THE WORST EXPERIENCE I’VE HAD.
THE WORST EXPERIENCE I’VE HAD.
Only gets 1 star because I can’t go any lower.
If you value your safety or any kind of accommodations, avoid like the plague.
I arrived at 1:25am after an 11 hour drive from Bundaberg (solo female traveller, disabled Navy veteran) to find I had been given TWO different rooms, and couldn’t access either of them.
Both codes failed. I called the after hours numbers multiple times around 2am with no answer.
I was left stranded in the middle of the night with my dogs, forced to walk across the road to the shady McDonald’s just to use the bathroom, asking staff to watch my dogs while I went in. If you’re a woman travelling alone, you’ll understand exactly how unsafe that feels.
On the walk back from McDonald’s, there were people in one of the rooms I had been provided codes for. This is beyond unsafe and a clear failure in the booking systems.
With no help available, I had no choice but to sleep in my car. I had to string up a crate cover I had in the boot, just to have some kind of privacy blocking my windscreen while I slept in this very public and shady carpark.
In the morning, even the housekeeper couldn’t get into the room, confirming it wasn’t user error. Reception staff were dismissive and told me I “should have kept calling.” No empathy, no urgency, no accountability. Tony Hughes could not have cared less about the situation I was put in. I gave him a serve and was told I could have a service credit.
I wasn’t offered a shower, a room, or even basic access to facilities. I had to make a coffee by boiling my own water on the porch of the room I couldn’t access with my portable gas stove just to have some kind of up and go for my long drive home. I then had to go back to McDonald’s to change clothes and wash my face in a public bathroom.
To make matters worse, I’ve since seen multiple reviews describing the exact same issue with after hours check in. This is clearly an ongoing problem.
I paid $186 and after standing my ground was offered a refund instead, however, I only received partial refund of $126.
This isn’t just poor service, it’s a complete failure of duty of care. No one should ever be left in that situation.
I will be escalating this through further channels as it’s entirely unacceptable.