Peppers Salt Resort & Spa Kingscliff — Hotel in Kingscliff

This is the second time we have stayed here - the first time was terrible. Staff in the restaurants were rude and the food terrible. But this time was downright ridiculous. Arriving about 1.45pm the line was near the front door and no one was at the Accor membership desk. by the time i got to the reception desk the lady was polite and ‘checked me in’ taking my credit card….then told me my room wasn’t ready 2.05pm. I was confused and she asked me to wait - after 20mins I stood at the Accor desk where she told me to , and a woman was helping another but handing out keys - i interjected myself very politely, tired of waiting and was told that i can leave the hotel ‘if i wanted to’ and they will call me! 2.50pm i walked back in and waited again until finally being served and told it was only just now ready. Got to the room which was what we booked - it was clean but the furniture pretty old and tacky, but we didn’t care as we had the spa bath, kitchen and hinterland view we wanted - we unpacked and settled in to watch tv that was able to be swivelled from the wall to watch in bed - but couldn’t for the life of us work out how to get channels on the tv which had three remotes. Rang reception told me to click a certain button didn’t work. Rang reception again to get help but at this stage my husband was literally pressing every key out of frustration and somehow got it working - we still don’t know how we did it. Although the room we booked stated satellite tv channels it only had local channels and was old so no chance of screen sharing Netflix from our phone.Went to the shops for maybe 30mins come back to water everywhere on tiled floors pouring out the front of the air con unit and slipped over. Rang reception again but it was one of those short conversations where i didn’t trust that he even understood , so I go down to reception and was told they sent someone - not one person asked if I or my husband was ok and low and behold after all that they had to move us to another room because there was no overflow on the air con unit!We had to pack everything up and I had to ask for a luggage trolley as none was offered , packed up the room and had to go back to reception and again, Had to sit around waiting some more! Another 30 or so minutes of sitting at reception. Got to the room same layout and ….we have a fantastic view of the front car park with no privacy whatsoever, when the room we booked states hinterland views .all I wanted to do was take a hot bath, proceeded to go and turn taps on the tub and guess what? Brown dirty water mark staining all around the bath, it wasn’t even clean! The TV was newer but could only turn side to side and couldn’t be watched from bed. Tried to get some movie channels and was excited by seeing nextflix and prime on the remote but it wouldn’t connect - rang reception to be told that none of the Resort tvs have internet connection…funny how the room we booked stated free movies and satellite tv! On top of it when they gave us the new keys they took our free drink vouchers lol. What a joke this place is.Customer service? There is none - the absolute worst hotel I have ever encountered and you can forget about the staff even showing any sort of empathy or care factor, clearly this is the norm for them. Do not waste your money here and don’t be fooled by its name - it is no where near the standard of other Peppers resort. Tried to get refund for night 2 but Accor said it’s up to hotel - couldn’t be bothered to speak to the staff again and as if they’d give a refund - staff here don’t take responsibility for anything except blaming housekeeping and being...

Not sure where the 5 star comes from to be honest. Our room was great but we paid for the suite so I can only comment on the suite. Pool area also really good. The rest of our experience was woefully substandard.

Staff: In desperate need of customer service training. Saw very little management on the premises. Almost exclusively kids. And they really had no idea about customer experience. At check in, there was a grumpy older man at the desk who told me he couldn’t help me because he was on a call. He wasn’t. And proceeded to chat to the next guy who came to the counter 30 seconds later. Bad start. I didn't see a single staff member over 4 days crack a smile. Ben was about the only person I saw smile. The rest was honestly they were hostages. It was truly awful. Tables rarely cleaned when people left as you can see from my photo, at one stage there were crackers on the floor being eaten by a turkey. At one point a girl with red hair came out and served a table, standing on the crackers and looking down at them in the process. In a 5 star resort it’s ok that the place is messy from time to time but she just left it there after noticing it. That’s not good enough. Several people walked past without cleaning it up. Again, 5 star resorts you expect staff who actually care about creating an enjoyable experience and place for residents. Total opposite. Collectively, the staff just couldn’t care less and took no pride in maintaining a “resort”. Everything seemed like a chore. Tables would be left with empty glasses for hours. I had a beer in the hotel lobby, went for a meal in the Indian across the way and when I came back 2 hours later my empty glasses was still on the table I left it on. On another occasion a turkey had knocked over some ketchup on a table. As the girl was cleaning the glasses off the table she saw the ketchup over the table, said “ew” brought the glasses back to the bar and never came back to clean the ketchup off the table. Instead, the next resident that sat there had to do it. Paying a couple of hundred bucks a night and has to clean ketchup off his table before he sits at it. Your staff are miles off it unfortunately.

Room: Really good. Good air conditioning. Bed and pillows excellent and very comfortable. Bathroom and shower also excellent. No complaints about the room. Full foxtel too with sports etc.

Location: Not much around bar 4/5 restaurants. Expensive buffet breakfast on site but it is quite good. Local mart is extortionately priced. But it’s not a bad location if you want a chilled out few days. You’ll get it. Good place to totally switch off.

Amenities: Bar is very limited. 2 tap beers and A handful of bottled beer. Pool is great. I dont think though given the rates the hotel is charging that residents should have to pay $35 a day to use an adjacent gym. Found that to be a bit rich and just the cherry on top of what was a very ordinary experience.

In summary it’s probably a 3.5 star hotel run by 1 star staff. So much potential but the staff don’t smile and they don’t care about the environment the residents are in. Place is upside down most of the time. If it has staff who cared and actually made a bit of effort it would be a much better...

We should have stayed home DAY ONE.

On arrival, we checked in, were given a piece of paper with our room details on it. As we are in our 70s, we asked if we could get help with our luggage. We were advised that “There are trollies in the car park.”

We arrived at the car park, and parked in a disabled spot. Alas! No trollies anywhere. Then we looked at our information and reception had forgotten to write down our room number. We only had the wing number and the floor number. So I phoned reception and asked for our room number. We dragged our heavy luggage through a labyrinth of hallways until we found our room. We entered, dropped our heavy luggage and sat down relieved. We looked around and realised this was the wrong room. This was a hotel room, and we had upgraded to a suite.

I tried three times to ring reception, unsuccessfully. So I trudged back to reception, handed in the old key and was reassigned a suite with an apology. We struggled to get our luggage out of both doors. We now trudged to the opposite end of the complex. We passed through reception, where 10 or so people were lined up. The place was obviously understaffed. Finally, we arrived at our lovely suite. In the bathroom I found black mould at the base of the taps.

DAY 2 We recuperated from day 1. We rang reception and asked for someone to come up and show us how to use the TV/remote. I had to ring a second time to finally get someone.

DAY 3 3.40 AM. We were awakened by the fire alarm. This announcements and noise went on for an eternity. I have PTSD considering and could not get back to sleep.. I thought we may have been offered a free coffee or a drink of some sort in the way of softening the terrible night we experienced.

DAY 4 My wife had eventually managed to get back to sleep and rose at 10am.. We decided we should go and have a coffee. It seems that you cannot get a coffee at Peppers until 11.00 am, that's when the pool bar opens. I asked reception where I could get a coffee in-house. My wife was told that the restaurant would make her a coffee, but when she got there she was told that the machine was no longer available as it was being cleaned..If they clean the machine during the day, what do they do at night? We went to a local cafe within a very short walk of Peppers where we found a better tasting coffee at a lower price (Peppers doesnt do themselves any favours) We decided to go for a drive and as we approached the car could see that it was splatter with bird poop. We contacted reception, who told us that the birds are an ongoing problem but to go to the "high vehicle parking" as there is a hose there and we (Us) could wash the bird poop off. When we got down to the hose, we found that the hose had no attachments. They’d been cut off both ends. Now, you may be thinking, he’s a grumpy old bloke who complains about everything. You would be wrong. Whilst we were not expecting 5 Star service at Peppers, we did look forward to a pleasant, relaxing, well-run establishment with perhaps an inkling of pampering. We experienced none...