This guest was booked on Easter Sunday by a Queensland Travel agent for 4 nights with 2 adults and 6 children.
The guests arrived many hours before check in time of 2pm.
They were personally greeted by the host and escorted to their Penthouse apartment where our housekeepers were finishing off from the previous guests departure. Generally guests are not permitted to enter before the housekeepers are entirely finished.
But the sight of 6 children softened the host’s heart and so he welcomed them in immediately as he believed that they had just come in from a long flight.

After welcoming and thoroughly briefing the guests about the facilities and also the cafes and restaurants in the area, he also took the family to show them our famous Fire Engine suite, as he thought the children would like to see the Fire Engine.

The host then waited until they departed from the apartment just in case they may have further questions or enquires or perhaps further assistance.

They were last seen walking towards the restaurants of O’Connell Street.

Well over 24 hours later our office was informed by, surprisingly a New Zealand travel agent, that the guests had departed on Easter Monday morning as they were not happy.
At no time during their stay had the guests telephoned our office to report any items or to ask for further assistance.

The comment “Surprisingly a New Zealand agent” refers to the fact that the booking was placed to our company through a Queensland (Australian) agent. Management believes that our tariff which was given to the Queensland agent was further marked up and then resold at a higher rate to the New Zealand agent without our knowledge or authority. We only learnt that a New Zealand agent was involved after the guest had left when we received a telephone call from the New Zealand agent.

Later that day, on close inspection nothing could be found amiss by management. The Head housekeeper had nothing out of the ordinary to report from her service earlier that day and had presumed by the lack of luggage that the guests had gone to Kangaroo Island for the day (many overseas guests do this day trip to Kangaroo Island in this manner)

It remains a mystery to this day as to what transpired on that fateful Easter Sunday. As the Fire Station Inn has had thousands of beautiful accolades from guests all over the globe, recorded in our guest books which are left in the master bedrooms of our apartments for guest comments.

Regardless Management decided to conduct a through review of ‘best practice’ and also to investigate and enhance the quality control methodology.

Therefore the action taken by management immediately afterwards was to

1. Employ a different housekeeping contractor to recheck the apartment to the minutest detail.

2. Remit half the money back to the Queensland agent to show good faith, even though this contradicted our stated and published trading terms.

3. Review the existing cleaning contract which was awarded to a best practice housekeeping team

Management highly regards the reputation of our company which has been earned over the past 20 years with over 60,000 satisfied guests.

Lastly it must be said that the guests were given a Welcome note on arrival which states, “Our Housekeepers take great pleasure in preparing for your stay, if however you require anything at all no matter how minor or trivial, please do not hesitate to ring our office. (This is a free call for our guests 24hours a day). We pride our selves on our service to our clients and we would like you to have a pleasant stay so we ask you to please contact us if anything is required or needs attention”