This property is a mixed bag, it has some good aspects, but a lot of negatives that you should be aware of before deciding to stay here.
Positives:
- fantastic location! The view is brilliant, and it is very close to town and a good workout walking back up the hill afterwards!
- large house, with plenty of space for a larger group.
Negatives:
- Lack of maintenance. The decor is dated, which isn't a problem for us at all. What was a problem was the lack of maintenance more generally. We counted 4 lights that didn't work throughout the house, including the main light in the master bedroom. Many of the jets in the spa bath didn't work. The green house manual referred to in the listing is nowhere to be found. Due to the range of maintenance issues we became concerned and checked the smoke alarms as we were planning to use the heaters overnight. We found there were no working smoke alarms in the property. The downstairs smoke alarm is missing, and the upstairs alarm has no battery which is completely unacceptable in a rental/accommodation property in 2022.
- Cleanliness. Cleaning is very basic, many dishes (cutlery and pots) were dirty with dried on food. The pots drawer itself was dirty. Surfaces such as floors and tables were very sticky. The outside rubbish bins were completely full.
- Firewood is not provided and the air con and oil column heaters aren't adequate to heat the house without a fire. It had snowed in Queenstown a few days before we arrived, and on the day of our arrival there was a heavy rain and high wind warning. No firewood or kindling was provided, despite a message from Lu just prior to our arrival stating that there would be, so it was quite cold in the house.
We messaged Lu with these concerns on our first night to give her a chance to rectify things rather than the first communication being via this review. Her response was lacklustre. She apologised for the poor cleaning, but did not offer to rectify it. We were also told that firewood is only supplied in "winter", even though there was wintery weather at the time of our arrival and even though others staying just before us had commented on their reviews indicating firewood was supplied. The concerns about the lack of smoke alarms in the property were ignored so we went to the late night dairy in town to buy a battery on the night of our arrival at our own expense. Lu messaged us on our second night in the property offering to replace the light bulb in the master bedroom that night, however we were out. With regards to the full bins, her response was just that the previous booking has been a large group (if you know that, then surely you'd empty the bins rather than leave them for the next guests to empty. We put the bins out on bin day)
The place feels uncared for and needs a lot of maintenance. The Air BnB listing was not accurate and gave us false expectations. Clearly this property is run by property managers who don't care about the property like an owner would. While it is "cheap" for Queenstown, it is still an expensive property so we expected the basics such as cleanliness and maintenance to be better. We'd stayed in 4 other Air BnB's on the 2 weeks prior to this one, and all others we had no problems with. You'd be better to pay an extra $50 or $100 a night and stay somewhere else.