Swiss-Belsuites Victoria Park Auckland

The staff were very welcoming and friendly, and parking onsite was handy at $10 a day. Swiss-BelSuites is around a 15-minute walk from the town centre, close enough to be convenient while still calm and quiet. My room was spacious and comfortable, with everything I needed for a relaxing stay. A solid stay with good service and an easy walk into town.

The harbour bridge and Sky Tower views were fantastic, and the CBD location was great. But our three-bedroom apartment was extremely tired and needed a deep clean. At $940 a night, the poor cleanliness was very disappointing. The carpets and couch were stained, the blinds were dirty and some were torn. The bedrooms didn't have blackout blinds, if that matters to you. The walls were marked and dinged, and needed a proper clean. One bedsheet had a stain, though we think it was clean. There was a weird smell, almost like urine covered by cleaning product. Opening all the doors to air it out didn't really help. On the first night, rubbish or laundry bags were stored in the emergency stairwell, though they were gone the next day. That wasn't reassuring in an emergency. The dining room ranchslider windows were dirty and the outside furniture was very tired. Breakfast was abysmal, and luckily we hadn't booked it. The person at reception wasn't very personable, was hard to understand, and gave confusing car parking instructions. It's hard to find three-bedroom apartments in the CBD, but this one let us down.

I booked through Hotels.com over a month before the trip, then had to cancel the next day when plans changed. A few days later our plans changed again, so I tried to reinstate the original reservation. The hotel said I had to deal with Hotels.com and wouldn't speak to me directly. They also didn't respond when Hotels.com contacted them for me. They refused to rebook me or refund the $200 I'd already paid, with no real recourse or even basic customer service. It felt like they took my money. Be careful booking a room here.

We paid almost 12 months ahead, but when we arrived our apartment type wasn't available. Instead, they put us across two separate two-bedroom apartments. That doesn't work for us because we can't leave the kids in one while we're in the other. What a joke. They offered compensation of about 10% of what we'd paid, or said we could cancel. We'd arrived from overseas and then had to choose between finding somewhere else to stay or splitting the family across apartments for our holiday. Geez, thanks. Avoid at all costs.