The Carlin Boutique Hotel

Happy campers The hotel & all staff were outstanding in every way from the moment we arrived to valet parking, a welcoming drink and an upgrade to a fantastic suite. The view from our balcony hot tub across Queenstown & the Lake (day & night) was amazing. The Carlin compared very favourably to other 6 star hotels we have stayed in.

Great service from all staff. Comfortable rooms. Great view.

The Carlin is not a "5-star" hotel experience, which it holds itself out as and charges for. The view and private hot tub are great hence the 2 stars. Otherwise this is effectively a poorly-designed air bnb, not a luxury hotel. We left feeling a bit scammed. Some details/notes below: -We arrived around 8pm after traveling halfway around the world. As we checked in asked if we could grab a drink at the bar. Bar is closed. Is the hotel restaurant open for food? No, it's permanently closed other than for breakfast. Can we order room service for food? No, room service not available. Any restaurant recommendations? No recs and was told most restaurants would be closed (this turned out to be incorrect) and told we should just "order Uber eats" for fast food or something. Not a great first impression. -Walls are not sound-proofed at all. Expect to hear people using the (tiny) elevator in the back and in rooms next door and above. -Only one employee was on site during the day that served all roles, including waiter for breakfast, and often at night there were no employees on site. -Housekeeping did not come every day we were there. -Room has several lights that cannot be turned off. Including a large, glaring neon-green "exit" sign placed in between the bed and the window. I've never seen an "exit" sign inside of a hotel room. I'm sure this is code but obviously should've been thought about when the hotel was designed. This forces anyone staying to close the blinds around the bed so they can't wake up to the view, which is the main attraction. -First night, the bright fluorescent bathroom mirror light would not turn off. The bathroom door is glass so this fully illuminated our bedroom. Couldn't place blanket over door since a sliding door, and wires to lighting went into the wall. Almost comical. Called front desk. Was told they wouldn't be able to get an electrician to fix until 3 days later (we stayed 4 nights) and no other rooms. What? After explaining this was not a reasonable solution, guy came up and unlocked a door to an additional musty bedroom with NO windows (kinda creepy - what hotel room, much any bedroom, has no windows?) that didn't seem it had been cleaned recently and was told to use this room instead to sleep. Whatever, we needed sleep. Next day when we asked for some kind of discount but were told no they viewed us as made-whole since we had an additional bedroom. The next day they did end up figuring out how to turn off the circuit-breaker to the bathroom light so the light was just permanently off. Other nice places in the area were already fully booked, otherwise we were close to just cancelling and switching hotels. -Furniture is weirdly uncomfortable and TV too large for where couch is located. Gym is a joke, basically a treadmill in a mirror covered closet. -poor water pressure in the shower -The rooms in general are not appointed well and very out of place given the location. Everything has this cheesy, garish

Amazing service & Richard went above & beyond with an early checkin & late checkout not a problem. We highly recommend staying while in beautiful Queenstown.