The Journal · The Brantford Club

Best Western Brantford vs The Brantford Club: The Conference and the Board Dinner

Best Western Brantford is a hotel and conference centre at 19 Holiday Drive: 158 rooms and suites by its own count, a ballroom, and a free lot outside, built for the conference. The Brantford Club is a club, private and members’ own, at 98 George Street, kept since 1898, built for twelve people behind a door that closes, and the dinner afterward.

Best Western Brantford Hotel and Conference Centre is at 19 Holiday Drive, Brantford, N3R 7J4, off Highway 403. The front desk answers 519-753-8651 by its own contact page, and meeting space is booked through meetings@bestwesternbrantford.com or the request form on the hotel’s event-spaces page. The Grand Hall, the banquet facility attached to the hotel, keeps its own site and lists up to 600 guests. Some of the people who search the hotel’s name arrive with a meeting to place and the planner’s question in hand: whether the room can hold the meeting and make them look good to the people in it. This entry answers that, and says plainly when the answer is the hotel.

The hotel on Holiday Drive and the house on George Street

Best Western Brantford Hotel and Conference Centre is a hotel of 158 non-smoking rooms and suites, by its own count, in the Walter Gretzky Wing and the East Wing, with Myra’s Bar & Grill downstairs and free on-site parking. Its event-spaces page lists sixteen meeting rooms and combinations by square foot and setup, from the Andrew Lucas Room at 288 square feet, a boardroom for eight, to the Grand Ballroom Extended at 6,125 square feet and 640 theatre-style.

The Brantford Club is a private members’ club and event venue at 98 George Street in Brantford, holding board meetings and client dinners in an Italianate house erected about 1855, since 1898. Every event space carries complimentary high-speed Wi-Fi and conference technology, each room closes to the rest of the house, and the kitchen runs under executive chef Eric Wasylenky.

When the hotel is the right answer

A conference of two hundred belongs at the Best Western, and this house says so without a qualifier. The hotel lists the Grand Ballroom at 4,450 square feet, a dinner for 400 or 500 theatre-style; it has 158 rooms upstairs so delegates from Woodstock and Cambridge walk to bed instead of driving home; and free parking by its own pages. A sales meeting with breakouts needs seminar rooms, and the hotel lists seven, Seminar I through Seminar VII. An all-day training with a hot lunch for eighty, or an annual general meeting that must seat every shareholder: the hotel, every time, with the Grand Hall for the gala afterward. No one at 98 George Street will suggest otherwise.

Does The Brantford Club have meeting rooms?

Yes, and they are the rooms of a house rather than a conference floor. The Club keeps a boardroom, the 98 George Room, the Bateson Lounge, the Waterous Family Dining Room, and the main dining room at 98 George Street. Every meeting room carries complimentary high-speed Wi-Fi and conference calling technology, so the director dialling in from Burlington is on the screen without anyone hunting for a cable, and the rooms close to the rest of the house. No seat count is printed for any of them; your event coordinator matches the room to the number of chairs when you write. There are no guest rooms upstairs and no trade-show floor, and a meeting of eighty with a hot lunch is a hotel meeting. Twelve people with something to decide, and nobody passing through, is the Club’s meeting; the rooms themselves are described in the Journal’s entry on the rooms at 98 George Street.

Best Western Brantford vs The Brantford Club, in Eight Rows

The eight rows below are the ones a planner checks first. The hotel’s figures are its own; the Club’s rows carry no seat counts, since the house sizes the room to the meeting.

The client dinner after the meeting

The meeting usually ends at a table, and the two addresses feed it differently. At the Best Western the table is Myra’s Bar & Grill, or a banquet from the Grand Hall’s in-house catering. At the Club the kitchen is in the house. Executive chef Eric Wasylenky runs it from a working lunch to full evening service, the menu is seasonal and settled with you beforehand, and the Churchill Pork Chops take their name from the house’s most famous guest, who signed the Visitors’ Register on January 3, 1901, per the Club’s centennial history. A board that met in the boardroom at two can sit down to dinner in the Waterous Family Dining Room at six without leaving the house, and the client you brought sees the same faces all day. The private dining page sets out how that dinner is arranged.

Minutes never record the size of the room, only what was settled behind its door. This house has kept a door like that since 1898.

Corporate meetings in Brantford: which address for which meeting

Corporate meetings in Brantford divide by the number of chairs and by who has to sleep over. The hotel sits off Highway 403 with 158 rooms and a free lot, which is why the regional conference and the two-day training go to Holiday Drive. The Brantford Club sits downtown at 98 George Street, at George and Nelson, by the Court House, in a house which predates the City of Brantford, where the city’s own business has been done since 1898: the mediation that wants a second room to step into, the quarterly board, the partners’ lunch, and the dinner for the client from Ancaster or Paris who is driving home afterward. A search for conference packages in Brantford lands on the hotel’s event-spaces page. The Club prints no package because it keeps none; the terms arrive in writing before you commit. Hosts write from Brant County, St. George, Cambridge, Burlington, and Woodstock.

Before you book either

Sources: the hotel’s own site, bestwesternbrantford.com, for every figure about Holiday Drive; The Grand Hall’s own site, thegrandhallbrantford.ca, for its guest figure and catering; the Club’s corporate events and booking pages; the Club’s centennial history for the Register. The wider field is in the register of Brantford event venues, and an evening in the house is set out on the booking page. For the neighbouring pairings, the register that keeps every comparison is the place to start.