The 115-room CN railway hotel of 1931, restored under the Rodd flag, the longest continuously operating hotel in the city, and the closest thing PEI has to a downtown grand.
"Built in 1931 for the Canadian National Railway and never fully closed, the Rodd is the hotel Charlottetown defaults to when the occasion calls for a grand staircase, a rooftop view, and a downtown postcode. Not the most fashionable address in town. Frequently the most useful."
The Rodd Charlottetown was commissioned by Canadian National Railway and opened in May 1931, one of the last of the Canadian railway hotels and the only one ever built on Prince Edward Island. The building is a red-brick six-storey block in the restrained Georgian Revival idiom favoured by CN's chief architect John Schofield, with a stone-clad ground floor, a colonnaded portico off Kent Street, and a roof terrace that has been the highest publicly accessible vantage point in the downtown since the year it opened. The interior was substantially renovated in 2018 under Rodd Hotels & Resorts, which preserved the original lobby plasterwork, the brass-railed staircase, and the ballroom on the lower level while replacing the room product end to end.
The 115 keys are arranged across six floors. Entry-level Standard rooms run a usable 22 to 26 square metres in the original block, with bay windows facing either Kent or Pownal Street; Heritage and Premium categories pick up an additional 5 to 8 square metres and tend to occupy corner positions on the upper floors. The decor is a deliberately quiet read on the building's age, oiled walnut headboards, woven wool throws, lithographs of nineteenth-century Charlottetown along the corridors, and bathrooms in white subway tile with chrome fixtures. The largest accommodation, the Confederation Suite on the sixth floor, holds a separate living room and a private terrace that looks across Province House towards the harbour.
Chambers Restaurant & Bar occupies the former CN dining room, with its original coffered ceiling and a reproduction of the 1931 walnut bar. The menu is a workmanlike modern Maritime card, PEI Malpeque oysters, Island beef, a properly executed seafood chowder, and the room has settled into being the default downtown business lunch since the renovation. The rooftop patio above the sixth floor, open from late May through early October, is the single most-photographed feature of the hotel and the closest thing the downtown has to a skyline bar; expect a queue on summer weekends. Breakfast runs in the ballroom or via room service, with a small but properly composed continental presentation.
Recreation runs through the basement-level pool, sauna, and a modest fitness room. The pool is short (12 metres) but the daylight from the street-level light wells is genuinely good and the lane is unusually quiet for a property of this size. The Rodd runs the largest meeting facility in the city, with a 350-seat ballroom and four breakout rooms, which means weeknights occasionally tilt towards conference traffic; weekends are softer and more leisure-led. Service is friendly, plainly Maritime, and rooted in a long-tenured staff, the night manager has been on the front desk since 2002, which is unusual for a property of this scale anywhere in Canada.
The Rodd is the Charlottetown hotel where a milestone anniversary slots into the calendar without effort. Book a Confederation Suite for a major year and a Premium corner room with a Kent Street bay window for a quiet weekend; dinner at Chambers and an upper-room drink on the rooftop in summer give the trip the structure it needs. The hotel handles small celebration set-ups, in-room champagne, flowers, a cake from the Receiver Coffee Company up the street, without theatre.
For a family staying downtown rather than at the beach, the Rodd is the most usable address in the city. Connecting rooms are available across the third and fourth floors; the basement pool is the only proper indoor swim in the central business district; and the Confederation Centre of the Arts (with its summer Anne of Green Gables musical) is a two-minute walk from the lobby. The hotel's location keeps the trip walkable, which is the single biggest variable for a family weekend in Charlottetown.
For business in Charlottetown, the Rodd is the default. The 350-seat ballroom is the largest function space in the province, the meeting board runs through to the lobby, and the property holds the federal and provincial government per-diem accounts in the downtown. WiFi is consistent, the business centre is open around the clock, and Chambers handles a respectable working breakfast service from 6:30 AM. The Confederation Bridge airport drive is 12 minutes; the downtown bar and restaurant grid is at the front door.
75 Kent Street
Charlottetown, PE C1A 7K4
Canada
Confederation Centre of the Arts 2 minutes on foot; Province House 4 minutes; Peake's Wharf waterfront 6 minutes
115 rooms and suites
Standard doubles from CAD 175/night
Heritage rooms from CAD 235/night
Junior suites from CAD 320/night
Top-floor suites to CAD 480/night
Check-in: 3:00 PM
Check-out: 11:00 AM
Opened 1931 as the CNR Charlottetown Hotel; current Rodd renovation completed 2018
Chambers Restaurant & Bar
Indoor pool, sauna, fitness room
Rooftop patio with harbour and downtown views
1,400 sq m of meeting space (largest ballroom in PEI)
Pet-friendly on request
Complimentary WiFi throughout
From CAD 175/night. Family rooms and waterfront categories book three to five months ahead for July and August peak; shoulder-season weekends typically open inside one month.
Compare Room Rates →The 80-room luxury independent on Grafton Street, the city's best-finished room product.
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Sign up for deal alerts: fifth night free offers, resort credits, and the upgrade windows we would book ourselves.