With a location just steps from Vancouver Harbour, the city’s famous Seawall and its historical Gastown neighbourhood, Fairmont Waterfront puts guests at the very heart of one of Canada’s finest cities. But beyond that, this seaside hotel with green ambition is among the most welcoming places to stay in town.
They say that a smile goes a long way, and we couldn’t agree more. Checking into Fairmont Waterfront, we found smiles to be quite literally everywhere we looked: on the faces of fellow guests, as they arrived in the lobby for drinks and live music at the hotel’s ARC Bar, but also on the faces of the team. And they weren’t of the practised kind you might expect in a hospitality business. Instead, those smiles were warm and sincere, telling us that the staff genuinely enjoyed doing their work (and no one more so, perhaps, than to the gentleman checking us in, who seemed positively giddy with excitement to welcome us – if only that were the case everywhere we go).
Opened in 1991, Fairmont Waterfront has neither a charming, historical nor a super-contemporary edge, and we’d lie if we said that over 30 years into operations, the hotel’s architecture or interior spaces were Vancouver’s most luxurious or inspired. There are corners that look a little dated, and, given its 489 accommodations spread across 23 floors, we thought another elevator would do wonders in helping guests get to their rooms faster. But soft refurbishments, including in the lobby, where a bulbous sofa and armchairs alongside organically shaped marble tables provide an invitingly modern accent, demonstrate the Canadian brand’s commitment to keep the property looking loved and looked after.
The same could be said for our 44 sqm (470 sqft) Signature Harbour View King Corner room on the top floor, which, despite not being the most state-of-the-art you’ll find locally, featured thoughtful touches and added-value perks like full-size Le Labo amenities, mouthwash by natural toiletries brand OLAS, and a Nespresso machine for that first cup of coffee in the mornings – not to mention a generous welcome amenity. We appreciated having plenty of storage room, a decent work area and a chaise longue, too, with the latter set up by the corner windows that were by far our room’s most seductive feature, offering 180-degree views of the North Shore Mountains, Vancouver Harbour, and even the tip of Stanley Park… that’s a lot of natural beauty for one panorama.
Guests staying in one of the hotel’s Fairmont Gold category accommodations further benefit from a private check-in desk and a dedicated concierge alongside access to the Gold Lounge, where daily-changing canapés await in addition to other perks. The ‘hotel-within-a-hotel’ experience also unlocks breakfast in the property’s Gold Lounge, although we were perfectly content with the ARC Restaurant on the ground floor, where we sat between orchids, fire places and floor-to-ceiling windows, having as much of the divine avocado coconut yoghurt on offer as was humanly possible: whatever your breakfast preferences, make sure you don’t miss out on this rich yet fluffy, almost ice-cream-like goodness that we found totally divine.
| Perfect for | Fly into | Right on time |
| The Culturalist | YVR | GMT -7 |
| While you’re Out There |
| Many of Vancouver’s top attractions, including the Vancouver Lookout and the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, are within easy walking distance from the hotel. But nothing is closer than the surprisingly fun Flyover, a fully immersive 20-metre spherical cinema experience that had us suspended in the air and ‘flying’ over Canada’s most breathtaking landscapes (and God knows there are many). For more inspiration on how to spend your time in town, the Destination Vancouver website has got you covered. |
ARC is also where we gravitated in the evenings for dinner. The restaurant prides itself on Pacific Northwest cuisine, as interpreted by Executive Chef Harris Sakalis at the time of writing, and we found flavours here to be very tasty, indeed (try the all-organic Hannah Brooks Farms salad, with roasted beets, cashew butter, pickled Anjou pears and verjus). Being herbivores, we were a little surprised by the ‘plant-based’ menu, for featuring not only vegan dishes but mostly ones that were ‘only’ vegetarian, as though the two terms and cuisines were interchangeable. But a range of imaginative plant-based options and staff at the ARC Bar making sure to point out animal-based ingredients in cocktails we eyed, convinced us that on the whole, Fairmont Waterfront seeks to honour dietary choices and individual needs.
Furthermore, it embraces sustainability, with several of the hyper-local ingredients used at ARC being grown in the rooftop garden, Vancouver’s first, which the hotel established in the 1990s, placing it well ahead of the curve in comparison to local competitors. There’s also the property’s role as a founding signatory of the OceanWise Plastic Wise Pledge, a commitment to scale down on single-use plastic, and its ranking as a 5 Green Key Hotel by Green Key Global, an industry-wide body certifying environmentally sound places to stay. Perhaps in line with this, another effort Fairmont Waterfront makes in operating responsibly is its actively welcoming stance towards the LGBTQ+ community – made visible through a Progress Pride flag out front, and a dedicated campaign featuring a same-sex couple that premiered in 2025.
A word of advice to guests who can’t do without a wellness experience or two, the hotel isn’t home to a standalone spa facility, so you’ll be looking for massages and facials in vain. There is, however, a 24-hour fitness centre and whirlpool, a heated rooftop pool, and a number of fun activities to join, from twice-weekly morning runs along the Seawall, polar plunges in winter and summertime paddle-boarding excursions (both paired with brunch to warm up afterwards!), on top of complimentary bike rental for members of the Accor Live Limitless (ALL) loyalty scheme. And did we mention the bookable candlelit sound bath experiences? Pure bliss.
Photography courtesy of Fairmont Hotels and Resorts
