Public Address | Cafe | Stories: Hotels

Joanna

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 16:31:40 +1200

It's not a particularly interesting story but I stayed in the Hotel on Devonport in Tauranga this weekend, and it was probably one of the best hotel experiences I've had, and I really really recommend it to everyone. It gets bonus points for having huge suede headboards you…

Beatrix

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 03:38:24 +1300

I tend to spot hotels and then return to stay there. The Twin Peaks Motor Lodge in Taupo HAD to be visited, if just for amusing sign photos. The Lodge itself was totally fine, if completely NON-weird. And had NO PIE. Next in line is the Klansman up North, which…

Stewart

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:14:09 +1300

Haven't really got stories of extremes in hotels, either good or bad. I've stayed in a number of very good, very expensive hotels (I have a wife that likes to be indulged and what's money any good for if you're not spending it making the one you love happy?).

On…

Steve Barnes

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 09:12:40 +1300

It's good to know we are all groan people here :-)

Sacha

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 23:11:53 +1300

Suppose I'd better say something about hotels. A few short stay Welli examples. I enjoyed the Copthorne Oriental Bay – easy walk across to the beach and well laid out rooms, good staff, decent food, etc.

Museum Hotel apartment wing was cool, quirky style and good staff – but crap…

Sacha

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 23:00:41 +1300

Appreciatively.

Russell Brown

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:42:30 +1300

I second the groaning.

Islander

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:41:20 +1300

OK Steve B, obligatory (appreciative) groooan-

linger

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:31:27 +1300

spattering of luxury

Well, quite. Still, it could be worse, as described by Peter Moore... Damn, that's an ugly site. The same book is here at Amazon.

linger

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:24:48 +1300

the Victoria Hotel on Little Collins Street in Melbourne

I liked that hotel! Are my standards too low? (I paid for one of the 'upmarket' rooms, though.)

Your standards are up to you, but: I actually stayed there once, in 2003, again in one of the 'upmarket' rooms. The university I…

Steve Barnes

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:21:49 +1300

I remember the Sultan Ahmet in Istanbul vividly.
The sign outside proclaimed "Western Style Lavatory" so, having had a gutsfull of Asian style "Lavatories" I figured this would be spattering of luxury. On entering the bathroom I discovered the aforementioned device, it was full to the brim with, well, what…

Steve Barnes

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:06:50 +1300

The Stradivarius Hotel.
Now there was a vile inn
Fnahh fnahh

Sam F

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:13:16 +1300

Very much a hotel newbie here – the nicest place I can remember staying is the Royal Seoul on a stopover at the end of 2006. A very good room for airline-paid accomodation, and the view was incredible – although I may have just been dazzled by the sheer neon…

Craig Ranapia

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 12:32:25 +1300

I liked that hotel! Are my standards too low?

If they are — so are mine. Adored the place — reasonably priced, good location and I wasn't accosted by a pair of identical twins inviting me to play with them. Forever. Then again, start the day off with all the…

Rob Hosking

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 11:29:09 +1300

First Job, in Whakatane, Feb 1983. I was 18. Got put up at the Whakatane Hotel til I got a place.

Small room, with one bed – a wire mattress which sagged lower than our current account deficit. One washbasin in the corner, which rattled everytime anyone else on the…

Simon Grigg

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 09:03:13 +1300

Last month in Dubai, the hotel car from the Niwa Heights Hotel took us to a meeting at an industrial park. We'd agreed on a price with the hotel after they had convinced us not to use a meter cab. After leaving the meeting, on our return, the driver tried…

Danielle

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 08:48:57 +1300

the Victoria Hotel on Little Collins Street in Melbourne

I liked that hotel! Are my standards too low? (I paid for one of the 'upmarket' rooms, though.)

Ben Chapman

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 20:23:35 +1300

When I asked at a hotel in Udaipur, India when taking a room whether the sheets were clean I was told "Don't worry, they haven't been used by an Indian."

Craig Ranapia

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 16:16:27 +1300

There is the Victoria Hotel on Little Collins Street in Melbourne (behind the Town Hall) which used to be the preferred destination for squatters come to town for a little discrete disipation, but has move slightly down market over the years. Now, it's kind of like The Overlook out of…

Joanna

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 15:38:57 +1300

When I stayed at the Quest Ponsonby, I slept with the window open, after getting very very drunk and woke up going "Oh fuck, who's in bed with me?" because I could hear people talking – but it turned out it was just noise from the cafe in the courtyard.…

Joe Wylie

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 19:43:59 +1300

The Constellation in Vientiane, Laos, in 1975. Immortalised by John Le Carre in The Honourable Schoolboy , but since fallen on harder times. Half a bloodstained sheet on the bed, and the hand-held shower head detached right in your hand. Presumably the rumoured CIA bugs planted in the walls were…

Simon Grigg

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 14:52:37 +1300

The Quest on The Terrace

The Quest on Ponsonby Rd is one of the most execrable dumps on the planet.

'Why is Our Room not made up?'
'Sorry, she missed it'
"Can you do it now?'
'No, she's gone home'
'When?'
'Tomorrow is her day off too so we are…

Islander

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:26:10 +1300

Sorry, – Kyle. This was the time when the more lavish your treatment of significant media figures meant, the more airtime/column inches etc. you got. That's probably a dead gamble now-

Islander

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:59:38 +1300

20thC thinking eh Kayle?

Islander

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:57:46 +1300

Oooo Jackie! My Mum & I judge ALL black forest cherry cakes by the early 1980's James Cook version! We've hunted equivalents round the world (and v. seldom found 'em...}
My standard is – how do they do fish? Raw, and/or cooked? Mary's is beef fillet.(Since I dont generally eat meat,…

Kyle Matthews

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:53:01 +1300

And never more than the time Nokia flew me to Singapore for the launch of a new phone (no, really) and put me up in the Ritz Carlton, along with journalists from all over the Asia-Pacific region.

There's an irony when a mobile phone company flies a bunch of journalists…

Jackie Clark

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:41:21 +1300

Hotels. Now there's something I used to know quite a lot about. When I was a child – from the ages of 10 through 18 – every year, for three weeks in the May holidays, my mum and dad, and two younger brothers and I would go on a trek…

Rich of Observationz

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:26:43 +1300

The Quadrant in Auckland is ok.

And the LivingSpace in Christchurch, which tolerated us having heaps of oddly dressed people for a pre-fetish-ball party.

Islander

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:45:42 +1300

Hey! You've got an edit button!
(I liked 'snakier'-)

Russell Brown

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:34:37 +1300

By no means all the trips when I was an IT journalist in the 90s constituted a junket — but a few did. And never more than the time Nokia flew me to Singapore for the launch of a new phone (no, really) and put me up in [[http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g294265-d302231-Reviews-Ritz_Carlton_Millenia_Singapore-Singapore.html|the Ritz…

Islander

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:53:55 +1300

Did a *lot* of travelling that involved staying in hotels & motels in the
1980s and 1990s (all of it in 1st-world countries.) Some of it was over-the-top grandiose (The Mayflower in Washington, where my mother asked for a large bed (she's not a small woman) and got a single bed…

Sacha

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:09:49 +1300

But what was the hotel like before its conversion?

Spartan?

Bart Janssen

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:07:46 +1300

But what was the hotel like before its conversion?

We walked past several similar places as we wandered the alleys in Damascus. Some like ours had been renovated. Some were shells with bars on the windows and filled with rubble. Apparently many of them are still owned by Jewish families…

Rich Lock

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:07:21 +1300

how do you fight a monkey?

Get drunk first?

linger

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:55:34 +1300

ended up somewhat randomly in this hotel in Damascus
Yeah, that happened to a bloke called Paul, once...

But what was the hotel like before its conversion?

Bart Janssen

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:28:08 +1300

Yeah, that happened to a bloke called Paul, once...

Yeah I think we saw the tomb that purported to contain his head ... or was that John's head ... someone's head anyways.

To expand on our hotel experience a bit.

We had crossed the border from Jordan to Syria earlier…

Blake Monkley

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 15:50:06 +1300

I know this sounds kind of comical, but it really isn't.

We stayed in Varanasi, India where we shared the hotel floors with monkeys. Many of these monkeys were bigger than me and totally not scared by humans.The hotel managements answer to the problem was to give you a long…

Rob Hosking

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 15:20:17 +1300

ended up somewhat randomly in this hotel in Damascus

Yeah, that happened to a bloke called Paul, once...

Russell Brown

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 15:10:21 +1300

The Quest on The Terrace — a vile office conversion — used to be top of my list of Wellington hotels to avoid but it may have improved since its refurbishment.

Quest on Gilmer claims to be four-star, but beware of its cheaper rooms. They looking nothing like the pictures…

Danielle

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:55:56 +1300

ended up somewhat randomly in this hotel in Damascus

Holy crap. In a good way.

I've stayed in a motel in a small Louisiana town with plastic mattress covers. No matter how little you moved, the bed squeaked all night, waking you up. Frankly, I think most of their customers…

Bart Janssen

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:47:40 +1300

We just did an amazing trip round the middle east and ended up somewhat randomly in this hotel in Damascus. Really the pictures show only half the joy of the place. We really did get to sleep in that four poster bed and the staff were great.
If you get…

Russell Brown

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:44:39 +1300

The worst hotel I've ever stayed in wasn't particularly dirty — but it was weirdly depressing.

I arrived at the Swan & Dolphin, Walt Disney World Resort, Orlando, Florida, about 4am; the last to be dropped off by the airport shuttle after flying for ever.

I got up about 8am, a…

Geoff Lealand

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:46:22 +1300

Paper darts, or the spiky pub kind?

Papers darts--but the pub kind might have attracted more attention.

On the local front, the Princeton Towers in Symonds Street are pretty 'orrible. Stayed there so my daughter could cosplay at Armageddon. After the first night, we had 23 bath towels, in a…

Emma Hart

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 12:58:19 +1300

When I was little I used to spend a fair bit of time in the hotels my father stayed in. That started in the seventies, but the tacky (in all senses) brown and orange carpets never changed. The definitive stuck in the seventies scungy hotel was the Hydro Grand. My…

Andrew Stevenson

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 12:56:21 +1300

Stayed in a backpackers in London (Bayswater I think) where the shower had been converted from half a small wardrobe making it approx 30 cm wide. It was not possible to turn around in this space.
You had to put shampoo on your hands and raise them above head height…

Kumara Republic

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 12:29:28 +1300

To brighten things up a bit...

A couple of years back I stayed at the Rainbow Hotel not far west of the Sky Tower during the Armageddon Expo. It's a well-kept place that's perfect bang for your buck. Don't be put off by the Engrish on the website – I…

Jolisa

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 11:40:46 +1300

But our children found it all very exciting--especially firing darts at the school-ground seven stories below.

Paper darts, or the spiky pub kind?

Geoff Lealand

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 11:11:06 +1300

Maybe once in Paris in 2004. The sink drained directly on to the floor, and there was a window problem: leave them open, to reduce the overpowering mouldy odour but this mean't that small flocks of pigeons flew indoors. The poor Canadians, two floors down, were completely flooded out. But…

ScottY

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 11:04:36 +1300

I've endured plenty of fleapits around the world, but here's one place I don't think I'll be staying any time soon:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/2278438/Five-star-hotel-boss-slams-one-star-parked-cars

Russell Brown

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 10:52:56 +1300

Fixed now ...

Kyle Matthews

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 10:49:53 +1300

That first link is broken Russell.

Russell Brown

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 09:56:36 +1300

The world's worst hotels were recently listed, including the most disgusting in America and Britain. Share your own stories of bad, good, awful, excellent and interesting places you've stayed.