Contessa Holiday Apartments in Gold Coast

We arrived early to beat the traffic and went to reception where we were greeted by a very unfriendly manager. I mentioned that I knew we were early and he said the room should be ready around 12-12.30pm. We returned at 12pm and checked if the room was ready the woman at the front desk was extremely rude because my husband had asked to use the toilet and possibly sit in the sitting room and a couple of other questions but nobody else was at reception. The woman on reception rolled her eyes and then the manager came out from his office and he literally SCREAMED at us to leave and not to come back until 2pm. Finally after checking in I wanted to mention how rude they were but she advised me to choose my words carefully or she will cancel our booking!! She said my husband asked too many questions and was needy.

Every hotel we have stayed at for the last 30 years allows guests to use their facilities until the room is ready. This was absolutely appalling behavior from both of them and totally unacceptable and no way to treat paying guests. They are in the wrong industry if they think screaming at any person like that is ok.

We were also never advised from reception nor from booking.com that the building was being painted and we were unable to sit on the balcony or use the tennis court weekdays from 7am-4pm which is disappointing from both parties as we chose this hotel for those facilities.

Very disappointing Contessa and booking.com

Great location but sadly the apartments are very old and run down. Clearly nothing has been done to them since they were built in the 80's and it shows, nowhere near the standard of other, modern hotels in the area. We had no hot water in either bathroom for the 2 nights of our stay, while the hot water in the kitchen worked fine. Contacted the number for the manager on Sunday to try and get it fixed so we didn't have to have another cold shower, only to be told that nobody else had complained about it and that he couldn't get a plumber on a Sunday. We were told if we wanted to have hot showers we should go down to the bathroom next to the gym! Absolutely terrible service and very rude management. Will not be returning.

To all those considering to stay at the Contessa Holiday Apartments, I strongly urge you not to for your families safety and security. The risk the property managers exposed us to is absolutely unforgivable. We consider ourselves lucky that we “only” had thousands and thousands of dollars of possessions stolen, along with our identities, which have already suffered many attempts at fraud.

What if our daughter had been kidnapped? What if we had been murdered or raped? We will be spending the next 12 months trying to move past the idea people were in our apartment while we were completely vulnerable, and could potentially have undertaken acts of an absolutely vile nature, not only to us, but to my parents, or even worse our daughter. On top of this, we will be spending countless hours cleaning up the wreckage of identity theft.

The brief story:

On the 3rd January 2018 we checked into this hotel (Room 191) for 8 nights stay.

On the morning of the 5th January, our apartment was broken into, while my husband and I slept, with our 2 year old daughter in a separate room.

We awoke to text messages alerting us our credit cards were being used fraudulently, and on further investigation found our wallets, iPads, iPhone and a few other personal items were not able to be found. We were absolutely shocked as we were led to believe this was a secure building, and could not understand how someone could gain access to our floor let alone get into our room, which we both checked separately was locked prior to going to bed.

Further discussions with the police highlighted that the robbery was invited by the actions of the property manager, David Gardner, who failed to retrieve or deactivate keys and security fobs from the previous guests. He knew they had the keys and security tag, and didn’t bother with the simple act of disabling either of them. He mumbled something along the line of how difficult it would have been for him to find the serial number and make a phone call.

David was completely disinterested in what had happened to us when I first told him. His first response was something about how he was going to have to spend time reviewing 6 hours of CCTV.

The room:

Further to the, negligence, flat out laziness and incompetence of the property management, apartment 191 (Level 19) was old and run down in pretty much every way imaginable and was not as advertised. It was only air-conditioned in the main area, and the rooms had noisy ratty old fans with no light covers or fan knobs on the wall. This is all acceptable, however on top of the condition of the apartment, safety is a considerable issue as well. Not one of the bedroom windows had any form of safety locks or restriction, allowing them to be opened fully, and they had a ledge and climbing rails that enable children to climb entirely out onto the exterior of the building onto another ledge. If parents didn’t check the room over with a fine tooth comb, they could potentially wake to a knock on the door telling them their child had fallen 19 stories to their death due to this.

There is a large piece of glass on the veranda that the rubbers have come out of and it rattles and is unsafe and unsecured. The verandah doors did not all lock without massive effort and were very rusty and hard to open and close.

This venue is not safe for children and is not safe for you I cannot stress this enough do not stay at this venue.

We are now facing 12+ months of clean up from identity theft issues as a result of pure incompetence and laziness of this property manager and will never be able to relax when staying at external accommodation again.