Colville Cottage, Hobart
 

Has anyone stayed at Colville Cottage in Hobart? It sounds like it's in a nice location and at a fairly reasonable price.

Havn't stayed there but it is a lovely property ( I do know it as such ) and in a good position.

Just returned from 4 weeks travel in Australia - 10 of which were in Tasmania. Colville Cottage was the only unsatisfactory stay of the entire trip.

In short, it was worn, shabby and not all that clean. It is in a wonderful location and appears fantastic from the outside. It has a lovely garden and a wraparound porch. Inside could use a good dusting, polishing, scrubbing and more lightbulbs in the lounge.

Our room turned out to be detached from the main house and felt as if it had been a garden shed at some point. Daylight could be seen through the door and the knob hung by a thread. Areas of the hard wood floor had been patched with mismatched pieces of wood, one of which still held a recessed drawer pull! A bare light bulb hung from a cord in the ceiling - the first time I have ever had to pay $180/night for that feature. There were, however, bedside table lamps and two wall lights over the bed. The wine glasses were filmy with dust and one had a dark liquid in it. The drinking glasses were crusty.

In the breakfast room, the cereal jars were filmed with sticky residue and dust. Coffee and tea service was extremely slow, and would have been better if it had been self-serve. The cooked breakfast the first day was fine, but was a fiasco on the second day. Three people had to leave prior to receiving their breakfast. We were served our coffee, but cancelled breakfast as it hadn't been started by the time we needed to head for the airport. (We had allowed 1 hour for breakfast). One couple had to wait in the lounge because the breakfast room could not hold a "full house." The hostess seemed more concerned to place blame on her guests for all scheduling at the same time than to get busy scrambling eggs.

After our first sleepless night (the outdoor light was directly outside our window) I asked the hostess if we could be moved to a different room. I knew that 2 couples were leaving that day, but I was told that there was a full house. In fact, I was told I could look at all the rooms and I would see that we had the most room, and that she wasn't going to move us.

My guess is that the photos on Colville Cottage's website were taken long ago.

Sorry to hear that you had a bad experience there. I was talking to a B&B friend who told me that it has recently been taken over by newbies who obviously should not be in the industry to say the least.
Anyway that only confirms my ideas that people should stay out of the city and go into the country ( especially the Huon Valley) where they can stay in a place like Matilda's of Ranelagh which has previously won awards as the "People's choice" accommodation and has a long and well known reputation and rave reviews both from myself as I have stayed the a number of times and other people who have written on Fodors.
I know that does not help the situation with you stay but perhaps you should write a letter of disapproval to the likes of Tasmania Tourism or AAT - especially if they have those recommendations on their website. It most surely is not fair to charge for less than perfection in this respect.

Think you definitely should write to AAAT - this is the official body in Australia to award star points. I see AAAT has awarded Colville Cottage 4 stars, whilst I'm sure the place was sparkling when last inspected by AAAT; AAAT gives no points for service, hospitality, or meals. For this reason many B&B's and some hotels no longer care to associate with AAAT, consequently its membership has dropped drastically. In a bid to regain its membership and increase its coffers, AAAT is running a snide, untruthful and probably illegal advertising campaign country-wide - specifically targeting B&B's without a AAAT star rating, one supposes in the hope of regaining lost membership.

Sorry, hit button too fast. the point I was trying to make there is an official 4 star rating for a property can sometimes mean diddley squat.