With around 85 hotel nights per year, I don t ofte...

With around 85 hotel nights per year, I don t often get my choice of hotel wrong, but when I do, it annoys me badly.

I ve decided out of brand loyalty to stay 10 nights at the Crowne Plaza Auckland, an IHG Hotel, without doing a basic research first. IHG hasn t really let me down in many years of traveling around the globe.....well, at some point it had to happen, Feb 2020 was that point.

The hotel is quite dated and seems to focus its business model on holiday or bus travel groups and not on business travelers or holidaying individuals.

My hotel room was clean. The age and the at most average maintenance of the hotel s public spaces, elevators, windows and frames and for me more concerningly that of my room and bath have been clearly visible. Noises from other rooms (room doors, voices, closets closing/ clapping ....) were disruptive. Only aspect that was clearly in line with IHG s superior standard: bed and bedding.

Bus travel groups seem to foster certain poor service behaviors in hotel staff, probably because the captive nature of this kind of customers - they will not create a return business anyway, so why bother. Staff clearly showed that lackadaisical attitude in the Aria restaurant during breakfast times, more senior staff like the gate keeper/ restaurant manager was even trying to boss me around during seating early morning. That kind of service may still be OK for a school cantina, but not when asking NZ$ 600.- + per night.

I had two interactions with the hotel front desk during my stay: can t say that the two people have pretended to care. Fortunately for the General Manager of this place, some of the hotel staff still understands that hospitality thing: I d like to thank the Bar, Club Lounge and Housekeeping guys, I ve enjoyed speaking to you.

WiFi and laundry working as per expectation, although laundry was more on the aggressive side for business shirts.

The reason for staying the full time at 5he Crowne Plaza and not switching hotels after a the first nights: two of my employees stayed a total of 11 nights in parallel at the hotel, too much hassle and sunk costs.

BTW: beware of the racing bellboys and their carts, I nearly got knocked over twice in the lift, when the young guys tried to get in with their cart and the elevator doors were already closing