Anna Christensen

Review of Manly Pacific Parkroyal

This is a Conference experience review.

This is a Conference experience review.
- I run Marketing Department for a cybersecurity company and we organised our Kick-Off at Novotel. There were some issues from the beginning as we were quoted for the room that was too small to fit us in the set up we needed for the second part of Conference. At that stage we were dealt with just fine and they offered us a smaller room for the first part of the event and a bigger room for the second part where we needed the set up to be banquet style.
From the beginning I was enquiring why can't we just get into a bigger room. ( The girl called Isabel dealt with me and she wasn't capable to provide me with any reason). I assume it was the cost. They already lost money on having to offer us a bigger room for free. This is all fine but it was still delivered in a pretty confusing way especially...that the first part of our Conference was taking only 1 hour! It simply was making no sense to keep us in a small room for an hour and then in a bigger room for 6 hours!
Anyway, I agreed to it because I assumed money is the issue.
- 24 hours before the event their A/V team called me quite confused because for them it also wasn't making sense to hire the entire A/V set just for 1 hour and they couldn't quite work out was Isabel ( the Event Coordinator meant).
- On the day I arrived at the Conference just to see the big room was already set up for us and technically ready to have the entire Conference there...but Isabel did NOT want to allow us just to move to the big room to simply make it easier for everyone. A/V team and front of them house didn't mind.
Isabel was rude and arrogant also in front of my Conference guests.
Finally, I persuaded her that if the room is ready we just want to start and stay in the big room. Mind you I've never asked to get any money back but she just kept on repeating in a very rude manner that she will charge me anyway.
It was a really unpleasant and unprofessional.
Also a day after I tried to speak to Isabel's Manager to tell her/him about my experience. The Manager wasn't available so I spoke to another very nice lady. Unfortunately, it was on the 24th of January, I was promised to get a call from the Event Manager and no one has contacted me every since...That's why I'm sharing my experience here.
- The room itself was nice.
- For afternoon tea, you really need more food to be served
- Front of the house staff and A/V were nice and professional
- Wi-Fi worked well