Property: Novotel Melbourne Airport
Status: Accor Plat +
Room booked: Deluxe Room with 2 zip beds
Room upgraded/type: Yes, appears to be a bigger room on a higher floor
Rate: Red Hot Stays - $144.50 per night
Free internet: Yes
Free Breakfast: Yes - but my room number wasn’t on the list of status holders so they just wrote it down and let me in.
Early check in/late out: No - checked in via the kiosk
Welcome drink: Yes, 2 on the app but they didn’t accept the app and so I had to go back to check in to exchange for the paper vouchers.
Welcome gift: Yes, chocolate platter and two bottle of water.
I’m in Melbourne for the weekend and because hardly anything I’m going to is in the CBD plus prices over $400 were common I decided to stay at the newish Novotel at the airport.
I actually never spoke to anyone at checkin to begin with as they have kiosks. You enter your first and last name, touch a card for the $100 preauth and it spits a key out (I’m a big fan as it was quick and easy).
The Novotel and ibis share the same building but there are kind of two different lifts. The room was big enough and I had two big beds (this was the cheapest type on the red hot rooms).
On the 9th floor rooms got a view of aircraft landing.
There was a welcome chocolate plate in the room and a couple of bottles of water:
Confusingly a welcome note, first of all I’d booked the Novotel and was 100% in a Novotel room but the letter doesn’t think so and also amusing the welcome to Australia (I mean QLD isn’t a seperate country… yet)
The only slightly odd thing is they do have a coffee shop on the ground floor but it’s only open Monday to Friday and then they’ve got a seperate beer bar (again only M-F) with a pools table etc that only opened 1 Oct, I walked in there and it was nice but they didn’t accept the welcome drink vouchers. The main restaurant/bar is the Italian one and also where breakfast is accepted the vouchers.
For the price paid it’s not bad. $144 per night but I also earn ~$13 worth of Accor points, ~$2 worth of Qantas points as it was paid via Amex with no surcharge in the app and an extra ~$6 worth of Qantas points thanks to the direct deal. Add on 2 welcome drinks (they normally charge $14 a bottle for a beer morette) and free breakfast.