I went back and forth several times on where to stay in Montreal. I checked the Amex Travel site to see if there were any good Fine Hotels and Resorts options as I had a couple of $200 credits to use from American Express Platinum cards. Nothing really jumped out as a good value. I ended up booking the Vogue Hotel, a Hilton Curio property for 60,000 Hilton points per night, but as I needed two rooms, it was pricy at 240,000 Hilton points (about a $1200 value).

I decided to cancel the Hilton booking when I found out the hotel was still under construction and the breakfast restaurant wasn’t even open. I next booked the Marriott Chateau Champlain for 35,000 Marriott points per night, but then I found out that this hotel was also under renovation and that the lounge was not rated very highly by Marriott elite members on Flyertalk.

I finally settled on Le Centre Sheraton for 37,500 points plus CAD$200 per room on a points and cash rate for the two nights. That’s about 18,750 points and US$100 per night per room. The points rate was 75,000 points so for the two rooms, I was basically “buying” 37,500 points for US$200, about .5cpp. Considering Marriott points are worth somewhere between .7 and 1cpp in my experience, it was a better deal than booking with just points, plus I would earn some points through my Marriott credit card on the cash portion.

I chatted with an agent at the hotel the day before we traveled and she upgraded my wife and I to a suite and my daughter to a club level room. I had tried to use Marriott Suite Night Awards (SNA), but she could not see them in my account. She upgraded us anyway, so I canceled the SNA request so they wouldn’t get used by mistake.

When we arrived at the hotel around 6:30pm, our suite wasn’t ready yet. That seemed kind of ridiculous at that hour, but we were more concerned with getting into our room and cleaning up after a long day of college move-in, airports and flying, so we took the downgrade to a king club room that was ready and checked in. Our daughter and her friend were in a 2 queen room down the hall, also with club access (which is not guaranteed on a second room, but I asked nicely).

Our room was nicely appointed and had a great view of Mont Royal behind downtown. I could also see the Olympic stadium if I craned my neck a bit.

The club lounge was huge, but very crowded when we attended in the evening and at breakfast. There were also a few kids running around screaming when we went to get dessert one evening. Here are some pictures of the lounge. I didn’t get great pictures of the food due to the crowds.

At dinner time, there was hot food, a salad bar, cold cuts and some great desserts. There was a bartender with a full bar as well. Breakfast had a full hot buffet, smoked salmon, pastries and self-serve espresso and specialty coffee machines.

The hotel was a in a good location to walk to Old Montreal and also to walk up Mont Royal. We were also quickly able to get Ubers when we went to Little Burgundy. Despite the construction on the street nearby, accessing the hotel was fairly easy.

Parking at the hotel was a reasonable CAD$25 per night. We left the car there when my daughter arrived on Friday night and didn’t retrieve it until we headed to Quebec City Sunday morning. Although it’s a busy convention hotel and the club can get crowded, I recommend this hotel for the good location, reasonable prices over a holiday weekend and good lounge food relative to most North American Marriott properties.

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