placed on the market<\/a> on a couple of occasions in recent years but according to property records has failed to sell.<\/p>\nJust last week, Auckland resident Hamish Williams booked a two-night stay for the end of August through the hotel\u2019s website, paying just over $400 for a room for him and his wife.<\/p>\n
The booking was made two days before the sister companies went into receivership.<\/p>\n
The receivers called him on Wednesday morning to explain the situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey explained to me that the company had been placed in receivership, and my booking would not be able to go through and that they would be unable to refund it.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, they did say you can try and reverse the charge through your bank, so I have begun that process.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey [also] gave me recommendations of where else I could stay in Napier, which I thought was a nice touch.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he and his wife were \u201clucky it was only two nights\u201d and they would rebook elsewhere, as they were coming to Napier to watch their daughter\u2019s football tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cMore than anything, it is really sad to hear this has happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a wonderful place and a unique offering on a national scale, I would say.\u201d<\/p>\n
Williams said they stayed at the hotel for their anniversary two years ago and loved it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was what you\u2019d call memorable.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a warm reception; we felt it had a real personal touch.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe owner told us the story about the business … and she really sold us on the place.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, coming back to stay there again was an easy choice. We had such a good time.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said they even had a brandy room, which he had enjoyed during a tour of the hotel.<\/p>\n
Constructed in 1909, the building was home to the Hawke\u2019s Bay County Council for almost 80 years, until it was restored and repurposed into its current use as a hotel and eatery in 1993.<\/p>\n
The building survived the 1931 earthquake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Future bookings have been suspended on the hotel\u2019s website and Churchill\u2019s Lounge Bar and Restaurant has closed. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574162,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[534,16576,138,20703,28721,2986,4381,91655,6735,86289,3607,35479,111,139,69,5204,26820,16784,223,3593],"class_list":["post-574161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-amid","tag-bookings","tag-business","tag-cancelled","tag-cancels","tag-county","tag-customers","tag-fivestar","tag-hotel","tag-lodging","tag-napier","tag-napiers","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-process","tag-receivership","tag-room","tag-the","tag-venue"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}