The Best Boutique Hotels in
Montreal

January 11, 2023

Tablet is your source for discovering the world’s most exciting boutique hotels — places where you’ll find a memorable experience, not just a room for the night. For over twenty years we’ve scoured the earth, evaluating hotels for every taste and budget, creating a hand-picked selection that’s proven and unforgettable. Now, we’re the official hotel selection of the legendary MICHELIN Guide.

Here are the top boutique hotels in Montreal, Canada:

Hotel Gault

In the historic quarter of Vieux Montréal, behind the 18th-century stone facade of a former carpet factory, you’ll find one of the most modern hotels in North America. Hotel Gault has no time for the French country style of many of its neighbors—the look here is industrial contemporary, with open-plan loft-style rooms, floors of polished concrete, and 1950s Eames chairs that look as futuristic today as they did when they first came off the drafting table.

No two of the vast, airy rooms are alike, but all fit the fashion-forward minimalist mold, with a minimum of ornamentation; here the pleasures are in the creature comforts, like the heated bathroom floors, the plush robes, and the café au lait delivered to your doorstep. Some have private terraces with views of the scenic neighborhood, others exposed red brick walls, and some come with vast California king beds—though the standard queens are nothing to be disappointed at. Plasma-screen TVs look perfectly at home in these chic environs, and bathrooms are like something from a design magazine, with egg-shaped freestanding tubs and low-profile washbasins.

Hotel Nelligan

The Hotel Nelligan is named for Émile Nelligan, one of Quebec’s most celebrated poets, and his face and quotations adorn the interiors of the hotel. It’s a detail that stops well short of outright gimmickry, but it contributes to the sense of history that is thick in the halls of this 1850 building.

It’s a boutique hotel, to be sure, but the interiors are far from the art-gallery sparseness that is the prevailing boutique design trend. Instead the Nelligan is heavy on function, with creature comforts ahead of aesthetic shock, and rich brick, leather and wood decor rather than white plaster or anything Zen. It’s easy on the eye, to be sure, but impossibly plush duvets and Frette bathrobes target the subtler senses. Gas fireplaces, spacious bathrooms, and the obligatory high-speed internet round out the package of conveniences, and as a bonus, many rooms have private terraces overlooking the St. Lawrence.

Le Petit Hotel

Although Le Petit Hôtel may be petit in size, it’s grand in luxury, in a style that evokes a lost bohemia of nineteenth-century Europe. The Antonopoulos Group have made a habit out of carving modern boutique hotels out of Vieux Montréal’s historic buildings, most notably the Nelligan and the Auberge du Vieux Port. And with Le Petit Hôtel, located in the center of the historic district, you’ll feel like a Montreal local, surrounded by hidden clubs, bars, shops and galleries.

The first thing you’ll notice when you enter is the scent of artisan baked goods from an old-world style bistro — the café also quaintly serves as the front desk. As night falls, the café lights dim and the space transforms into a hipster lounge ready for mingling. The twenty-four rooms with their exposed brick, contemporary stonework and hardwood floors combined with the cozy, mod furniture give the impression you’re staying in friend’s urban loft rather than a hotel at all.

Le Saint Sulpice Hotel

A decade or two ago we’d have never believed that Vieux Montréal would be the epicenter of an outbreak of chic and modern boutique hotels, but for whatever reason, that’s what’s come to pass; within the historic district of the walled old city, one finds some of the most inspiring small hotels in North America.

Le Saint-Sulpice is an all-suite property, and those suites are large, beginning at 550 square feet, many with fireplaces, some with terraces facing the central courtyard garden, a rarity in the cobbled Old Town. Down duvets and kitchenettes equipped with Nespresso machines are standard, as are additional sofa beds and leather armchairs. Plush robes and L'Occitane en Provence bath amenities add to the creature comforts, and work desks and high-speed wi-fi internet access ensure a productive stay.

Auberge Du Vieux Port

Old Montréal is like a city within a city, a slice of Old Europe right in the middle of a major North American city, where one can still hear the hooves of horses, drawing carriages along the meandering cobbled streets. And the Auberge du Vieux-Port is a bit of a trip through time as well—though nominally a boutique, and younger than it looks, the hotel is chock full of historical detail, with rustic touches like timbered ceilings and pine floors and 1882-vintage stone and brick walls.

In the timbered cellar of the hotel is Taverne Gaspar, serving gastropub cuisine with a Quebeçois-French flair, and featuring an unearthed relic from Montréal’s past—a piece of the fortification that originally defended the city. Today the spot from which to survey the waterfront is in the Auberge’s guest rooms, fifteen of which face the Old Port, many with whirlpool baths. All are immersive, comfortable, and are decorated in the same rustic romantic style as the restaurant and public rooms. The loft suites have kitchenettes, and are a short walk from the hotel; some have wood-burning fireplaces.

Hotel Monville

Montreal is perhaps best known for its picturesque historic district, its cobblestone streets lined with heritage buildings, including the 18th-century structure that conceals the thoroughly contemporary Hotel Gault (a longtime Tablet favorite). For a follow-up, the Gault’s owners have decided to play even more against Montreal’s type with the towering, ultra-modern Hotel Monville, a hotel that’s drawn nearly as much attention for its forward-looking architecture as for its futuristic amenities — specifically, its robot room service.

Yes, you read that right. Room service is delivered by a sort of anthropomorphic Roomba, whose retro styling makes the experience less bizarre than it might otherwise be. Meanwhile the rooms are minimalistic, largely monochrome, but warm and bright thanks to their touchable organic textures and their vast full-length windows. Space is at something of a premium, at least until you get into the suites, but comforts like espresso machines and king beds ensure comfort doesn’t suffer unduly. If, come mealtime, you’d rather not wait for the robot, you’ll find a restaurant with a menu that takes liberal inspiration from multicultural Montreal, as well as a café and lounge that does double duty as a co-working space, and a stylish cocktail bar to cap things off.

Hotel William Gray

There’s no place in North America with more historic character than Old Montreal — which means that a design hotel like the William Gray, made from a pair of 18th-century heritage buildings and a contemporary addition, gets maximum impact from its stylistic contrast. Once you’re inside the modern section, with its soaring glass atrium, it’s clear that you’re in for a 21st-century luxury-boutique experience.

Rooms vary in size and equipment, from the very modern Residence to the classic rooms in the Maison William Gray, but all are finely wrought and full of comforts. Multi-jet rain showers, Frette towels, and Le Labo bath products supply the excellent bathrooms, and the bedrooms come with plush down comforters, Nespresso machines, and all the latest high-tech gadgetry.

Hotel Le Germain Montreal

In Montreal, the boutiques have all but run the big chains out of town — and Hôtel le Germain is the place that started it all. Once a deeply unfashionable Sixties office block, this was the first hotel in town to embrace the sort of high-concept hotel design made famous by Starck and Schrager in places like LA’s Mondrian or New York’s Paramount Hotel.

This touched off something of a revolution in Montreal hotels, and the cobbled streets of Vieux Montréal are heavy with chic little boutiques. Hôtel Le Germain, though, is in the city’s downtown business district, just off Ste. Catherine Street, home to the finest designer shops and boutiques in town.

Le Mount Stephen

Montréal’s hotel scene is unique in North America, largely because of the high concentration of historical atmosphere in Vieux Montréal, the city’s old quarter. But there’s plenty of personality, architectural and otherwise, to be found elsewhere around town. The so-called Golden Square Mile is the historic commercial district, and among its regal old edifices is a stunning neo-Renaissance structure that was originally the home of one the city’s movers and shakers, Lord George Stephen — and it’s for him that the structure, in its new guise as a luxury hotel, is named today: Le Mount Stephen Hotel.

Don’t get too attached to the 1883-vintage façade, however. Though the historical building contains the restaurant and the bar, both of which make the most of their beautifully preserved 19th-century spaces, the guest rooms occupy a modern addition — and we do mean modern. As you check in you’re transported straight to the 21st century, into rooms and suites that are not just contemporary in style but loaded with up-to-date comforts like chromatherapy showers, Toto washlets, and Nespresso machines. The best of them are truly extravagant, adding massive skylights, fireplaces, and bathtubs, while the three-bedroom Royal Suite spans the entirety of the 11th floor.

Le Place d'Armes Hotel & Suites

Hotel Place d’Armes is a new addition to the historic district of Old Montréal, a modern boutique hotel within the renovated nineteenth-century Great Scottish Life Insurance building, and an ideal vantage point from which to witness the resurgence of this once-neglected neighborhood.

Old Montréal was, quite obviously, the first part of the city to be settled, and throughout the twentieth century, as today, the city’s financial and legal giants towered over the district’s old, meandering streets. It would be reasonable to expect a hotel in Old Montréal, esecially one housed in an historic building, to be a conservative or even stuffy affair; thankfully the Hotel Place d’Armes is anything but stuffy.

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