In my one year without fixed abode I have had the opportunity to stay in quite a number of motels and hotels in Vancouver. I'm not sure what the high end of the prices for those hotels looks like, but I can claim that I am quite familiar with the low end of the price range. By now I am also familiar with the condition of some of those hotel rooms. And it ain't pretty. Lack of air-conditioning, lack of coffee-maker, lack of a working bathroom fan, lack of cleanliness are just some of the issues that do not prevent a room from being rented for good money. In the winter and early spring you get to spend $50 to $79 per night for a room with some or all of those features. I was quite surprised a month ago in July when tourists apparently were willing to spend up to $109 for these rooms. Or maybe the tourists were not aware what they were getting, but the hotels were not ashamed to ask that much.
Then I looked for a room for today, Saturday, the 24th of August. At first I thought Booking.com was making a poor joke. But checking Expedia confirmed it: The cheapest available hotel room in the city of Vancouver, and one of my standard 'cheap' choices (cheap but not that pretty), is going for $169 per night. I've been in that hotel repeatedly (when it was cheap) and I can tell you: The rooms are NOT worth that much ! For friggs sake: I paid less for a comparable room in Paris !
Some people might bite the bullet and pay this, but fortunately I know I have choices. For tourists with cars, the cities of Squamish (49 km), Langley (30 km), Surrey (15 km), and even Hope (150 km) offer rooms still in the $60 - $70 / night range with rooms of comparable dinginess (or MUCH nicer ;-). And sleeping a bit outside of Vancouver proper might even get you some better breathing air,since you're outside of the brown dome of exhaust air. This is particularly true in Squamish, which is also the one that will provide amazing scenery on the drive to/from Vancouver.
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