Vancouver Island to Banff to Vancouver
 

I have been trying to plan a three week vacation in Western Canada combining timeshares and hotels. Circumstances beyond my control forced me to stop planning for a while and now I'm in panic mode. Hope you'll be patient with me and help. I've never been to this part of the World before.

I've clearly waited too late, as the first night I need in a hotel at the Vancouver airport June 12 has been a bit of a challenge. The perfect hotel is booked solid and I've got to stop waffling about the ones that ARE available or we'll be sleeping in the rental car.

I have a night booked in Victoria June 13 that I got free on a Best Rate Guarantee that I saw on flyertalk. I was pleased to get that.

Here's the last part of the itinerary I'm proposing at this point. Will someone please give it a sanity check? Haven't looked for hotels at any of the interim stops, so if you know there are none, that would also be valuable information.

We're leaving Pacific Shores Resort on Vancouver Island on June 21. Spend the night in Kamloops.

June 22 & 23 - Hotel in or near Jasper. I have the names of a couple recommended by friends. Hopefully everything isn't already booked solid. (I really DO have an excuse for waiting this long to plan. Honest ... I do.)

June 24 - July 1, Timeshare in Canmore

July 1 - Hotel around Kelowna or Penticton or Summerland

July 2 & 3 - Hotel in Vancouver if I can find one that won't bankrupt me. Already tried with Marriott and Hilton points and didn't see anything sleeping four. Well, maybe a couple of Marriotts with high parking fees. May resort to those if I don't see anything else interesting.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me. I'd hate for the four of us to be sleeping in the minivan.

Sheila

Wow! You really have left things late. I recommend that if you find a place with a vacancy in Jasper, book it immediately!

If you can't get accomodation in Jasper (park), the nearest town is Hinton. That's about a one hour drive away. Not very convenient for sightseeing at all.

Don't panic! Jasper is very busy in July and August, but June is a bit slower. Plus you are coming on a Sunday & Monday, which might make it a bit easier (Friday & Saturdays tend to get very booked with weekenders coming from Edmonton). I wouldn't put off booking though.

Jasper Tourism's website has full listings for all hotels in the area:

www.jaspercanadianrockies.com

Jasper Home Accommodation Association website has B&B and private home accommodation listings (generally quite a lot cheaper than hotels, and ranges from a completely private hotel-style room, to the proverbial spare bedroom... and everything in between) : www.stayinjasper.com

Also, July 1 is holiday (Canada Day) so you should book that night ASAP.

How inconvenient would it be to stay in Hinton instead of Jasper. The rates are much lower, but I'll bite the bullet and pay the higher cost if Hinton would not be fun.

Sheila

I thought I had all my reservations ready. I logged into my email to notify the Jasper owner I had selected and had a message that she had looked at her calendar wrong and really didn't have both our dates available. I sent out a few more emails. About 70% of the places I contacted are booked for at least one of the two days we need, so I'm going to pick one today regardless.

Sheila

There's a reason why rates are cheaper in Hinton. It's an hour's drive from the town of Jasper (about half an hour's drive from the east gate to Jasper NP) and is not a very "nice" place to go. The main industries there are oil & gas exploration, mining and logging... it's booming right now, which means they keep putting up ugly new box-y buildings, including several new hotels, in a strip along the highway. (It's a town of about 10,000 and about ten miles long by a mile wide...I don't think they've ever heard of urban planning ... it just keeps getting uglier.) It's also a pulp mill town, so it can be quite smelly if the wind is blowing the wrong way.