Merimbula Gardens Motel

The room was awful, and when we asked to move, we were given another one. There were ants everywhere, dirty floors and hair, a badly stained bathroom sink, and a shower that clearly hadn’t been cleaned after the previous guests. The curtains and blinds were torn, and the fridge froze our food and drinks. Towels were faded, thin and torn, like they’d been around for 50 years. The front door lock looked ready to fall off, so we put our belongings back in the car whenever we went out. Parking spaces out front blocked the stairs to the rooms, and the male cleaner left collected rubbish right outside our door. The front car park bins were overflowing, with rubbish around them too. On top of all that, we were told we had to pay another $40 for our dog, even though we booked with the dog and had already paid $270 for two nights. We paid anyway because we were exhausted from driving. It’s absolutely not okay to take people’s money and then say nothing can be done. This place shouldn’t be operating like this. Don’t be fooled, stay somewhere else.

The room smelled dank, the toilet kept flushing loudly, and there were cockroaches in the bathroom and ants and bugs in the main room. It was filthy under the bed, and the walls and windows were paper thin. The fridge was faulty and froze everything. I’ve never stayed somewhere worse, and I wouldn’t recommend it. It needs a lot of care and much better cleaning and hygiene. I went straight back to reception after checking in to ask for another room because the constant flushing was obvious from the start. I was told they were fully booked and couldn’t move me, but someone would check the toilet during the cleaning service while I was out. When I got back, the flushing was even louder. The cockroach appeared in the bathroom that evening after the clean. Under the beds, there’s a thick layer of dust and dirt that must have built up over at least weeks of neglect. Please pass this feedback to your team and improve the service. I have no reason to make these claims other than to share what happened to me.

For $150 a night, they offered me a room that felt uninhabitable. I’ve stayed in plenty of awful places while travelling, and this was by far the worst. The bathroom had dead cockroaches, a green stain across 90% of the sink, dead insects on every windowsill and on the floor, and black mould on the ceiling. The water from every tap was rusty and stank. The place looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in years. There was a frayed carpet at the entry that could trip someone, a kitchen tap that kept dripping, and water damaged kitchen cabinets. There was more, but those were the worst problems.

I booked two nights at Merimbula Gardens Motel, starting Friday 20 February. The manager was friendly, and although the rooms were very dated, they looked clean at first. Around 9.30pm, while I was nodding off on the bed, I felt something crawling on me. The bed was full of bed bugs. The attached pictures of room 24 speak for themselves. I slept on the couch with a spare blanket and pillow from the cupboard, but when I turned the pillow over in the morning, I found a disgusting mess on it. My colleague in room 25 had a very unsafe electric blanket on the bed, and that picture speaks volumes too. I think the company got a refund. They also own the motel next door, MERIMBULA SAPPHIRE MOTEL.