Our stay in beautiful Whitianga with our 1-year-old son was unfortunately ruined and cut short by cockroaches and a very uncooperative host.
The Blue Belle cottage is cute. Unfortunately, despite being recently renovated, the core of the wooden house has endless cracks and hiding places for cockroaches, and we saw several within the first 24 hours of our stay. Although we are aware that the occasional cockroach is typical in subtropical areas, the truth is that the longer we stayed there, the more roaches we saw. We were seeing them many times a day/night all over the house, even though we kept doors and windows closed. As soon as it got dark, corners became alive, they were just everywhere. During the day, we found them in kitchen drawers, or in our pram which was sitting next to the outside wooden wall. On our 4th day, we found 7 cockroaches in the house, which was not acceptable anymore and made us wanna move out immediately.
We politely informed our host of this on multiple occasions, providing photos and asking what we should do. She consistently tried to shut down the conversation, employing a myriad of tactics. She said that “it’s normal”, they are “not a problem”, and that “there is nothing she can do about insects coming into the house”. In a truly bizarre moment, she even said on one occasion that the photos we provided were “not of cockroaches” (they clearly were cockroaches). In addition to this, she does not live in Whitianga, and was therefore unable/unwilling to come by the house to see and discuss the issue in person. We spent another 4 days (Day 4 to Day 8) texting with Penelope, begging her to agree to checking us out earlier and refunding the remainder of time. She simply refused and didn’t care about us being happy or uncomfortable.
In the end, she suggested that she could get the house sprayed (apparently admitting that there IS a problem?) but offered no solutions as to where we might stay until this spraying happens. We explained that we did not feel comfortable with cockroaches or fumigation poisons in and around the house where our 1-year-old was crawling, so we moved out the next day.
Although we had only stayed one week of our 18-night booking, we wanted to be fair and suggested that we could receive a partial refund for half of the booked nights. Penelope was incredibly unhelpful, she said she will refund us if she can resell any nights, but her cleaning person is too busy to clean the house, so nothing happened. In the end, she didn’t answer our phone calls anymore and stopped replying to any of our messages.
We are not wealthy, and the Blue Belle Cottage is quite expensive for what it is. We saved up for this vacation for a long time and were extremely disappointed with our experience. Unfortunately, this stay was ruined by cockroaches and a host that thinks it’s acceptable to treat guests who have genuine concerns about her accommodation disrespectfully. Our polite complaints were met with a mixture of denial, gaslighting, and, ultimately, ghosting tactics. In the end, we found her behaviour truly absurd and went for some legal advice.
We can’t recommend this place at all. Do not book.