The road into Banff delivers you to the Fairmont Banff Springs the way a good overture delivers you to an opera: slowly, then all at once. The trees part, and there it is — a Scottish baronial castle of grey stone, improbably vast, set against mountains that do not look real until you are standing beneath them. The Canadian Pacific Railway built the first version in 1888 to lure travellers west, and more than a century later the pitch still works. I arrived a hotel reviewer and left, briefly, a tourist with his mouth open.

This is a National Historic Site with some 760 rooms, a championship golf course, a storied spa and enough corridors to warrant a map. It is a resort in the fullest sense — you could arrive, never leave the grounds, and want for nothing.

Service that carries the castle

What struck me most, and what recurs throughout recent guest reviews, is the staff. When one traveller flagged a problem with their first room, the team moved them to a better suite on the spot; another singled out a tour guide who turned a day trip to Lake Louise and Moraine Lake into the highlight of their holiday. My own experience was the same — from the front desk to the spa, this is a large hotel that somehow still feels personally run. In a property this size, that consistency is an achievement.

Families are unusually well served. The kids' club, the bowling alley and the outdoor pool — steaming against the cold mountain air — make it a genuine multi-generational resort rather than a museum you happen to sleep in. Parents in the reviews return to it year after year, and I can see why.

The rooms are not the largest you will ever occupy — but you did not travel to the Rockies to stay indoors.

The heritage trade-off

I owe you the same candour I gave the Frontenac. This is a historic building, and the rooms reflect it: several guests — and I agree — find the standard bathrooms surprisingly small, and the décor in places a touch dated. One reviewer's blunt "the tiniest bathroom" is not wrong, though the same guest raved about the Fairmont Gold service, dining and spa. There were also a couple of pointed complaints about cleanliness in specific rooms, which a resort at this level should never allow; my room was spotless, but I note it because consistency is the whole game.

The dining is broad and mostly very good, with an Italian restaurant that draws praise and river-and-mountain views from tables you'll remember. The afternoon tea divides opinion — lovely setting, occasionally ordinary execution — so treat it as an experience rather than a meal.

The setting, which changes everything

Ultimately, the Banff Springs is inseparable from where it stands. Willow Stream Spa with the peaks in the window, a round of golf under the treeline, guided hikes that start from your lobby — the mountains are not scenery here, they are the reason. Rooms are where you sleep; the Rockies are where you live for a few days.