The Pavilions Hotel, Christchurch - Review

A Trip Down Under 2019
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When we do these trips we usually try to find points-friendly lodging to help us save money.  However, trying to find any room with three beds is always a challenge.  As I searched Christchurch for a place to stay, all the places where we could use points for a suite and a rollaway bed only offered a king bed instead of two twins or queens.  Using Trip Advisor as a starting point I narrowed down a list of places that would seem to suit us.  D (the birthday girl) ended up selecting The Pavilions.  It's not super-fancy but is a Trip Advisor Certificate of Excellence winner.  We reserved a two-bedroom unit which was basically a small apartment and included a kitchen and living room.

Pavilions Hotel, Christchurch, NZ
(photo credit: pavilionshotel.co.nz)

Guest Room

The hotel is fairly sprawling but fortunately a staff member helped us find the most dry routing to reach our room, as it was raining when we arrived.  The unit is shaped a bit oddly with the french doors opening sort of on the lower point of a diamond into the living room.  Just beyond that was the kitchen.  Hang a right and there are the bedrooms and the bathroom.

The living room had a dark brown carpet and the sofa and love seat were also dark colors which made the area seem even smaller than it was.  The sofa, especially, was saggy and the whole room could use a refresh.

Front doors behind the curtains, dark sofa and carpet

Across from the sofa was a console unit that had the best-stocked mini-fridge I've ever seen and a large snack drawer.  A TV was mounted on the wall above it.  We stayed up late one night watching the All Blacks play World Cup rugby, which was fun.

TV, console and love seat

Well-stocked mini-fridge, with freezer compartment

Snack drawer

The "dining area" was a table with three chairs positioned between the living room and kitchen.  The room could technically sleep four people (or more with the sofa?) but there were only three chairs.  While that was fine for us I'm not sure where the fourth person was supposed to sit!

Dining Table between the sofa and the kitchen

The kitchen didn't have an oven though of course we didn't need it.  A microwave and a two-burner stove provided the cooking power.  No dishwasher so someone got to wash while another person dried and put away any dishes we used.

Kitchen area

Our 2 BR unit had only one bath and was too small for more than one person to occupy at a time, partly due to its configuration.  The shower stall was straight across from the door, with the toilet on the far wall to the right and the sink on the near wall.  The shower had a glass shelf up over the door.  That was fine for my friends and me but I can see how that could be an issue with young children (or short adults) who can shower themselves but can't reach that high.

Shower stall. The toilet was to the right

The sink didn't have a whole lot of storage as one whole drawer was occupied by the hair dryer.  There was a towel rack over the toilet which was great while everything was dry, but once we had wet wash cloths and towels, there wasn't enough space to hang them all in a way that they could dry.  This is not something unique to this hotel but it does make me wonder what hotel designers think we're going to do with all those wet items when they're not offering housekeeping every day.  I'm not saying we need new towels each day, we just need somewhere to hang 'em so they're not still wet tomorrow!

Toilet and sink

Toiletries were by Vertu and worked well enough.

Vertu toiletries

D had the master bedroom which felt larger than it was because there's virtually no other furniture in it except the night stands.  Next to the bed was a niche in the wall that acted as a closet but that was the only place to store clothes.  The safe was, inconveniently to our aging knees, down on the floor.

Master Bedroom

Closet/niche with safe

The second bedroom that C and I split was a reverse L-shape with one bed running the length of the long part of the L and the other bed at a 90-degree angle to it.  A wardrobe was at the foot of that second bed though only one half could be opened.  It makes me wonder if some of these units are privately owned and the other half was the owner's closet.

Second bedroom

Second bedroom

Amenities

The hotel has a guest laundry that happened to be very convenient to our room and we made use of it on our last night.  One of the two restaurants is fairly formal while the other is quite casual.  The bar area is very quirky and has mannequins representing members of the family that owns the hotel.  Perhaps the collection of items around the room could be called Kiwiana, assuming that's a term equivalent to Americana, but for New Zealanders!  Think of things you might see in a Cracker Barrel restaurant and that's the sort of things decorating the bar area.

There was an extremely small pool outside the bar area.

Pavilions Pool

And a very small hot tub beside it.

Covered Hot Tub

We didn't have a lot of interaction with the staff other than at check in and at the restaurant but they were pleasant and helpful.

Final Thoughts

This is a family-owned hotel and has been around for quite some time.  It's popular with tour groups as we saw a large bus being unloaded one afternoon.  It's location is good for getting to the park and botanic gardens, a mall and the grocery store and it's on a major street that was easy for the ride-sharing folks to find.  While I almost always prefer points-earning hotels sometimes they just don't fit the bill but Pavilions worked out well for us in this case.