Novotel Melbourne on Collins

Disclaimer in advance: I booked via thid-party for this stay, as I had a Qantas Hotels voucher nearing expiry. As such, no ALL benefits were extended, so this is a review of the hard product only.

The ALL website states that the Fitness Centre is 'recently' refurbished, though I cannot comment on this as I did not use it.

The hotel is very well located about halfway along Collins street, about a 10 minute walk from Southern Cross Station. It is a 15-20 minute walk to the Melbourne and Olympic Parks precinct (Margaret Court Arena, Rod Laver Arena, MCG etc).

Check-in was efficient. The front desk agent gave me the relevant information without overloading me with information. I thought it was interesting that the process was to do a 'sale' for the deposit on a credit card - in my experience it is usually a pre-authorisation, but that is just an observation.

The key cards at this hotel are made out of wood, like at the Mercure Sydney in my previous review,

The rooms are getting dated, though they are well-maintained and comfortable. Looking at the floor plan, the majority of the rooms, including mine, faced in towards the central atrium, with the shopping arcade below. This is well-lit by a large skylight.

The bed and couch were both comfortable.

The bathroom had those refillable bottles for shampoo, conditioner, body lotion and hand soap. The minor annoyance with these is that they are not great if you use a body scrub/loofah. The shower screen did appear to leak some water out onto the tiles under the sink, but only to a small degree.

Room service is ordered through a QR code.

Service was generally decent. Room service was delivered within 30 minutes of ordering, and the tray was collected from outside my room within a couple of hours.

On check-out, the hotel attempted to charge me for a mini-bar item that I had never consumed. My guess is the previous guest had consumed the item and not declared it on check-out, so the hotel retrospectively applied the charge, but placed it on my (incoming) reservation, rather than re-opening the folio of the previous checked-out guest. This was a very quick fix by the front desk agent handling my departure, so no complaint there.

The other issue I had was that the bedside alarm clock alarm went off at 7am, which I had not set. I guess the previous guest had used the alarm, but housekeeping had not cleared the set alarm during their inspection before my check-in. It was 'close enough' to my wake-up time that it didn't bother me too much, but if I had been planning on a sleep in, that would have been a different story. I provided this feedback to the reception on departure.

I ordered the steak sandwich from the room service menu, which was delivered within 30 minutes. It was decent - the steak was perfectly cooked, although a bit grizzly in sections. There was also one part of the steak that was heavily seasoned with salt, which was an interesting experience. The bread was a bit soggy on the bottom, but I think this is to be expected with room service.

Breakfast is very decent at this hotel, with a wide spread of options, including an omelette station.

I would return to this hotel, but I would first check and see what the pricing is for other nearby options. The location is fantastic, but the hard product is tired (though well-maintained)