that's available year-round cannot possibly be legal.

 

We do now have staff being hired (thanks to the licensing fee) to investigate AirBnB listings, but there are so many that priority is being given to those reported by neighbours in the same building - and even when reported, some of the listings make enough money that they just pay the fine and keep renting illegally (which is why we're now allowing larger fines to be levied, but it takes time for paperwork to catch up to reality). Even houses with a separate 'in law suite' have issues complying - if the basement or attic apartment has it's own main door and number it's counted as a second property making it illegal to rent short-term.

 

But maybe if you couldn't care less about the legality of the rental/social impact on local housing availability side of things - what about your personal safety, or what if the listing disappears leaving you with no accommodation? If someone is knowingly breaking extremely-well-publicized local rules on this, can you trust them to have e.g. complied with local fire codes on alarm and sprinkler testing and functionality of fire exits? Getting the fire brigade round to test involves a paper-trail, so illegal rentals tend to have nothing in place confirming they are safe for tenants. Plus, with staff beavering away on getting rid of the illegal listings, AirBnB on-board with requiring a business licence number to be added to all listings or pulling them (unfortunately the specific agreement with the city on what AirBnB must do has a few loop holes), and condo boards almost all having by-laws in place forbidding such rentals by the time you come to visit there's a lot of potential for an illegal listing to be discovered and pulled - and AirBnBs fine print means you get zero compensation, nor do they have to find any alternative accommodation for you!

 

TL;DR - there's a lot of reasons AirBnB is much cheaper than licensed hotels, B&Bs etc. and some of those reasons could have a negative impact on you.

[Langoustine]

The operative word may be near Chinatown; perhaps on Hastings in Downtown Eastside? Someone (perhaps you) very kindly steered us away from that area 10 years ago when I had booked what looked like a nice hotel in what turned out to be a very scary neighborhood.

[ErLee]

We're in the exact same situation as you OP, and we decided to take Martincath's advice and have booked at the YWCA for this June. Even booking one of their most expensive rooms so that we can have a private bath, we are still saving almost $200 US over our other options, and plan to use that to have a very nice dinner in Vancouver. We're also flying in very late from Georgia, and it just didn't make sense to spend the time traveling back and forth to an airport hotel when we only have a day and a half to visit this lovely city before leaving for a two week trip to Alaska, especially when there is such a highly rated and affordable option downtown. Apparently the YWCA in Vancouver is nothing like what we think of in the US when we hear YWCA!  Enjoy your trip, whatever your decision!