Alberta's Best Hotels and Restaurants

Sandy Campbell is a reference librarian in the Science and Technology Library at the University of Alberta.

These handy, pocket-sized guides are aimed at the upper end of the
tourist market. While the stated criteria for inclusion in these lists
of “best” establishments is that they “offer excellent quality for
the price,” you will not find much on the budget end of the price
range. For example, the listings for Jasper, which appear in both
guides, do not list the hostels or the myriad of approved home
accommodations, which provide great value for the price.

The two guides compete directly with a variety of other tour guides,
including motor association guides and Internet resources. Because they
are restricted to hotels and restaurants, they are more limited in their
function than guides that also include local sightseeing information and
history. Although both guides supply more listings than the motor
association guides, they contain no comparative quality rating. Finally,
these two-year-old guides are quickly becoming dated. For example, the
more recent motor association guide shows that accommodation at a
particular hotel costs $100 more than indicated in the Ulysses guide.