We recently spent a few nights at Browns and found not only was its location very central but more importantly, Gillian and Donald were very helpful and considerate hosts. Great choice at breakfast time.

We'd stay here again. Great location (if you don't mind of flight of stairs when you come home for the night). Great breakfast. Clean rooms. Friendly owners. This place was the perfect Queenstown spot, since you are close to everything, but not in the middle of everything. Great views from the rooms too.

We stayed three nights at Browns as part of our honeymoon in February 2011. We found the hotel to be the most welcoming, homely, clean place and loved the mediterranean look and feel of it. Gillian and Donald are the most lovely and helpful hosts. Nothing was too much trouble, Gillian helped us organise day trips and make dinner reservations and all recommendations were excellent. We were given the top corner room and found it to be superb. Very spacious, comfy bed and marvellous views over the harbour and Queenstown in general. Even though we were by far the youngest guests in the hotel at the time, we found the conversations with fellow guests around the breakfast table to be very interesting and lovely. We loved the tranquility of the location away from the hustle and bustle of what can be quite a 'party' town full of young backpackers. We enjoyed our room so much, we had dinner in it twice when we could not face yet another restaurant meal (gets a bit boring after three weeks).

Yes, admittedly the parking is not great as the spaces outside the hotel are very tight, but you can always park on the road opposite, which we did not find to be a problem.

All in all, this was one of our favourite places to stay in the whole of New Zealand and is now one of my 'happy' places I dream myself back to whenever I need to escape the reality of everyday life.

Our first taste of Browns was the guest-centered service. As others have noted, it is a small hotel lovingly operated by Donald and Gillian. Our arrival at the hotel was delayed by 7 hours because our plane from Sydney was diverted to Dunedin and we were bussed the 4 hours to Queenstown arriving at midnight. To other small hotels, the annoyance would have been palpable. But Donald and Gillian were gratious, staying up late for our arrival and even sending a taxi to meet our bus. The room with it's stunning view, the gratiousness of the hosts and the delicious breakfast, made this hotel one of the highlights of our trip.