Whitsunday Apartments Hamilton Island — Hotel in Hamilton Island

Positives Note that all comments below are written from the perspective of two people who are neurodivergent, with one of them also having a disability and needing a wheelchair/walker. We stayed here for 1 week in total.

The place itself has amazing views out on to Catseye Beach from higher floors. Always nice to look out during different times of the day to see what is going on outside.

It's also very easy to get around. Catseye Beach is less than 5 minutes walk away, the pool and spa is in front of the hotel, and you can either walk to the main road with IGA and restaurants/reef tours (15 minutes) or catch a free shuttle bus that comes around every 15 minutes and takes less than 10 minutes to get to the main Street.

The apartment size was good. It was easy to move around the bedroom and lounge area with the wheelchair and still have plenty of space. Note here that the wheelchair user can walk a little so the standard size bathroom and kitchen worked OK for us.

The air conditioning and fans work really well to keep the place cool and comfortable.

Negatives Firstly, we found the customer service/resort manager and cleaning staff very hit and miss. This included: Reporting a broken oven but being told by the resort manager we just didn't know how to use it. When we later requested someone to show us how, they found it was broken and needed replacing. Rung up randomly the day before and asked why we haven't checked out. Reception had mistakenly recorded out dates and wanted us to leave. Cleaning staff did not care how loud or noisy they were, and were not particularly friendly. They would quite often spend time chatting and telling in the corridor and disturbing you, or listening to loud music during cleaning that was very audible. No late checkout was provided, which is fair enough but the receptionist was very unfriendly when we asked. Issues with the apartment itself: Noise! The noise insulation between places is pretty bad, but it's just awful if you're in the West 01 apartments. Those have windows that look out to a loading bay where garbage is collected and linen cleaned for multiple hotels. Think fortlifts reversing noises and garbage being dumped randomly from 6am to 10pm. The ramps to the entry doors they provide are not suitable for wheelchairs. Need a partner to help get you in. There was also a step down/over to the balcony and no ramp was provided. The apartment lacked basic amenities you'd expect. For example, it has an oven but no oven gloves provided. We had to buy our own set. The appliances and cookware were very dated and old. The sort of style where you'd probably have thrown it out yourself as they seem to be many years old and heavily used The internet/WiFi was very poor. We ended up not using it as it was inconsistent and the mobile reception was much better than the constant pausing and slow loads the WiFi was giving us.

For a $400-$500 a night place we expected...

Quite possibly the most depressing accommodation I’ve had the misfortune of booking. You arrive at the property and it looks like they’ve deposited a hotel block from Benidorm on an island in the tropics, it’s so ugly and has no business being in such a beautiful place. The room is big and that’s the end of the list of redeeming qualities, the hallway to get there looks like the mezzanine floor of a Turkish prison, the furniture is straight out of episode 2 of Dallas, the kitchen equipment is from a university bed sit and the knives couldn’t cut cheese. As for cleanliness well the floors were so filthy that after a quick browse of the rooms our feet looked like we’d done a barefoot tour of mount doom, covered in black dirt and grit. There were handprints and questionable liquid stains on the walls and every single item in the kitchen had a weird grease film on it like cleaning had been attempted with a sweaty loincloth.

Hamilton island itself is a strange place, all clearly owned and run by the same company (even when it’s made to look like it isn’t) it’s like being in a weird black comedy, your waiter from the restaurant in the marina is checking you out of your room in the hotel in the morning. Everything is a rip off, the food is all terrible and the guests that are enjoying themselves are all a weird parody of all inclusive hotel guests from the 90s. If they were animatronic and part of the ‘experience’ I wouldn’t be surprised. All this for the low low price of 550 dollars a night.

To sum up do yourself a favour and stay anywhere else, anywhere other than the Hamilton island companies weird dystopian resort for...

WAHI

Pros: Close to the beach, beach pavillion and 3 pools. You can get a drink from beach pavilion and laze by the pool and/or the beach barefoot. Apartments are spacious, loungers on the balcony are a great idea. Kitchen was in very good order, fridge was top quality. Which is handy in the Whitsundays for seafood. You get a kitchen, so you can cook breakfast and enjoy it at your own pace instead of the hell that is a breakfast buffet in a hotel. Great view. Close to walking trails.

Cons: No cafetière/french press in the room. So you have to drink their nasty instant coffee when you get up. Could do with a bit of insulation strip inbetween the patio doors so that they don’t whistle on high wind days. No bar, not much of anything really, have to go to the reef hotel next door for any food or drink. Seems to be entirely staffed by trainees (hopefully). Every question is too much to handle. The staff have a sort of deer in the headlights look every time you as them a question. Like you are about to tell them that Polly and Manuel have found a dead body in room 624 or something. It then takes them a good while to process what you said and it turns out to be a normal hotel enquiry. Signs everywhere, this is a Hamilton Island and Queensland thing in general, but the entire environment in this place is ruined by warning signs for absolutely everything. Housekeeping didn’t replace the shampoo at all. Must have forgotten. If you’re going to rent an apartment out with 2 DVD players, perhaps buy some DVDs for...