(Pictured: The sitting area of  a deluxe room at the Fairmont Palliser in Calgary.)

By Carl Dombek

Calgary is a quick flight from our home in Seattle, and both Banff and Lake Louise are within easy driving distance of Calgary, so  with flights booked and rental car reserved, we started looking at hotels.

Home of the famed Calgary Stampede, the city has plenty of accommodations. Many of them are downtown, near the city’s landmark Calgary Tower and the major pedestrian mall, Stephen Avenue. The mall contains a high concentration of registered historic buildings. In fact, the street itself was declared a Canadian historic site in 2002. Today, it boasts a range of restaurants, bars and pubs, shops and stores from Dollarama to The Bay. It also abuts the Core Shopping Centre, which was formerly Calgary Eaton Centre/TD Square.

Wanting an up-market hotel close to restaurants and bars that would offer alternatives to whatever our hotel offered, we chose the Fairmont Palliser. We could not have been happier.
As with all the Fairmonts at which we’ve stayed over the years, staff represented the epitome of hospitality: Polished, professional and gracious. For example, after our first interaction, the hotel valet/doorman remembered – and used – our name every time we left or returned. Every. Time. Talk about making someone feel special!

While we’d booked a Deluxe room, we were upgraded to a larger Signature room upon check-in. The room on the hotel’s ninth floor was very spacious, measuring about 320 square feet. Ten-foot ceilings made it feel even more grand. The room had a king bed with a bench seat at the end, a sofa with coffee table, an easy chair with an ottoman, and a desk equipped with delightful old-school touches like stationery and mailing envelopes.

A flat-screen TV sat on a bureau which contained coffee and tea service, glassware for coffee, tea, or wine, and a minibar with wine, spirits, and snacks.

A safe, iron and board, and robes and slippers awaited in the closet, while the bath was equipped with high-end amenities, a hair dryer, and an increasingly important magnifying mirror over the vanity.  The bath had its own radiator on a separate thermostat from the room so guests could take the chill off before getting into the shower. Both the closet and the bathrooms were smaller than at more modern hotels, though given the hotel’s history it was understandable.

The Palliser first opened in June 1914. With the Canadian Pacific Railway as the original owner, the hotel was an outgrowth of the railroad’s intent on pushing westward. The hotel is connected to what used to be a CPR station, though it is now sealed and inaccessible. Tracks that run behind the hotel now carry freight trains almost exclusively. Passenger trains are increasingly rare.

The on-site restaurant and lounge, The Hawthorn, offered food and beverages from breakfast all the way to the nightcap. After rising very early the first day to catch our early-morning flight, we lacked the energy to do much exploring, so chose to enjoy wine and small plates before turning in. They were well-prepared and delicious, brought by servers who clearly understand what hospitality means.
The Palliser is a popular conference destination, and there were at least three there during our stay. That meant the lobby and the restaurant were quite busy – and noisy – at times, though staff handled everything with aplomb. Importantly, little of the noise made its way to our guestroom.
The hotel has an on-site spa on the bottom floor, with prices you would expect for spa treatments in a resort setting. There are also an indoor swimming pool and fitness center.
One thing the Palliser doesn’t have is an on-site shop with Fairmont merchandise. However, products are available online at us.fairmontstore.com and at the Fairmont Banff Springs, just about an hour’s drive up the Trans-Canada Highway.
We left reluctantly, feeling quite pampered and looking forward to what we trust will be a similar experience at our next yet-to-be-discovered Fairmont.

Carl Dombek, who lives in Seattle, is a retired journalist and a travel blogger. His website, thetravelpro.com, has news, reviews, and personal observations on upmarket travel.