After booking online for a birthday dinner for eight people (adult friends and teenagers), and specifying in the booking that we would be starting earlier in ‘The Lounge’ for cocktails before dinner (marketed on their website as an updated part of the pub, specialising in cocktails), we turned up at 6pm. The cocktail lounge was empty and a staff member was fiddling with the Eftpos machine. An unkempt older man (found out later he was the owner) was leaning on the bar and he informed us the staff member was trying to fix the Eftpos machine. I asked if we could look at a cocktail menu. The staff member looked around for a menu then asked the owner if the cocktail lounge was opening tonight. The owner kind of shrugged and so the staff member kept looking for the menu. The owner (at this stage we didn’t know he was the owner) raised his arms and said, oh at this time of year we don’t know where anything is. And mentioned the Eftpos machine again. Another staff member came to the bar and he was asked for a menu by the other staff member. He immediately said they weren’t opening the cocktail lounge that night. I said it would have been good if we had been contacted, seeing as I’d put in my booking notes that we were coming for cocktails and the staff member said they’d had some staffing problems. I said that it would still have been good to know ahead of time that the cocktail lounge wouldn’t be opening. The owner then started getting very agitated and told us to “just go”. When we looked at him quizzically, he shouted that he was the owner, he had plenty of business and he did not need us there. As we started walking out, he yelled out “just go, just f***off, get out of here”. (Seemed he was slightly/a lot under the influence but no excuse for this nastiness). We were offered a free round of drinks by the restaurant manager and a table straight away in the restaurant - we did sit down but honestly we were not comfortable and felt (obviously) very unwelcome and so we told the restaurant manager we were going and left. (Ended up at an amazing German/Turkish restaurant called ‘Down Thyme’ - see my review for this - where everyone gave their meals 10/10 and the proprietors were very welcoming). I can not recommend the Waihi Beach Hotel one bit, what an awful experience we had.