Eichardt's Private Hotel — Hotel in South Island

Not worth it, do not book it. Worst hotel experience to date. Worth the long read on.

From the 27-29/7, my husband and I stayed at the suite during our 10 day stay in Queenstown for our honeymoon. Eichardts was one of the 5-star hotels we had stayed at, and was second most expensive, but the worst.

Pros - Nice rooms, good food quality.

Cons - Service and staffing 100% Sadly, the service, amenities, and overall experience really added a negative impact to our honeymoon.

Our experience - We had arrived early at 1130am, and were greeted with not the most friendly of welcomes. We were told visit their lounge and have some coffee. We were then taken upstairs by a lady, with another family who she had offered the menu too - but not us. Not sure why. So we left.

For breakfast at the restaurant, we had sat for 20 mins before someone had bought out the menus for us. The same waiter come and took the menus back, as she had thought we already ordered food lol. Later on, she bought out the wrong coffee orders, which we informed her right away. She then pointed to the slip and said “but this is what it says here”, implying WE gave the wrong order.

After returning from our tours, we had returned to our rooms for a shower. After showering, we found our room with no towels and were left standing dripping wet in the cold. We called reception explaining our situation, only for her to say “what would you like me to do”. Obviously we needed some towels please.. 30 minutes later.. still no towels. We called again to remind, and she said “oh they didn’t give to you? coming”. When she came, again no apology. This had upset us, and created un awkward, uncomfortable and very cold situation. On this note, there was also no toilet paper restocked, so you can imagine the awkwardness when we found this out.

Included in our package were daily drinks and canapés. On our second day, we had to call to remind the staff of this. They responded “just letting you know- they are the same as yesterday, do you still want them…?”. Of course we did, we paid for this? When the canapés were bought to our room.. the utensils were dropped on the floor. The staff member did not apologise, and was “sighing” very loud while in our room.

We had booked Eichardts for 2 nights and were so uncomfortable the whole stay, but felt it was not worth bringing this to the attention to the staff present as they were the ones who made us feel uncomfortable. Booking the most prestigious hotel in QT, we were shocked to not even receive the basic level of service. We sucked it up, and stayed our full stay and moved onto our next hotel, the Spire. We had not realise this was their sister hotel.

Upon check in, we were greeted better than our first stay at Eichardts. We returned later at check in time, and saw the same staff from Eichardts, and were not even greeted to one hello. A look up to notice we were there, and then looked back down. Extremely rude.

We went into our room and there was acknowledgement of it being our honeymoon (the only hotel that lacked this). We had requested a higher floor, but were given on level 1, which was uncomfortable as the public walking outside could literally see everything inside. We called to request a higher floor. This staff member simply replied with “What about ear plugs”. We said no. She had replied with “No, its fully booked” We went online and saw there were 2 rooms still availible night. This was enough - we could not be in this place like this anymore, and had to request to cancel the rest of our stay, and find anywhere availible at 6pm a Wednesday night in Queesntown. That is how bad our experience with this company was. Words could not describe the overall bad vibes we experience during our stay.

By the looks of the rest of these reviews, it seems like the hotel lack to acknowledge any reviews. But we hope to bring the reader awareness of the issues we had, so that you do not experience the same...

Underwhelming. We wanted to love our stay at Eichardts but unfortunately we were left feeling a bit underwhelmed. We did not receive the premium service that you would expect from a premium hotel. At $1700nzd per night, the lack of attention to detail was really disappointing. We stayed in the 2 bedroom apartment (27th - 2nd June). I’ll list a few details below.

Apartment was lovely and well equipped for our family of 4. Nice views out to the lake and mountains. Wonderful location, reception staff were lovely.

BUT

Tv was covered by a piece of artwork that you then had to lift up and it stayed sticking out horizontally, you wouldn’t want to be a taller person staying in this room as you’d have to duck under it. We weren’t too bothered by this but about half way through our stay the internet to the tv stopped working. This meant no smart tv features were able to be used (Netflix, Disney etc.) having 2 young kids this wasn’t ideal. We called and a gentleman came to our room to try and a fix the tv. He fiddled with the remote a couple of times and tried switching tv off and back on but had no luck. He mentioned he was finishing soon so we told him not to worry and and he left. He didn’t even check the network settings on the tv… he also mentioned they have this issue a lot. Their remotes are also very temperamental and you have to push a button many times for it to actually do anything.

Food: Included daily breakfasts were delicious but Restaurant was closed for 2 of the days we were there meaning we were unable to order anything to get delivered by room service for lunch and dinner. We were supposed to get a pre-dinner drink included daily with our stay but after ordering them on the first night, were told by a very condescending and rude manager that bought them over to our room that they were only for people that order food along with them??

When the restaurant opened again we ordered dinner (steak and gnocchi dishes) the steak was beautiful but the gnocchi was the worst I have ever had. I’m not sure what happened but it tasted very hard and dry and then was sitting on what tasted like a puddle of sweet soy sauce…. Was so disappointing as had been looking forward to it. They also forgot to bring our drinks over so we had to call and and remind them.

House keeping: We had the apartment cleaned beautifully on the second day but then after that it seemed like it was just all too hard for them. We had to a card left one day apologising they weren’t able to make up the room due to staff illness, another day our room was never made up and breakfast dishes weren’t collected until 5pm (after we called to complain). Each day we had to call and ask them to come to sort the room. Some days they left chocolates, other days nothing. The inconsistency was just really unprofessional.

We had a phone call to our room one night at 9.15pm by someone asking if we wanted to order anything from the restaurant as they were closing(even though they had a late night snack menu which was from 10pm), this woke my children up which we weren’t happy about. Why someone would call a room at that time unless it was an emergency is beyond me.

I’m not sure what has happened as it seems their service previously has been amazing and it’s what I was really looking forward to experiencing! Maybe covid has caused huge staff shortages which in turn has made their service take a hit? Staff seemed very stressed and scattered.

Please note that this was our experience from the 2 bedroom apartment (which is located a short distance away from the other Eichardts building). Wondering if we received a different level of service because we were a bit of an inconvenience out of the way of the other...

I stayed at Eichardt’s Private Hotel for one night - September 21 to September 22nd - using Hyatt Hotel points. While I think that Eichardt’s Private Hotel is a nice hotel I don’t think it was worth the points that I used for it - and, had I paid out of pocket for the stay, I would’ve been extremely disappointed.

The staff was initially pleasant on arrival and I did receive an upgraded room and a $100 voucher for room service - which was nice. After freshening up my partner and I went for a walk around Queenstown. When we came back, however, the hotel was cordoned off by police. This was due to some kind of event the hotel was hosting with - I don’t know - important guests. Nevertheless, we told the police that we were also guests at the hotel and, to my surprise, they wouldn’t let us into the hotel. Now, I suppose that’s fine, but this whatever was going on wasn’t a exactly a very expedited procedure; we ended up going to dinner and then coming back, waiting another solid half-hour, and it was only then we were allowed back on the premises. The staff seemed aloof at the whole ordeal.

Fine, it’s an oddity - but maybe it’s a one time occurrence or are circumstances so unique that they’re not worthy of really mentioning to staff nor are they worthy of a negative review. So, my partner and I went back to the room and ordered some room service. The food came quickly. Now, I’ve never in my life, after living and working in over 60 countries, ever complained directly to staff/chefs about food before - not from street vendors in Bangalore to Michelin starred chefs in Washington, DC. But when this food came it was so salty that it was very literally inedible. My partner is a Kiwi-Korean and I’m American-Scottish; we’re accustomed to heavily salted food - after all, we eat salted kimchi and grav lox like there’s no tomorrow. But this food wasn’t just salted heavily as a matter of preference; it was like eating salt straight out of a jar - like, you’d have to chug a glass of water after every bite just to be able to keep your mouth from drying up.

We reported this to the front desk and, at breakfast the next day, they sent someone over informing us - in a fairly condescending manner - that the hotel would remove it from the bill (I guess it went over the slotted $100 voucher). At first the hotel employee appeared to imply that maybe the salt was just a matter of preference (it wasn’t) and that we were overreacting. Later, we were informed the chef probably forgot to soak the beetroot, which was apparently cured in salt, in water before serving and that this was apparently the likely source of the problem. I don’t know, but I do know that both my partner and I felt pretty weird about the treatment at breakfast by the staff regarding our complaint.

The room itself was nice, however, the aforementioned party was quite loud and made napping and sleeping difficult. Additionally, the room is well equipped with TV’s but if you plan on watching Netflix or Amazon Prime on them the internet connection (as mentioned on several other reviews) isn’t strong enough to stream them. My phone constantly disconnected and my laptop barely has WiFi during our stay.

Overall, I think, it was fine only because it was booked using points (though I wouldn’t stay at another small Hyatt property like this one again) and had I paid my review would be even more scathing. I’d suggest looking elsewhere - maybe an AirBnB or the Hilton (where I’ve stayed before and had none of these complaints - before spending large amounts of money for a...