What I Loved and Hated About the Vogue Hotel Montreal Downtown, Curio Collection by Hilton

Montreal is a great destination any time of the year. Last winter, given the chance to visit again and fill up on bagels, smoked meat, and cans of très foncé maple syrup (which, sadly, has become impossible to find), my family and I didn’t hesitate.

This time, though, we booked 2 hotels instead of 1, splitting our stay between the historic Hôtel William Gray in Old Montreal and a more modern hotel in downtown Montreal.

Here’s what I liked — and didn’t — about the Vogue Hotel Montreal Downtown, Curio Collection by Hilton.

Booking the Vogue Hotel Montreal Downtown

I booked the Vogue Hotel Montreal Downtown, Curio Collection by Hilton, for a December 2025 stay using my Platinum Card^® from American Express, paying $318.93 for a standard room with 2 double beds and $60.58 in taxes and fees. The total came to $379.51 for 1 night in full at the time of booking, meaning I earned 1,895 Membership Rewards points from my stay, thanks to the 5x earning bonus for booking through AmexTravel.com.

As the Vogue Hotel is a member of the Fine Hotels + Resorts collection, I received several benefits, including a $100 credit to be used at the hotel, early check-in when available (it wasn’t), late checkout when available (it was), a complimentary upgrade when available (I’m not sure if it was or wasn’t — read about me trying to puzzle this one out below), and a daily free breakfast for 2.

Hot Tip:

Cardholders of the Chase Sapphire Reserve^® and Sapphire Reserve for Business℠ can find Vogue Hotel as part of The Edit by Chase Travel, which offers benefits similar to Fine Hotels + Resorts.

If you were to book with Hilton Honors points, rates hover from 73,000 to 75,000 points per night. With cash rates ranging from $209 to $653, that delivers a return of around 0.3 to 0.9 cents per point. We value Hilton Honors points at 0.5 cents each, so redeeming points makes the most sense when cash rates are high.

Great Location for High-End Shoppers

The Vogue Hotel is inside Montreal’s Golden Square Mile, a luxury shopping district with the city’s most high-end neighborhood for spending money on clothes, food, and booze. It’s also neighbors with the esteemed McGill University. Tiffany & Co. was right up the street, and when we left the front entrance of the hotel, we looked out on the posh department store Holt Renfrew Ogilvy and the Four Seasons Hotel Montreal.

The back of the hotel bustled up against Le Mount Stephen, another high-end hotel we’d stayed in a couple of years back, and our view out the window was the back of Le Mount Stephen’s newer wing.

We didn’t go home with tens of thousands in sparkling jewelry and fashion, but if that had been the intention, the Vogue Hotel would’ve been a perfect base for that kind of shopping. As it was, we did have business at a nearby bank, and the hotel was plenty convenient for that, too.

Hot Tip:

Flying to Montreal (YUL)? Read our tips on getting to the Great White North on points and miles.

Lively Space With Local Feel

When we stayed at the Hôtel William Gray, we found ourselves among a friendly, lively crowd, but one that was distinctly tourist-heavy — which is no surprise, given that hotel’s smack dab in the heart of Montreal’s tourist district.

At the Vogue Hotel, we were among a mix of visitors and locals, catching up with colleagues, friends, or dates at the lobby bar, getting dinner in the restaurant, or taking a break between presumably 4- and 5-figure shopping sprees.

The difference was noticeable immediately: Instead of couples and families lounging in lobby chairs between sightseeing and retiring to their rooms, the atmosphere in the Vogue’s lobby was more cosmopolitan, more urban, more quotidian. That said, we were at the Vogue mostly on a Sunday and Monday, and at the William Gray over a Friday and Saturday right after Christmas.

Dripping With Style

The aesthetic at the Vogue Hotel was sleek, understated, and modern, with effective underlighting throughout that highlighted prominent features and added depth to a rather small lobby.

The soaring chandeliers, which looked more like flying vehicles from a modern “Tron” movie than anything else, managed to make the high lobby ceiling look even taller, rather than making the overhead space feel cramped or threatening. In other words, the interior designers did a good job here.

The lighting carried over to the guest room hallways, which had doors with a more art deco sensibility.

Even little touches like the Champagne-flute man-and-woman signs for the public bathrooms in the lobby tickled me.

Spacious, Comfortable Room

I liked our centuries-old room in the Hôtel William Gray, where I specifically booked a smaller room for the history, but it started to feel cramped after the first night.

At the Vogue, space in our room was never a problem, as our highly active grade-schooler demonstrated almost as soon as we entered, running around and jumping from bed to bed nonstop for several minutes. I restrained him just long enough to take these photos of the room untouched by grade-school hands.

‘Tissues Get Their Own Hole’

Our son, who has been in his share of both higher-end and budget hotels, quickly declared that this was a “fancy hotel.” His evidence?

“Tissues get their own hole.”

Take that statement, and the visual evidence below, anyway you will.

Large Bathroom

A big bathroom is one of those things you don’t really appreciate until you’re actually in one. I say this as a New Yorker with a bathroom that’s bigger than most, with both a bathtub and a standing shower that’s still barely big enough to turn around in.

The bathroom was large, the whirlpool bathtub seemed big enough to film Jean-Paul Marat’s murder in IMAX, and there was plenty of twirling from the grade-schooler.

There was no bidet, though.

That said, we could’ve used more towels, even for just 1 night, and there wasn’t a separate bar of soap for the bathtub.

Spectacular Breakfast

Late December in Quebec is nothing to sneeze at, as it were. With temperatures as low as minus 2 degrees Fahrenheit during our stay, room-service breakfast in bed sounded like a great idea.

Room service can be spotty, and even the supposedly best hotels often get the timing of breakfast wrong so that you’re stuck with spongy eggs, greasy bacon, Styrofoam potatoes, toast like drywall, and insipid fruit.

What we got at the Vogue Hotel was among the best room-service breakfasts I can remember, with crispy (but not too crispy) bacon, fluffy eggs, toothsome potatoes, perfectly toasted bread, and juicy diced fruit.

Besides the scrambled eggs, coffee, freshly squeezed orange juice, and a pot of tea, we got a cornflake-encrusted French toast topped with ripe strawberries and vanilla ice cream, which was scrumptious. It got to us before it got soggy, so the exterior still had that pleasing crunch, while the interior remained soft and creamy without being overwhelmed by the fruit sauce.

The Hotel Credit Went Really Far

I booked this hotel through AmexTravel.com, and it’s a member of Fine Hotels + Resorts, so we got a $100 hotel credit. Unlike at the Hôtel William Gray, it was given to us in U.S. dollars, not Canadian dollars, meaning we got about 33% more value out of the equivalent hotel credit at the Vogue Hotel than we did at the Hôtel William Gray.

We used it on valet parking and on our wonderful breakfast. If we hadn’t had breakfast and a member of our party with a typical elementary-school palate, I would’ve used it at the hotel restaurant, Yama, which has apparently garnered a reputation beyond that of just a hotel restaurant and is considered worth a visit in its own right.

Cafe Filicori Is Just a Small Stand

Like the Hôtel William Gray (and many hotels nowadays), the Vogue Hotel makes a big deal on its website about having a coffee shop or cafe on the premises. In this case, it’s Cafe Filicori, which it touts as a sophisticated caffeination station with elegant, lounge-like seating.

Don’t be fooled, though: The website photos of the lounge-y seating at Cafe Filicori are actually of the hotel lobby. Cafe Filicori is a standing-room-only takeout coffee and snack joint in a little room off the lobby.

I Couldn’t Tell the Difference Between Standard and Deluxe

When I was booking on AmexTravel.com, I dithered over the room selection screen, not quite sure whether paying an extra $16 for a deluxe room was worth it for an extra 5 square feet.

After actually staying in the room, I still can’t tell whether we were in a regular double-bed room, if we’d been upgraded to a deluxe room, or where that extra 5 square feet could have been.

Comparing online photos of both rooms on the hotel site for way longer than I probably should have, I only tentatively decided that we had been upgraded to a deluxe room and that the extra space was a slightly longer wall to the left of the TV console, occupied by a bench.

Awkward Corner Window

As always, with guest rooms with windows facing each other at 90-degree angles, we had to be cautious about opening and closing our shades. During our stay, one of the rooms opposite us had a family in it, too, leading to an awkward situation in the morning when 2 pajama-clad boys did a dance-off in the windows simultaneously, before their shirtless dads could close the curtains to restore privacy.

No Fridge Space, Pricey Minibar, Valet Only

The other quibbles I had with the Vogue Hotel wouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s stayed in an expensive hotel in a city center.

The minifridge was packed full, leaving no space for us to refrigerate anything we might’ve wanted to bring back from, say, Jean Talon Market or L’Express.

The minibar prices were ridiculous, though it’d be more noteworthy if a hotel’s minibar price list were reasonable, so this isn’t surprising. Think CA$6 ($4.50) for a liter of water, CA$12 ($9) for a beer or M&Ms, CA$18 ($13.25) for a bar of dark chocolate molded in the shape of the Montreal skyline, and CA$100 ($75) for a stubby bottle of Champagne.

It’s also not surprising that there was no self-parking at the hotel, given Montreal’s narrow streets, centuries-old infrastructure, and harsh winter climate. Instead, the hotel offered valet parking for CA$59 ($44) a day, which we gladly paid in return for not having to deal with finding and keeping a parking spot in downtown Montreal after a major snowfall.

Final Thoughts

A few things make a great hotel stand out, and only a few get all of them right. But with a great location for high-end shopping, a vivacious and friendly vibe from both the staff and the guests, truly wonderful food, a gorgeous aesthetic, and lots of welcome space in the rooms and bathrooms, the Vogue Hotel is definitely on the ball, and I wouldn’t hesitate to stay here again if my travels took me back to downtown Montreal for either work or leisure.

That said, making the most out of my Fine Hotels + Resorts hotel credit from Amex helped take the sting out of the bill and valet parking bill. That hypothetical future stay would also be one I’d try to use my Amex Platinum card and its attendant benefits on again, too, leaving me more money to spend on bagels, smoked meat, grands-pères dans le sirop, poutine, brasseries, food markets, maple syrup candies, maple syrup caramels, maple syrup fudge ….