Mantra Amphora Palm Cove — Hotel in Palm Cove

There are a lot of apartment options in Palm Cove, most of which claim to be 4 or 4.5 star accommodation. It is worth doing your research, including calling in advance and asking about the things that are important to you. Don't ask if the room has a TV. Ask if it has a modern smart TV with apps or which you can stream to (if that is important to you). Don't ask if they have Wi-Fi, ask if they have free fast Wi-Fi included at no cost, etc).

In my opinion Mantra Amphora might be 3 stars.

We stayed with a group of families, totalling 5 apartments. So the first thing I can tell you is that there is no consistency across the apartments. e.g. some are well maintained, have big new modern fridges, etc, and some don't. If you want to self cater, then make absolutely certain you are allocated an apartment with a modern kitchen, big new(ish) fridge, new(ish) microwave, dishwasher, etc.

If you or your kids enjoy streaming movies, online content etc, then this place is not for you. We don't watch a huge amount, but it is nice in the evenings, and especially if it is raining heavily. When we arrived, the one television in our room looked like it was about 15 years old, and frankly I would not ask my worst enemy to watch it. It made a bad buzzing noise, seemingly the power supply slowly failing. NO smart features or streaming apps. It took the staff three days and a fairly major tantrum on my part for the television to be replaced. I call it a television because that is all it is (I mean the new replacement one). Not a smart TV, impossible to stream to it, no apps, etc. We packed a Chromecast (in case of emergency), however the way the WiFi is configured, it is impossible to stream from a smartphone to a Chromecast. We also note that other apartments had multiple screens (in the living room, the bedrooms, etc), but ours only had one (and as noted, it looked like something from the year 1998). I do note, our room had a CD player (circa 1994). So again, inconsistencies across the different apartments. It seems that the management of this facility are not keeping up to date with basic guest expectations around entertainment options.

This facility does not offer free guest Wi-Fi (huh???). They try to blackmail you into signing up to an Accor hotels promotions scheme if you want to use the Wi-Fi. Otherwise you have to pay for it (and it's expensive and limited). I had a tantrum over this, and eventually the staff relented and gave us the password (I recommend pushing back when the staff here forget that they work in 'hospitality').

NOTE: there are NO elevators and 3 levels of accommodation. If you have a disability or hate carrying heavy luggage, kids, prams, or shopping up many flights of stairs, I suggest choosing a more modern accessible hotel. The hotel is open and honest about this on their website, nonetheless, it's an odd design choice (in my humble opinion).

The rooms and living areas are gloomy like a funeral parlour (even during the day). I dunno, maybe the wrong paint shade?? The lighting looks (and works) like something from the 1970's.

Good large pool which is very well fenced (safe resort for kids).

Our apartment had good air-conditioning, but as noted earlier, don't assume all apartments are the same. If this is important to you (it should be in Cairns) then make sure all rooms and lounge in your apartment has new(ish) split system air-conditioners.

Good car parking.

Awesome water pressure in the shower.

Well located near the Palm Cove Esplanade and all the action.

Coming back to my opening statement, this place is most certainly not 4.5 stars, so keep that in mind when comparing prices with other accommodation.

We stayed at the Alamanda last time, and we would definitely choose it again over Mantra Amphora (even though the Alamanda is much older, nor does it have elevators, it has been better maintained and with modern fitout, not gloomy, great...

We booked directly through mantra. On making the booking (3-4 months before travelling) we requested a downstairs apartment as I had a heavily pregnant wife, a toddler in a pram and a I have a bad back.

Mantra took our money in full a month before we travelled. Happy to take our money when it suited them. Prior to arrival 2 days before I rang to check they had our request for downstairs and was assured that housekeeping would sort it out.

Upon arrival after a 13 hour trip. We were told not only were we not downstairs but we were nearly as far from the office as we could be. There were 3 individual sets of stairs to navigate and at no point did any staff member offer to assist us to our room.

When questioned about downstairs we were told there was nothing that could be done.

Upon arriving in our room we had requested a cot for our toddler. The cot was NOT set up. Just sitting in a pile in a corner. This was $10 a day extra as a hire and housekeeping just dumped it in there.

We stayed for 4 days out of our 7 days and flew home. We were completely disgusted at mantra. I expressed at the time that we wanted to be followed up with and moved to a downstairs room. NO ONE MADE CONTACT WITH US THE WHOLE TRIP. NO ONE CARED ABOUT OUR SITUATION.

We have NEVER had such a poor experience at a mantra hotel. We now will always look to at alternatives rather than with mantra group of hotels again.

Your staff were completely unhelpful and clearly guest satisfaction is not important. It’s the quiet season and it was very quiet in palm cove. Seems mantra staff happy to take foot of the accelerator and just coast along.

We were beyond disappointed with our experience. We want a call from mantra management to follow this up. Mantra in no uncertain terms destroyed our family holiday.

Our room was also teeming with cockroaches. 9 of them in total in 3 days.

There is NO toilet in the pool area and people were openly laughing about how everyone just urinates in the pool. My god how sick people must be getting when there’s 100 people an hour urinating in a pool.

There was nothing about our trip that stood out to us at all. A waste of...

I'll start with good. - the pool and the price.

The pool is amazing, its basically a sprawling waterpark perfectly suitable for all ages with various zones and depths. it's really good. The price was relatively cheap. also, staff are friendly

The bad.

Our room smelt strongly of unpleasant mildew. There were two aircon units in the room, one emitted a highly unpleasant smell when turned on. Our one bedroom apartment wasn't adequately equipped with kitchen implements, one example being the only cutting board in the room was the size of a small cheese board. The dishwasher emitted an unpleasant odour after use. The guttering around the building overflows There is no housekeeping service available Our young daughter had an accident on the bed, the staff at reception gave us new sheets and said they would send the housekeeping to provide a new mattress protector the next day as they did not have one at reception - housekeeping never came. The day spa was closed during our 5 day stay.

My biggest issue is that this hotel represents itself as a four star hotel. I don't believe it gets close to being four stars by anyone's definition. There's no onsite dinning (Vivo's may be technically onsite, but it's closed most of the day an doesn't appear to service the hotel directly), the day spa was closed, there is no daily housekeeping, and I have stayed in motels on the Nullarbor that have better better equiped and higher quality rooms than the one provided.

The hotel is tired and old and needs to undergo full refurbishment. Whilst I appreciate that some of these problems are down to a staffing shortage in the Cairns' area, this doesn't explain away lack of maintenance and the basic problems...