Judy O'Donahoo

Review of Novotel Wollongong Northbeach

Your hotel is in a beautiful location! Unfortunat...

Your hotel is in a beautiful location! Unfortunately we had views mainly of a concrete roof - however I don't think we chose to have ocean views so that was our fault. We came from Cairns and had battled Sydney Friday afternoon traffic to get down to Wollongong - so were very relieved to be there! We checked in and parked the car and got up to our room - after a long wait at the lift - only to have both our keys not work. But they did work, actually, just no-one told us that we had to put them in backwards, with the arrow pointing out, not in! Before we found that out, my husband went back down to reception, via the stairs (rather than wait for the very slow lift) - but the fire doors were locked and he couldn't get out, either at our room level, or at the level of reception! Luckily he had his phone, and rang me to come and open the door for him. And we managed to find out about the keys. These were only little annoyances, but not what we needed after a long day travelling.
We had dinner with our friends on the Friday night - the seafood buffet. We found the buffet very overpriced at $75pp - the seafood was not good quality! (maybe we're spoilt in Cairns) and the >$200 per couple bill (with drinks) seemed excessive
We had breakfast in the restaurant on Sunday morning (which happened to be Mother's Day - thus it was very busy). Again, the food was adequate, but nothing special. And because it was Mother's Day, the restaurant was very busy - so it was too much trouble to join the queues and we found we had very little food for the $35pp charge
The service was adequate in all areas - but nothing or no-one stood out - it was all pretty ho-hum.