Status: Diamond
Hotel: Hilton Taupo
Rate: NZ$350 per night (long stay special rate)
Date: 1st-7th July 2013
Room booked: 3 Bedroom apartment
Room received: 3 Bedroom apartment
This hotel is a very nice place to kick back. The apartment was fantastic, the views are superb (multiple views including the whole lake to the snow capped peaks beyond and the pool area and thermal stream behind) and the locality is good (although it's at the thermal pools rather than right in town). Benefits include a 35oC heated spa, a 25oC heated pool, gym, sauna, steam room, drying room, tennis courts, 2 restaurants (although one was closed), heated bathroom floors and towel rails, TVs in all bedrooms, washer/dryer and gourmet kitchen, comfortable funiture and pleasant decor, three separate balconies and a choice of valet parking (NZ$35/nite), undercover self parking (NZ$15/nite) or free outdoor self parking. Internet was also free (had 8 iDevices connected) and a newspaper arrived at the door each day.
But........I find the attitude toward elite status is stingy. It's hard to say that, given they follow the HH perks to the letter so possibly it's just that we're spoiled a bit by most Oz Hiltons.
- Like the other NZ Hiltons, no exec. lounge. Fair enough, I knew that well before I booked, but I find the practice here in Oz to offer some drink vouchers in lieu is an almost mandatory gesture in those cases. None were offered at Taupo.
- The breakfast is definitely 2 x continental only. An upgrade to a full breakfast can be bought for NZ$10 each, but that consisted only of a choice of three hot items (mostly they were sausages, mushrooms and tomatos), so we declined that generous offer
. The breakfast staff were very inconsistant. The first morning I was simply shown an urn of coffee and told that's the coffee and you can have everything except the hot stuff! Only later did I hear others ordering a barista coffee so I asked and was told "
sure I can get you a coffee" (why not offer from word go??). The next day, +1 asked a different lady (girl) for a capacino and she was told to go and order it from the bar herself
. Another guy was more than happy to make us coffees and would even make us coffees in a take-a-way cup for the drive to the snow. Some mornings the breakfast was good, other mornings not so good so those breakfast inconsistancies ruled out any dinners there as there are plenty of good restaurants in town. We were also billed NZ$50 for one of the breakfasts so check your bill to ensure you don't pay for those elite perks
.
- 2 x small waters were delivered on the first night, but nothing on the second night so my +1 asked the turn-down lady if we could have some waters (no mini bar in our apartment) and was told no, that's no longer a diamond benefit so we don't have to :shock:........there was no mention of the diamond benefit by us, we knew we were only entitled to 2 x water on the first night.......we just wanted water as the air-cond tends to dry us out during the night! Next day we bought our own water from the shop but got home from skiing to find 6x waters in the room :?:, but then not again for the rest of the stay! So strange.
- Received a note explaining diamond benefit and nice chocolates with the turn down service.
So would we stay again? Yes, without a doubt. This Hilton is a very nice property all round. The service standards definitely needs to be managed better (especially the breakfast staff who do not seem to have adequate training), but on the other hand, the duty managers all seemed to go the extra mile in assisting us, even to booking our lift tickets and kids rentals/lesson passes through the hotel and booked to the room (more HH points). I'm not sure if it's just Kiwis, or what, but two things I asked about at the hotel received looks of bewilderment. Firstly, there was construction work happening on the hotel grounds. I enquired as to what it was going to be. Both counter staff looked at each other, looked at me, looked at each other and then agreed they had no idea! I later asked the groundsman and he told me they were extending the free carpark because they often fill up. Surely the staff would hold enough interest in their job to enquire as to what the construction was that was happening? It was hardly top secret. The second was a little more understandable, but left me shaking my head. I asked them how I find out if the local geothermal power station does tours. Given this was the very first operational geothermal power station in the world, I foolishly thought that may have been asked previously. They didn't even know they had a power station about 10 minutes up the road, let alone what the name of it was or if it conducted tours (as it turned out, they don't....OH&S put paid to that). Given kms of bright stainless pipes and clouds of steam acting like a flashing billboard saying "
here I am", it was about the first thing I noticed upon driving into Taupo, but the two Hilton duty staff had no idea it even existed........Ahhh, New Zealand, land of contrasts and blissful ignorance
.
Other thing I found a bit odd was no movies on demand. Had pay TV with a movie channel, but no on-demand offering, but after skiing all day and the drive between, I was not that worried about movies and the kids actually bought same card games! How's that for old fashion!
All in all, a very plesant stay, but plenty of room for improvement.
