When searching for a city centre hotel in a city I've not visited before, I worry about three basic things: is the hotel in a bad area? is it noisy? is it clean?

The Days Inn in Downtown vancouver meets those basic needs. It is reasonably priced for a downtown hotel (although tends away from budget to mid-range during the summer months).

I have stayed here approximately twice a year for the past five years without problem.

The basics:

* Area: Vancouver has a very scary area; this hotel is comfortably outside of that area by 2-3 blocks. It is in the financial area so tends to be pretty dead in the evenings and weekends, but is safe. It is a few blocks to the nearest convenience store.

* Noise: the street outside is not a particularly busy one, plus you'll probably be facing a wall on the side rather than the street. It is in the city centre though, so some minor traffic noise. I've very rarely heard noises from the corridor or other rooms.

* Cleanliness: very good, never had a problem with the rooms, bathrooms or beds.

But there are a few other things to know about this hotel:

* Rooms are small, I mean SMALL. Not New York small, but not generous by any means. The bathrooms are tiny.

* Most rooms look out the side of the building, straight onto a blank wall. You can just about see some sky if you look straight up. A few rooms at the front look out over the street, but these are a bit noisier (from the street) and lighter (from the giant yellow Days Inn sign).

* Parking is but valet only, at about CAD$15/day. You can go in and out as much as you like, but this is not super convenient.

* The elevator is tiny and slow.

* Stairs wind around the elevator, so you end up walking much further than normal back-and-forth stair well, and even get a bit dizy.

* TVs aren't very large, and have a strange, separate channel changer box (with remote).

* Curtains are okay thinkness for keeping light out, but are absolutely minimal height so there is lots of light leaking in under the curtain. Normally to stop this in other hotels I push the curtain onto the window sill to keep out the light, but the curtains here only just reach the sill. Also they are cutout around the air conditioner (which is usually in the window).

* No pull-in area outside the hotel, so when arriving by car just park on the street and run inside to check-in and give the keys to the valet.

* No free breakfast

It is not all bad though:

* Safe area
* Quiet
* Clean
* Walking distance to downtown attractions (gastown, cruise terminal, harbour tower, Robson street, Granville Street).
* Very close to buses (on Burrard and Granville)
* Very close to Skytrain (Burrard St)
* In-room safe
* Elevator requires room key (so a little bit more secure than hotels with open access to the room floors)
* Valet parking is usually sufficiently quick to retreive cars, even when several people are leaving at the same time

Overall, I recommend this hotel if you want to stay downtown at a more reasonable price.