The Chamberson — Hotel in South Island

First, this is not a hotel but a limited service AirBnB. It’s very misleading to call it a hotel as they provide zero onsite services. Just call it a furnished apartment.

Looking at the stay, the apartment has a lot of things missing and general poor design issues. The room is incredibly dark with very poor lighting. The bathroom lighting was even worse making shaving a challenge. On the topic of the bathroom, the hot water ran out and never returned - talk about a surprise.

The bedroom lacks options to hang/store clothes. There were two hooks on the wall with four hangers - that’s it. No where to put or store any other items. And if you want to iron your clothes, the cabinet where the ironing board is stored doesn’t fully open because it is blocked by a ceiling light. Very bad design.

The living room was fine but the TV was old and did not have an easy way to plug in our Roku. So we were stuck watching local TV only so we watched TV on our laptop instead. Who watches local TV these days? Most hotels will provide either easy access to plug in your devices or at least have a cable attached to the TV allowing guests to plug in their personal devices.

Parking is challenging - the garage is very, very, very small. It’s an old building - so it made sense - but make sure you have a tiny car. If you have a car much larger than a compact I’d suggest street parking.

Tons of outside noise - the windows are also very old and allow just about all traffic noise into your room 24 hours a day.

And finally, a major safety issue. You receive a code to a lock box where you find your room key card. But it’s not a lockbox with only your key - you have access to keys of every room checking in that day. Someone previous to your arrival could access your room before you arrive. Or…someone could take one of your extra key cards and access your room while you sleep. I’ve been in the hotel industry for over 20 years, including time with similar furnished AirBnB apartments. Giving guests access to other room keys is a major security violation. And with no security latch on your room door, it was hard to feel safe the entire stay wondering if someone would access our room while we slept, or would enter our room while we were away for the day.

But the location was great. Very walkable to restaurants and shopping.

So overall, the Chamberson has potential but needs serious improvements to make it a safe and high end option in Dunedin. And it really needs to remove “hotel” from the name - it’s very deceptive to refer...

Worst experience ever! Richard was very rude to me and my family. We travelled a very long way to stay there to be treated with disrespect from this man!

Check in time was 2pm he agreed for 1:30 and said room would be ready. Upon arrival room was filthy, crumbs on countertop, floor not vacuumed, hair everywhere! Fridge, cupboards not clean.

I complained he told me this was the result for checking in early (Basically said it was my fault) Since I was the one who wanted to check in earlier they had to clean the room in a “rush”. I would have waited that extra 30 minutes if I had known the room wasn’t going to be cleaned properly. We did not receive 1 single apology from this man, just back and fourth it’s my fault for checking in early, no accountability taken on his end. Disgusting attitude from this man! I couldn’t believe it.

He was raising his voice at me while I was expressing my concerns (couldn’t even get a word in) , wouldn’t offer discount or refund nor an apology for the filthy room. He just grabbed his cleaning supplies and cleaned the room in a rush while we watched awkwardly. We could tell he was very angry too, so it made me and my family feel extremely uncomfortable and unwelcome.

Clearly this man doesn’t care about his guests, just their money! He then told us we weren’t allowed to checkout at 10:30 anymore, we had to be gone by 10. I was so shocked to be spoken too like that, he was so rude I couldn’t believe it. No body should ever be spoken to like this!

As a paying customer it’s really sad that he’s treated us the way he did. We left that night, my poor 3 year old was so tired, but he made us feel extremely uncomfortable we did not want to stay there. We ended up booking another hotel, cheaper and a lot nicer. So heartbroken I wasted so much money there! (If this man was nicer and treated us with respect the outcome would have been different, I didn’t care about not getting a refund or discount it was more about how he approached and handled the situation. He had no right to be rude to me and my family. DO BETTER RICHARD!

Don’t ask to check in early, otherwise you’ll get a dirty room and get blamed for it. Bad vibes from him for sure. He needs serious customer service training! Disgusting behaviour, I hope he doesn’t treat future...

Such a shame as this boutique hotel/Serviced Apartment could be so much better with some attention to detail. I noticed that there haven’t been any recent reviews which is interesting and perhaps the rooms were great four years ago? Firstly the parking. The owner needs to state when you book (and pay for parking $25 per day) that you need a small vehicle! Do not try and park a four wheel drive in the basement parking of this hotel! You are sent a code for the door and secure key box which contains all keys for all rooms??? Security issue. Please fix as soon as possible. The room was tidy but not clean, the lounge window fronted onto the street (traffic noise) the bedroom window looked onto dirty roofs, the beds and bedding were fairly standard, the furniture was stained, lamp broken, bar stools made of steel wire (not comfortable) crack internally in fridge, TV had finger marks on the screen, cooktop extractor needed to be cleaned, pots needed a good clean, frying pan scratched and chopping board needed to be replaced. I contacted the hotel regarding the parking and was told that they would refund the $125 (has not happened) sent another message saying that we would not be staying as we were very unhappy with the accommodation. The owner replied by saying that he had entered the room and found minor issues and would try and rent the room and refund any nights that were booked (did not happen) Approx $1200 plus parking this cost us (non refundable booking) I feel that the owner just doesn’t care and does the bare minimum to rent rooms which is not the impression we got when booking from the website (Very Glossy & Lux) The issues could be easily fixed of which I outlined to the owner so I wish them well but would not recommend this hotel. Very...