QT Wellington - the worst 5 star hotel I have ever stayed in

After having an experience at the QT Queenstown (click to read review), I have reasonably high expectations for the room and design for the Wellington chain. While the online customer service for QT Queenstown was a huge letdown, I have only contacted the sales/management to offer some advertisement for their higher category room, so I am hoping that they are not as bad as their Queenstown team.

QT Wellington is a double hotel and apartment block, but you will have to book on a separate page on most third party booking sites as they do offer different room features from the hotel version and the apartment version, but I did find 2 of the apartment rooms listed on their hotel section. I will be staying at their cheapest hotel room (Superior King) which costs $150 as it was at the peak of Covid when I book it and they push out some great promotion during that period.

Having looked at some other room photographs, the bathroom that is most disappointing would be on their apartment section, it seems to be lacking details and it feels more like a cheaper hotel design. If you are fussy like me, you would most probably want to avoid booking the apartment rooms, but the upside is that that is the only category with kitchen facility, which if it is important to your stay then it could be a very important aspect to weight on. All the other categories feature some elegant, classical and modern design bathroom and room design. If you would like a bathtub, you will have to book the Harbourview category room but they are limited so you will need to specify on the notes during booking and hope that they will be able to give you one.

On check in day, I have received a call from QT stating that my room has been taken off because of a broken toilet and they need to replace the entire thing, so the only replacement is the accessibility room (apartment) instead of the normal hotel wing. This is not what I have hoped to showcase but I hope to make the best out of the situation and show you what an accessibility room may look like, I am assuming there wouldn't be too many reviews for these room type. The difference would be the additional kitchen facility that is missing from the hotel rooms.

CHECK IN:

Upon arrival, there was a long line of cars queuing into the property, I didn't realise that the driveway ended up turning into a car park as well. I took my belongings and check in while I park there temporarily. The check in line was short and I was attended within 3 minutes.

The concierge and check in staff are friendly and professional, with niche décor surrounding the bar and lobby.

The apartment section is located on the rear end of the property, a short minute walk through the conference hall to the back of the property to take the separate lift up to the apartment. If you are staying in the hotel side, the lift will be right next to the check in desk, and those 2 sides are not linked apart from the ground floor.

ROOM:

Entering the room, the toilet is towards the front end of the room. There is a decent size sink and space beside it, but there's a big wooden box tucked around the corner which house the washing machine. Since it is an accessibility room, the walk in shower is designed as a standard accessible one.

Further into the hallway comes the rest of the room, the kitchen comes with an oven, electric stovetop and microwave. The oven seems to have seen better days, while the extractor fan unit has a burned out light bulb which decreases the amount of light available for the kitchen area as there are no other sources of light nearby.

The other corner house a single golden painted lounge chair with fur to keep you comfortable and warm, a large work desk with modern designed lamps and study light to keep the area lit up, while there is also 2 wall facing light which lights up the ceiling and the wall.

There is a decent size TV on top of the work desk, while next to the desk is a cabinet where plates and cups can be found. Next to the cabinet is the closet with a safe and some hangers, an umbrella and 2 bathrobes.

The opposite side of the room is the King bed with a nightstands on each side, placed on top are 2 quirky lamps and storage area below is a cow or ox statue. The space between the bed and kitchen is a small 2 seater bench, although I wouldn't find it comfortable enough to sit there for a long duration.

It is nothing like what they have showcased on their website for their accessible room, it felt like an old well abused room that they don't bother spending any more money to fix up. If duct tape can fix it, then they are going for it.

ISSUES WITH THE ROOM:

There are several issues I have with this room, firstly, they are still using a single unit air conditioning system instead of the centralised one. I would have thought that is something standard in most buildings, but this building may have been old or was a different hotel that got converted into QT. While it is not a big issue, I hope that this is something they will look into when doing renovation.

The kitchen doesn't have proper cleaning equipment, which may explain why I find dirty plates in the cabinet. This is not difficult to resolve if there's better cleaning equipment inside the room and better protocol for housekeeping which I would have expected from a 5 star property. Some sponges and towels would have allowed people to better clean the equipment as well if they are not satisfied with the cleanliness.

The sink is fairly small and in an awkward position, which leads to water spilling out often, again, towels would have been nice to allow people to clean it up since this wouldn't be a one off issue with me. Anyone using it whether it may be hand washing or cleaning dishes would encounter the same problem, which can also damage the carpet quicker with the consistent water drip.

There are also kitchen tools that are placed on the top shelf of the cabinet, which does not make sense given this is an accessible room. They need to have a better discussion with their team to redesign this entire kitchen space for accessible users as this is branded as one.

The room, furniture and equipment felt like it has worn out after decades of abuse, whether it may be under maintained and using cheap furniture which resulted in this mess is mind boggling , this is not what I expect if I am paying to stay in a 5 star hotel that is also being ranked as one of the best in Australasia.

There are cables everywhere, some are taped together, holes drilled into the walls but not patched up, it felt more like a DIY project than a properly designed room. They really need to retrofit this room as it is tired and felt like a motel branded as 5 star.

As this is an exceptional situation, I got placed in the worst room there is within the property, I got a direct view to the spa/pool area, and I am fairly sure they can look into the room as well if I did not close the blackout curtains. It is certainly not a pretty view unless you are into crowd watching taking a bath. I would not be paying full price for this room which luckily I did not and as this is still a serviceable room I would not recommend booking this room category, there would be plenty of other options around Wellington that can provide a much better experience than this.

LIES FROM QT:

I got the call early in the morning during check in day and they told me that they have no other rooms available, but at 11pm that night I have decided to go into their website and do a quick search to see if there's any room that I can book tonight. To my not-so-surprised instinct, there are actually 2 rooms available for booking, one is the Executive studio and the other is the Executive One Bedroom.

While they have a minimum 2 night restriction on this booking, I am fairly sure the management could have given an exception and let me stay in their cheaper studio room for the 1 night. Regardless of how much I have paid for this stay, whether it is $200, $100 or $10, they should treat each of their customers with the utmost dignity and while the broken toilet may not be their fault and they are losing out money for taking out 1 room from their system, being able to give a lasting and good impression is far more important to their business and brand than a short minded money grab which they ultimately did not manage to sell.

They never know who may be booking their room, and I would say that they have put the wrong person to the worst room within their property, because it is now being documented and this is going to impact their brand.

I did contact them 5 days out before my departure to ask for an upgrade for me to showcase some of their better rooms within the property, but I got a response and they said they are not interested in "collaborating in your project". I used to have a very good image of QT due to their quirky and playful design, but both of my stay in QT Queenstown and here has given me a bad impression in different ways, but this is by far taking the cake.

BREAKFAST:

As they have swapped my room, they added a complimentary buffet breakfast to my stay. The Hippopotamus restaurant & bar is located on the 3rd floor of the hotel wing. The elevator on the hotel wing is rather trippy, painted in full black with a small light coming in from a cut out hole on the roof. This is what I would expect from QT and I assume I would have probably had a much better experience if I manage to stay in the room I have originally booked.

As it was still fairly early, there wasn't much of a crowd there. Their buffet consists of traditional English breakfast such as hash browns, baked beans, tomato, scrambled eggs, sausages and bacon. There is also a pot of porridge if you fancy something else. For the non-hot food selection, there is a small selection of cereals, juices, cheeses and dessert.

I do like that they keep their hot food in fairly small portion to ensure that the food remains fresh, but that is as far as the good review goes.

They said if I want barista made coffee, there is an additional charge, otherwise there's tea and pot coffee, luckily I don't drink coffee so that does not bother me.

I am not sure how much they charge for a buffet breakfast, but they also have a menu for you to choose from if you do not have breakfast included in your room and you would like to walk in, or you can also walk in and pay for the buffet breakfast or a mixture of cooked/buffet if there are multiple persons in your group wanting different things.

I would not recommend the buffet option if the price is anything over $25, because I do not feel like you can get a good value out of it for what they are offering, but if you are a big eater and you can grab a full plate of each item, then you might get your money worth as most of the food there aren't expensive stuff.

CONCLUSION:

Would I be coming back to QT? Or would I be spending my money elsewhere? Given how many 5 star hotels are available in this city and many other cities, I am happy to take my money elsewhere because I would rather be assured that the money I have spent will not be taken lightly and be lied to so that they can try to milk more money out of their better rooms.

QT is not the cheapest 5-star hotel in the city they operate in either, they are charging roughly the same price as many other reputable and internationally well recognised brands. If this was to occur in other hotels of a similar category, I would be most likely be upgraded rather than downgraded.

This experience has given me a sour taste in my mouth and I am not ready to recommend this brand to anyone, not unless they can prove that they can do better than this, because so far they are not performing to the expectation of a 5 star hotel, and far from any of my 5-star hotel experience. This is not taking away the hard working front line staff who I do appreciate and some of these issues start at the top rather than the ones facing the customers.

The location of the hotel is a perk though, next door is the New World supermarket, opposite is the Te Papa museum, while you can also go to the Sunday market across the road in the car park. Being a central location, you can get to the shops and touristy stuff by walking and no car will be necessary.

Wondering what to do or what I got up to in Wellington? Read my post to find out more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_TcTYhEh5s