Opus Hotel

Colour, Pop Deco and a Corner of Yaletown

Yaletown was a rail yard and a warehouse district before Vancouver turned it into the neighbourhood with the best loading docks in the country, now patios. The Opus sits on Davie Street in the middle of it, and where most hotels in this part of town went for grey and glass, this one went the other way entirely. Vibrant colour, pop deco artwork, bathrooms treated as small spas. It has been the design hotel of Vancouver for long enough that the city takes it for granted, which is usually the sign of a place that got something right early.

Why It Works

We keep this one because the concept is more than a paint scheme. The 96 rooms are built around five decorative personalities, and the hotel actually matches guests to the one that suits them rather than assigning a room number and hoping. Beyond that, the ground floor works hard: Capo is a real Italian kitchen with its own pizza, and The Spritz takes aperitivo seriously enough to make it the reason locals walk in. The MICHELIN Guide lists it, and it holds a Condé Nast Traveler Readers’ Choice award for Western Canada.

Why This Location

Davie Street runs down to the seawall at False Creek, which means the water is a few minutes away on foot and the entire waterfront loop, Granville Island ferries included, opens from there. The restaurants and boutiques of Hamilton and Mainland Street are around the corner, the Canada Line and the SkyTrain put the airport within a straight run, and Granville Island itself is a short hop across the creek by mini ferry. Yaletown is also flat and walkable, which matters more than people expect in a city built against a mountain.

Fast Facts

• Price: Luxe

• Vibe: Colourful, design led, sociable, unapologetic

• Rooms: 96 rooms and suites across five decorative personalities, with pop deco art and spa style bathrooms

• Best For: Design minded city breaks, travellers with dogs, anyone who wants to walk to dinner and the seawall

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: Being matched to one of the five room personalities instead of being handed a key at random

• Dining: Capo for Italian cooking and house made pizza, The Spritz next door for aperitivo hour

• Amenities: Fitness centre, outdoor green space, digital check in by phone, turndown service, dogs genuinely welcome

• Attractions: The False Creek seawall at the end of Davie Street, the Yaletown restaurant streets around the corner, the mini ferries across to Granville Island

Five Personalities, Ninety Six Rooms

The five schemes are the backbone of the place, each with its own palette and its own idea of who is staying. What this produces in practice is a hotel where no two corridors feel identical and where returning guests ask for a particular character rather than a particular floor. The bathrooms are the consistent strength across all of them, generous and treated as part of the room rather than an afterthought behind a door. Suites add space and, on the upper floors, the view over the low roofs of Yaletown toward the water.

Capo Downstairs, The Spritz Beside It

Capo cooks Italian without hedging, house made pizza included, and it is busy enough on a weekday evening to prove it is not trading on the hotel above it. The Spritz is the smaller, louder half, an aperitivo bar in the proper sense, built for the hour between finishing work and deciding where to eat. Together they give the building a street life that most hotel restaurants never manage, and they mean a guest can have a perfectly good evening without crossing the threshold.

A Hotel That Means It About Dogs

Plenty of hotels accept dogs. This one builds its welcome around them, and says plainly that the four legged guests get the better treatment. For anyone who travels with a dog, that difference is the whole trip: it decides whether an animal is tolerated in a corridor or greeted at the desk. Yaletown helps, with the seawall a few minutes away and a grid of patios that do not flinch when a lead appears under the table.