Whatipu Beach Tours

Reception staff were very welcoming, friendly and most importantly their smiles seemed genuine. Instructions for the basement car parking was made very clear. Note to management: give the girls a nicer uniform, make it modern and get rid of the grey colour. The girls smiles made up for the dull uniform. The first room I was allocated, was clean but the bathroom door was not hung well. This created a wide gap between the wall and door whereby personal privacy in the bathroo was an issue. Reception were great and remedied this straight away by moving me to another room. Rooms were clean and tidy but lacked the 'luxury' feel of the public spaces such as reception, lobby and restaurant. I note 'luxury' is in the hotels branding. Restaurant was almost empty when we ate there, in fact we felt that staff 'hurried' us along for dinner on Sunday night because it was 8pm and they were 'having a slow night' (staff words). They ended up giving us room service from the restaurant menu and waived the room service fee. Each meal we had, breakfast and dinner, were top-notch. Absolutely incredibly tasty so our compliments to the chef and kitchen staff. Meal portions were very good and I couldn't finish them all but oh such great meals they were. Bar/restaurant staff were friendly and attentive. Overall stay 8/10. I would stay again.

Situated in downtown area near restaurants and harbour amenities

While our room was comfortable & great location - the staff need to work on their customer service. We weren't advised of our free room credit on check in & even when I confirmed it with staff, it wasn't applied at check out. until I reminded them again that we were over charged. Check out is 11am but house keeping knocked on our door at 9.30am asking to make up the room. Also at check out after settling our room service bill, the receptionist asked to see the credit card we used for the bond again, which was unnecessary and a bit rude. Staff aside, the room was great.