Do not judge Motel by external design. Internal studios are roomy, spotlessly clean with well equipped kitchen facilities. On busy road but not noisy.Owner/ manager very pleasant & helpful as experienced throughout our 2 trips around N.Z. Very good value in a city that has a shortage of vacancies following earthquake. Can recommend. Handy to lovely Merivale shopping arcade. Say 1.25 kms by car.

We arrived about 3 hours earlier than the check in time of 2pm and the owner was very welcoming and our room was ready. The studio we had was clean and very spacious for the two of us. It was a lovely short walk down the river to the city centre - which we enjoyed. The kitchen was well equipped and it was nice to have a seperate room for the kitchen, living area and bedroom - which we didn't get in the other motels that we stayed in. It was handy to be able to leave the bedroom when I was awake with jet lag in the middle of the night and be able to sit in the living area and watch tv without waking my husband. Would definately recommend this motel to anyone visiting Christchurch.

I stayed in a one bedroom apartment on the first floor of the Aotea. The units are quite spacious and the place is extremely affordable. You are provided a tv, micro, gas, etc and the one bedroom unit can easily accommodate 3 people. The staff was also quite helpful with suggestions on how best we could utilise our 1 day in Christchurch. Only drawback - The motel is kind of far from the cathedral area and hence taking your car to the city center might be required.

Our room at the Aotea Motel was spotlessly clean and comfortable athough our 2 bed apartment was a little small for the 4 of us - but there's so much to see and do in the area that we were out and about so much that it wasn't a problem. The kitchen facilities were fairly basic - 2 ring hob, micro and fridge but fine for what we needed!

It was a 15 - 20 minute walk into the town centre but we walked along the River from the motel which was quite pleasant and avoided alot of the traffic!

All in all - we enjoyed our stay at the Aotea motel - certainly good value for the price and the owners were friendly and helpful.