Spirit River Hotel Ltd - Spirit River, Alberta

Doug J.

The liquor store is well stocked with just about anything you need with a great friendly staff always happy to help! The bar is a good place to come and meet with friends for a drink or just a coffee also with great friendly staff to keep you watered up !

Tarzan M. (.

For the price, this is the best hotel in the area. Good staff. Clean rooms. There is fridge and microwave in every room. A bar and a liquor store on the ground floor. U can buy grocery in walking distance .

Supa D.

This place needs a serious flush.

Too harsh? I don't think so. The staff are just punching a time card from what I can tell.

The bar (which should be a money maker) is closed on Sunday and only open until 7:30 on the other days. For a place in the middle of resource country, it doesn't allow workers coming off day shift to have a beer after work.

If you want to watch any sports, they're closed when the games are on. That doesn't make much sense.

Heck, you can't even get a meal here as the restaurant closed ("Oh, Covid caused that", they claim). For a town this size, this should be a meeting place, but the management doesn't feel fit to make an investment in the business.

First, start by updating the bar. Make it less like a roadhouse and more of a place where people are comfortable. If you need to, seek outside expertise - because if you had it, it would have been used by now in renovating this building.

Next, seek out someone who has the desire to run a restaurant. There are plenty of energetic NAIT and GMCC grads you should be seeking out. They'll have the drive to make a restaurant successful and they'll have the current marketing tools to ensure it. Your approach simply isn't working, and it's losing you money.

So start with the simple things; steam clean the carpets, do a thorough cleaning of the public areas (including the bathrooms). That includes the walls - floor to ceiling! That'll get rid of the background odour people smell when they walk in the place. Have the inside and outside glass professionally cleaned. It shows that you're only giving someone a bottle of Windex and a rag and expecting good results.

Clean the outside of the building. Do things like getting the paving stone on the sidewalk flat, so it can be swept and make snow clearing easier and faster. Make the building look lived in. Touch up or entirely redo the paint. Update the lighting or get a back-lit canopy on the north and east sides.

There are so many things management could do, but haven't. If there's one word to describe this place, it's neglected.

Dean E.

Medium priced food of decent quality. The restaurant has the best Chinese food for quite a long ways. Pub is small and old. Not much going on. Don't know what rooms are like but there are a few guys that stay here so must be at least passable. .

matt S.

Obviously not the Ritz but for its price you cant beat it. Food is good and the bar has VLTs if you're into that. People are super friendly and helpful. Travel a lot for work and if I'm ever in the area I always come here. The staff even offered to lend me a few knives and cutting boards to make my lunches in my room! Super people make the little things not matter 🙂

Steven L.

Food is hit and miss ..... if you get the blonde waitress she is miserable and makes you feel unwelcome because she cant sit and gossip with her friends.
The other brown haired lady is nice but we expressed our concerns about previous visit and she just made a mockery of it between them lol.
The owner was 1 heck of a guy too bad his staff couldn't follow his lead .

Richard K.

As a weary traveler from Chicago, having driven 5 hrs North from Edmonton, I found that the Spirit River Hotel had the price, service, and room (esp. the bed - clean and comfortable) to be the best in town. 5/5 for total value.

Darrell B.

They are cheap, rooms are easy to get into if you left your key inside. Cost are very outdated for the year of this place ( expenses ) over all I will never go back