We stayed here for one night in January 2010 as part of a three-week trip from Melbourne to Brisbane.

We chose this motel as we were only looking for something fairly basic as we were expecting to arrive late and leave early the next morning and didn’t feel we would have time to enjoy the facilities of something more upmarket. It was by far our cheapest accommodation, paying only AUS $103 including continental breakfast.

The website stated that it had been recently refurbished and from the pictures it looked modern and bright. Sadly, this was not the case with our room.

The positives were that the room was clean, the breakfast was OK and delivered to the room at the requested time. The room was a good size with a sitting area and a very small balcony, overlooking the shops opposite. It was a good job we intended to leave early, as it was noisy in the morning because of the businesses opposite. The room had a modern, flat-screen television but that seemed to be as far as the refurbishment had gone. It was dark and gloomy, partly because of the dark, built-in wood furniture which was old fashioned and badly chipped, but also because two of the lights were not working. The paint was peeling off the head board of the bed and on the ceiling were a series of holes, where some fitting had been removed, but no effort had been made to put right the décor!

The bathroom was clean but small and old fashioned, with a toilet that seemed to take forever to refill (and was very noisy doing so) and a slight, unpleasant smell of drains.

The location of the motel was not ideal. It is quite a way out from the town centre. Given that there is no restaurant in the motel, we assumed that there would be a choice of restaurants within walking distance, but this is not the case. On arrival we were given vouchers (AUS $2 off per person) to use at the restaurant in the local bowling club, but we were not told where it was or what it was like. When we did come upon it by chance, we felt it was not within reasonable walking distance. Instead, we had to drive to the town centre where we found a very nice Spanish restaurant by the river.

As it turned out, we didn’t arrive as late as anticipated, but we really felt that we wanted to spend as little time as possible in the room and were eager to get going the next morning. Fortunately, we found there’s quite a bit to see in Port MacQuarie if you’ve got a car, we particularly enjoyed the (free) guided tour of the Koala Hospital daily at 3.00 pm.

Overall, although we had no great expectations of this motel, we were still very disappointed and can think of no reason to recommend it.

The hotel looked great for what I wanted and I wasnt disappointed, it was great, comfortable bed, quiet, plenty of parking, centrally located, great management, but above all spotlessly clean, the continental breakfast in the room was either delivered at a set time of your choice (great alarm clock) or it you werent sure they would put it in your room the night before. hot shower, and one day i ran so late leaving the room I said not to bother making it up, but when I returned they had.

There was little bottle of milk provided each day, a pack of 2 biscuits for each of the 4 possible guests, and nothing was too much trouble

10 out of 10 for Christine who manages it, I will be back and would recommend it to anyone who is visiting Port Macquarie.

We stayed there for Christmas holiday with my dog. The reception was very helpful and advised us good restrants, beaches etc... The room is simple but has everything you need. You can walk to beautiful beaches. The breakfast at the balcony is nice option too.

I am at a loss for words to describe what a disappointing experience my guests and I had at the Best Western. It is difficult to know where to begin to describe accurately the exceptionally poor service, sub-standard amenities, awful location and terrible value of without a doubt the saddest excuse for a motor inn in Australia.

From the roadside location of the pond they call a pool (with its old, broken chair to greet people as they arrive), to the dated use of cheap concrete which causes as much distress to the eyes as it does the atmosphere, to the contemptuous, uncaring, unintelligent, fourth-rate service provided by the service desk, this motor inn would find it difficult to be included even amongst the top 80% of 'crap motels whose only positive attribute is that wasting your money to spend a night here wont actually kill you.'

The service desk is certainly unique in being totally devoid of any service. One positive of the motel is that it is so far out of town it can actually serve as accommodation for Forster.