When you look at a map, this hotel legit looks like the absolute best deal in Melbourne- and it definitely is! For just over $100 a night, we had a whole room to ourselves in the heart of Melbourne CBD.
My partner, is rather fussy when it comes to where we are going to stay and so, prefers to stay in actual hotels as opposed to hostels (I think its a ‘having my own bathroom’ thing). Which is why we ended up here, instead of one of the slightly cheaper hostels around this area.
First and foremost-this location was absolutely excellent! You are a super short walk from the Flinders Street train station, a hop, skip and a jump from China town and only 1km from the likes of Southbank, Melbourne Jail or the Museum. Plus, there’s loads of food and shopping options as soon as you leave the hotel! I was very, very impressed by the location for the price we paid!
Not only this, but when our flights from The Gold Coast got delayed by a couple of hours and we were then going to be checking in at 1:30am, the reception staff were very understanding and stated that it was absolutely fine. They advised that they were staffed 24hrs (hello coming in on those inconvenient middle of the night landing flights).
When we did arrive at our hotel, we were greeted very warmly and given all information about our room with such cheer even though it was almost 2am (and we were past the point of being happy about still being awake!). They also gave us all of the information for when we were to check out-super helpful!
Here comes my issues with the place…
We got to our room and I see a double bed, a small table, a chair, fridge, stand alone wardrobe, and wait… is that? Yes that is a shower curtain right next to the bed head.
I was a bit puzzled as to why there was a carpeted room with a shower curtain in the middle, so I walked over and opened the shower curtain. This exposed a small tiled area with a glass enclosed shower and a small basin. The toilet was in a separate room next to this contraption.
I shrugged and thought “Hey, this mustn’t be that bad!” And went on to comment that we will just need to make sure that we didn’t wet the carpet after our shower.
My partner had started reading the room information though, and found out that you had to have all of the shower screens and shower curtain closed while you were in there because otherwise the fire alarms would go off…
And if it was your room that set it off, you could be charged $1000!
It ran through both of our minds that we wouldn’t shower for the weekend, but then we decided that was gross, and we would just have to time our showers really far apart to minimise the steamage!
After getting over our initial shower shock, we bundled ourselves up and decided to go to bed. Although, this was harder than it should have been, given that we could hear what everyone in the rooms around us were doing-everything from vomiting, to vocal sex to construction works- everything was happening in Melbourne on this early Saturday Morning!
So after our stay over the weekend, my official recommendation is that this is a great place to stay if you’re only staying for a short time-if you’re around for a week or more, I would recommend trying for somewhere with a real bathroom and some stronger soundproofing so that you can get a decent nights sleep!
PROS:
-Free Tea and Coffee
-Location is FANTASTIC
-Staffed 24hrs
-Staff are lovely and super helpful if required
CONS:
-Your Bathroom is in the middle of your room
-It’s expensive to its hostel competitors
-Walls are paper thin
