Scenic Hotel Dunedin City — Hotel in South Island

“Misleading advertisement that had to be resolved”

Before purchasing their package, be pedantic with the details and request for a printed copy.

A few months before our conference, I purchased a Harbour view package from this hotel. The photos showing on the website looked very appealing, images of a balcony with the view and bathtub.

Upon arrival, I was surprised with the room given to us. Yes, there is the view of the harbour but that's it, no balcony and no bathtub. I informed the receptionist and I was told that that was what I paid for. I asked for the supervisor as I was sure of what I saw online. Unfortunately, he did not seem to know what I was talking about. The offer is no longer online so I had no proof. They kept telling me that what was written on the internet was just the guaranteed room with a view. The supervisor apologised that he couldn't do anything as the hotel was fully-booked. And that's it, not even a proposal on how to ammend and no action was taken. Just a plain sorry and 3 complimentary cards for drinks (probably wanted us to just drink it off)

As I was already having a heated argument and I didn't want to completely ruin our stay, I emailed the general manager that night. Luckily, he intervened the next day. He mentioned he just started this month (before the deal was offered on the website) and that he heard of the problem before. (So how come the supervisor pretended to hear an absurd complain?) For the succeeding days, he offered to give us 2 rooms, as those were the only available rooms. One with the balcony, one with the tub. Good enough but again that's it. I had to be the one to inform him that the first night was a big inconvenience and that he needed to at least do something about it. He offered a 50% refund of the first night's bill.

In the end, we had a nice stay at the hotel. It's probably the most modern in town. Unfortunately, the horrible experience on our first day was a turn off.

To my understanding, you book a hotel accommodation to avoid inconvenience, not to create one.

Stayed...

Terrible place. Old dungy place with horrible service.

We booked our room a couple of months in advance and requested for a parking spot as we were a family of 4, with 2 very young kids on a 2 wks holiday in winter season so a lot of clothes etc, in short, we had heaps of luggage with us. On arrival we were greeted simply as, "your room number is xyz and elevators are located to your left. Thank you". On enquiring for the car park we were told that ,unfortunately there's no parking spot available. And we were advised to use street car park, which is only 2hour paid car park. What's the point of booking the rooms so much in advance and asking for the car park if they cannot reserve one for us. ?? We had to park our car arn 250-300 m away and make 3 trips while struggling to roll our bags along the steep hill of the street. The receptionist saw us, still did not bother to offer any conceirage service, if they had any. My kids were struggling to even walk properly along the steep slope of the street and still they were carrying their little bags along. My heart cried to see them in that state.

The hotel room was spacious, the only reason we booked, but it had an odd nauseating old building smell inside. The shower was the old style bath tub with a half glass window installed on one end. And the moment we stepped in, it started making creaking sounds. I was scared like the whole tub may collapse any time 😱. Room service was very basic, just the bare minimum. Staff just did the beds and put the towels nicely. There were no bin liners in any of the bins. Only the top sheets were clean and bottom sheets of the bed weren't clean either. The pillows were super hard and bed super soft, like old soft, all of that gave us sore neck, shoulder and back aches. We would have been better off having a motor home instead. All in all, it was very disappointing 😞 . I definitely won't recommend it to anyone, neither will I come back...

We had booked the hotel for one night after we had read the good reviews. It all started when the employee at the reception was unfriendly, unmotivated and disinterested and didn't even have a smile left. It was Christmas Day and everything was closed, so we had booked a dinner for 109 dollars per person in the Scenic Hotel Southern Cross. When we asked where the dinner would take place, he answered us annoyed that the restaurant was closed. The employee only asked after we explained that we had made the booking through the hotel and we had an email. We didn't feel well there already and after we went into the room (406) the blow hit us! A horrible room, antiquated, no toilet cover, no shower curtain and handicapped accessible. The latter would be ok, but we hadn't booked it that way! The hotel does not look colorful and beautiful as in the photos but was dark and abandoned, some room doors were only rejected because not used? We felt so uncomfortable and did not want to spend christmas there. Although neither the money for the room nor for the dinner was refunded to us, we looked for another hotel. Again, the employee was just annoyed, not willing to all and just wanted the money. Never again a Scenic Hotel!!! Since we had to pay for dinner and nothing else was open, we went to the other hotel for dinner. The staff there was really warm and friendly and made an effort and the food was ok. We really wonder where the beautiful rooms are, which are shown. We wanted to leave the hotel so quickly that we unfortunately missed to take...