Hotel TOTTO Wollongong — Hotel in Wollongong City Council

So damned close!|On paper, and at first glance, this hotel seems to nail it as a more budget-friendly property. Unfortunately, the longer you stay the more you see that it's being badly let down by poor management, and pretty much all of the more recent reviews back this up. This is my second stay of a week or more during the last 6 months. During my first stay I felt Totto missed the mark slightly, mainly but not exclusively with the housekeeping. This time however, I see the same housekeeping problems still exist and now there are additional cracks becoming clearly evident across the operation.|The incredibly noisy aircon units and the noise from the street (and from the other rooms) and cheap lumpy beds and pillows are mentioned often by reviewers and they are very true issues, but to me those are problems that management can't really do much about without going to huge expense to replace windows or aircon units or all the beds. To me those are things I can put up with for paying a reasonably thrifty room rate (shop around - I saw rates for the same room that ranged from as high as $185/ngt to as reasonable as $125/ngt PLUS a daily $25 food credit). But things like the housekeeping staff continually omitting linen changes, the restaurant/cafe being closed 2 days per week and the poor food and beverage policy are things that can be changed easily and quickly - overnight really - if dealt with by a capable hotel manager. |On this occasion my room rate for a week included a daily $25 credit towards food and drinks. It's a clever way of ensuring there's at least $25 per room per day going to the restaurant, but the restaurant is closed for dinner 2 nights of the week and since hotel policy is that the credit cannot be carried over to the following day and I never eat before midday, I missed out on $50 of those credits. Even if you do eat breakfast the new buffet style offering is poor in my opinion, and at $35 per person (not including any hot drinks) is WAY overpriced for what you get.|There are a lot of other small things that are becoming apparent as the recent-ish renovation ages (mould in the shower, scuff marks all over the internal walls, tables in the restaurant left uncleaned for 30 minutes or more while waiting staff comes and goes, food orders being 'lost' in the restaurant etc etc), and it's pretty obvious that management is just letting standards slide. Some managers might think that a few shortcomings here and there won't be noticed by their customers, but they are wrong. ||I'd love to say this hotel is a great choice for the budget-minded, but it just...

Not sure if this was a booking.com or hotel issue, but we modified our 2 night booking to 3 nights, however when we went to check in, only the original 2 night booking was in the system (even though we received the modification confirmation a week prior). Good news was that the modified booking price was honoured, however due to hotel capacity (Christmas period), we might need to change rooms for the 3rd night. Thankfully, Emily at the front desk was able to sort this out for us (thank you!).

Issues continued when we got to our room, the aircon was not working properly and blowing hot air (not ideal with mid 30 degree celsius temperature at the time). Emily, was able to help us again with a pedestal fan (and a bottle of chilled wine to help us to acclimatise). Unfortunately, this room was still too hot to sleep in, and thankfully Emily found us a new room, but the issue was that this room was not public ready and did not have a door handle for the bathroom (was fixed the next day - but not ideal). While the aircon worked in this room, like MANY of the reviews have mentioned, it was extremely loud (approx. 56.8 dBA), to the point that we had to turn it off to be able to sleep and just relied on the pedestal fan.

Agree with other comments that there needs to be exhaust installed in bathrooms - the vent that was in the bathroom was filthy. And not sure why you wouldn't install double glazed windows when doing the refurbishment of the hotel (cost cutting) or invest in known/ reliable commercial air conditioning units instead of what I can only imagine where purchased from Temu.

Overall, the service was great and staff did their best to address issues that were not of their making. Small room size and lack of wardrobe weren't really an issue for us - we knew this prior to booking. The lobby was very nice and the breakfast and pizza we had were great, however the issues mentioned above would mean we would probably not stay again if they are...

Very mid experience, stayed in Wollongong as it was a bit cheaper than Sydney but after staying there one night, we figured we should’ve spent a little more somewhere else and actually felt comfortable in our rooms. Not terrible price, as we had parking, breakfast, drink on arrival and a $25 food/drink credit. The espresso martini was the best I’ve had The buffet was cold, yet we were one of the first to arrive, eggs are cooked to order but came out so much later and were very undercooked, my partner had poached eggs and they popped over his bread and the plate was covered in water. The coffee was terrible, they girl at the bar/desk was super lovely and remade it but it was not drinkable. The rooms are way too small for 2 people to be comfortable, no hanging space, the beds are as old as the building, the the sheet on the mattress was a flat sheet and just came off, the duvet had what looked like blood stains on it, pillows were terrible, the bathroom was okay but I’m 5’2 and average weight and I could barely turn around in the shower without touching the walls, the water pressure was horrible and it was either boiling hot or freezing cold, and the entire floor was covered in water after coz the gaps are massive. The room overall was so small but mostly just felt disgusting and dirty. Did not wake up feeling refreshed and didn’t get out of the shower feeling clean, the cups were too dirty to use, so gross!! Pretty disappointing experience, considering we traveled 6 hours either way and had a couple big days of walking etc, then coming back to a crappy room the cost $260+ per night. The staff were pretty helpful and definitely nice, it’s just a shame the rooms are so neglected and dirty. Wouldn’t recommend to anyone wanting to...