The house itself is excellent, it is warm, clean and roomy. Most importantly, it is right on the lake taupo offering wonderful lake views from the living room. You even do not need to walk out to enjoy water front life.
However, the booking procedures is frustrated to me. I requested a date change to Denise. However, she didn’t reply to me in Airbnb for at least a month. I tried call her and left message to the answering machine, still no response. So I have to call airbnb for help. It took them at least 2 weeks to finally get in touch with Denise and she still not able to reply me through Airbnb. Then it took another 3 days when airbnb help desk finally decide to response on behalf of Denise. It is only until then my modification request was finally confirmed.
Denise insist she had send email to me from time to time. However, I never received any until the day before check-in. I also need to mention since all the booking procedures are processed in Airbnb. It is not appropriate to communicate your guest outside the system while leaving requests in system unattended.
The day before check-in, I finally received check-in instructions. However, it is not detailed enough, instructions to disengage security alarm was failed to communicate. So after we retrieved keys from safe box and open the door smoothly, we encountered high volume alarms all over the place. We need to figure out how to disengage it on our own.
The Wifi password provided on the door of fridge and house menu are both incorrect, it turns out we need to wait 2 hours at the house after check-in for cable man to fix it. At which time Denise is not available as she need to drive back home far away from the house.
Towels and liens are not included in the price which is clearly listed in the profile so we brought our own. For those do not prepared, they can be hired from nearby lodge. However, I still have to say this arrangement is strange giving guest is paying considerably hotel equivalent price to rent a entire lakefront house instead of a hostel bed. All the essentials to comfortably stay in the house should be included in the total price.