Jon Bell

Review of arlberg hotham

We stayed in a 1 Bedroom room 7-Aug to 9-Aug - roo...

We stayed in a 1 Bedroom room 7-Aug to 9-Aug - room 419. I'm not one to bother with hotel feedback / complaints / reviews but can't let this one go through to the keeper.

The room we were allocated was unsafe, dirty, un-maintained and half-serviced.

It had almost no similarity in fit-out and cleanliness to the images on your website - the images that led us to choosing to book at Arlberg....to the extent that it was blatant false-advertising.

One of the bunks was dangerous - when my friend lay on the bottom bunk a large piece of metal fell from below the top mattress and hit him on the head. We lifted the top mattress to figure out why, only to find some dodgy home-crafted pieces of random metal just lying across as slats. Not original parts of the bunk and completely un-fixed to the frame, just asking to fall with any wobble of the bunk. A $150 Ikea bunk would have been safer. Some of these dodgy bits of metal were bent with sharp edges. They were clearly not meant to be part of the bunk and a massive safety hazard.

No one could sleep on the top bunk for fear of dropping more metal slats down onto my friend. I took the top mattress out to the living room and slept on the floor.

Just before moving the mattress, I looked to sleep on one of the sofa beds in the living room. I folded one out only to find the sheets had been slept in - gross. I folded it away and tried the other one - same thing. Disgusting. Hence sleeping on a bunk mattress on the floor. Although we then also found that not all the bunk mattresses had been made up with sheets, so we had to ask for sheets to be supplied for the fourth bunk mattress.

The bathroom looked nothing like the photos. The bath/shower was chipped, old and damaged in many places, the wall adjacent to the toilet was filthy with random dirty marks, the ceiling in the living room is collapsing due to a water leak above it, and there was some undescribable gunk on the floor between the vanity and the bath.

Aside from the lack of cleanliness, it is clear that the owners/management have done absolutely zero to maintain/repair/upgrade the room in many many years. It would cost less than the money from our two night booking to replace the cheap and dangerous bunks, yet management/owners had clearly not been able to bring themselves to spend a cent on this room for many years, despite the potential risk and liability.

For $600 a night, the photos on the website looked ok - a clean, basic hotel room. The reality was woeful.

Given all of the above (especially the safety issue with the bunk), we would have gone at had a word at reception. Unfortunately the person on reception made it clear from the moment we approached to check-in that the less she could interact with guests the better. We were friendly and chatty as we checked in, only to have one of the most surly receptions I've received at a hotel. We thought she just might have been having a tough evening so let it go, but whenever we came across her through the rest of the stay (reception, the shop, etc) it was the same. It was clear that taking up the issues with the room with her would be a waste of time. No interest in customer service.

This room was appalling and something needs to be done about it, especially the safety issue. The Arlberg Hotham website offered a false representation of the standard of accommodation being booked. Photos attached below - including some comparisons of what we were promised by your website vs actual.

It was so bad that we want a partial refund. The only problem is they are completely ignoring our emails :/ Don't stay there.