J Andrews
Google
We recently stayed at The Grand Hotel in Griffith. Firstly, what a great location! This hotel has the potential to be a diamond in the rough, but unfortunately, it was nothing but rough!
Two minutes after booking, I messaged the hotel to ask about a balcony apartment, as my partner is a smoker. I received a response saying that it was fine and would be sorted at no extra charge…….
When we arrived, the room was an enclosed space with no windows, just a single filthy skylight. We had to contact reception to open or close the blinds, etc. (To be honest, I’m not sure how this meets fire safety standards.) When we spoke to reception, they blamed it on booking.com responding to us, not them! We decided to let it go and not worry about it, as we're pretty easygoing people.
We headed back to our room and proceeded to unpack. Unfortunately, The room was dirty, with food marks on the walls. The sheets were clean but stained yellow and needed a good bleaching. We then discovered, they only provided us with one towel, and when we asked for another, the manager insisted on bringing it himself and placing it in the bathroom, almost as if he were checking that we weren’t lying.
Next, we headed downstairs to the spa... what a disgrace. The spa was filled with filthy water that smelled bad (not like chlorine). When we spoke to the manager, he said he had just added chlorine. As a pool owner, I was completely disgusted!
Then I went to the gym… if you could even call it that. The room was in the basement, had no air conditioning, and was stifling hot—exactly what you want when you're working out, right? At this point I was thinking, maybe they should advertise it as a sauna instead of a gym.....
The walking machine was so flimsy and old, it was squeaking and felt like it was going to fall apart under me. After 15 minutes, I moved to the stair climber, which seemed a little more sturdy. Sadly, it was just for show and didn’t work; the light wouldn’t illuminate, so I couldn’t change any settings. So if you're a serious about working out .....this definitely isn't the place for you!
We decided to give this hotel a try, but I certainly won’t be coming back or recommending it to any of our tradies in the future.
It’s such a shame because it really did have potential, and with these issues corrected, it could have been a regular weekly accommodation for my partner, who has been traveling to the area for the past 15 years and stays at hotels Monday to Thursday every week!
