Ianiv & I spent our first baby-free night close to home at the Fairmont Waterfront. to celebrate our 5-year wedding anniversary. I had purchased a great room & breakfast deal several months ago on Groupon – this was the perfect occasion to use it!

Our experience at the Fairmont was amazing. This isn’t our first Fairmont experience, but it definitely comes in as the best. The room was great, as you can expect from the Fairmont chain, but the whole experience was made special by the treatment we received by the staff.

After booking our trip, I asked for recommendations on Twitter and Facebook for a Spa to book a couples massage. The top contenders were Spa Utopia and the Willow Stream Spa at the sister Fairmont Pacific Rim. Either looked great to us. In the end, it was the service of the Fairmont staff that made the decision for me! They noticed my query on Twitter (despite not using their @FairmontWF handle) and called me to offer their help – they then helped me choose a package and booked our Spa reservation. Nice Twitter outreach!

When we arrived at the hotel, our file prompted the staff to wish us a Happy Anniversary and to let us know our room had been upgraded to one with a view – nice touch, particularly on a “discount” room deal! I, of course, tweeted my pleasure.

Later that night, after our visit at the Spa (later to be reviewed), we had just uncorked a bottle of sparkling wine when a knock came at our door – complimentary chocolates and flowers to thank us for our support on Twitter. Um, wow! Best social media outreach I’ve ever experienced!

So, though I’m sure we would have enjoyed our baby-free time in any hotel (we got to SLEEP IN!!!), we were made to feel extremely special by the staff at the Fairmont.

The only drawbacks to the experience, for me, were discovering that the lobby washrooms were locked in the evening (not so good after sharing a bottle of wine and Skytraining back from Yaletown!) and that the breakfast buffet was very conventional and, given we came at the end of the buffet, we also found things less than fresh.

We are looking forward to another baby-free night away soon – hopefully really soon! A trip to Whistler sounds really good ;)