Hotel Beausejour Mirabel

You can walk to restaurants nearby, and the hotel is centrally located. The rooftop parties are nice. The air conditioning and TV worked, but the rooms, especially the bathrooms, need renovation.

The rooftop party had good music and a really pleasant, relaxed feel. Just be ready to climb five floors, since the lift wasn’t working.

The rooftop is a nice spot for parties and events. The elevator’s been out of order for years, though, so getting up all those floors on foot is a real shame.

The staff do try, but most seem poorly paid and not properly trained. The hotel itself feels untouched since it was built in the 1960s. The lobby is dingy, and the seating is disgraceful. The aquarium looks lovely in the pictures, but it’s covered in algae in person, and I feel sorry for the fish. The restaurant off the lobby seemed presentable at first. Its chairs had full-length cloth covers like you might see at a wedding, but underneath they were the cheapest plastic chairs. One collapsed while I was sitting on it during my second night. Real chairs were put in only four or five days later. Menu items are often unavailable, and even when you can order something, it usually takes over half an hour to arrive, including simple dishes. When the food does come, it’s often cold. There are frequent power cuts. At night, the hallway from the lobby to the elevator can be completely dark, though sometimes there’s an electric floor lantern to help guests find their way. The generator usually starts within a couple of minutes, which is one good thing. But if your room faces the parking lot, as half the rooms do, its noise can carry on for hours and become more than just distracting. Be careful with the elevator too. Its door sensor doesn’t work, so the doors may close without warning when more than two or three people are trying to get in. The rooms look as they did when the building was first constructed. Some have a lot of mold, and many walls are pockmarked and have gone unrepaired for a long time. There are often gaps around the air conditioners where they open to the outside, leaving mosquitoes and other flying insects an easy way in. There are no mosquito nets. In the mornings, especially on the upper floors, hot water for a shower or bath is often lacking. The advertised internet can be so slow that two tin cans connected by a piece of wire might be a faster way to communicate.