TripAdvisor Travelers' Choice Award - 4 in a row!!

Wow, 4 in a row! We blogged about our 1^st Trip Advisor Travelers’ Choice Award in 2011, and blogged about the 2nd award in 2012 and blogged about the 3^rd last year too. 

This year when the Travelers’ Choice Awards came out, our much beloved category was not there….gone.  We have recently learnt from an official Trip Advisor press release in Japan that; “Until last year the award had been announced as a part of "Travelers' Choice ™ Hotel Awards", but in order to provide accolades of greater clarity to accommodation providers who present “hospitality” to a level such that it remains in the hearts of guests, this year it was decided to announce the service category individually. (taken from a Trip Advisor press release dated 15 April 2014 and translated by Jeff)

We are once again super duper proud to say we’ve done it again.  Yes, Best Service awards 4 years in a row. 

This year we are No. 7 on the list of Top 25 Hotels with Exceptional Service in New Zealand and No. 10 on the list of Top 25 Hotels with Exceptional Service in the South Pacific.  This follows a top 10 finish in 2011, another award in 2012 and No.8 in NZ and No.15 in the South Pacific in 2013.

This is the 12^th year of the awards and the second year that NZ has had its own category. The first 2 awards we received were in the South Pacific Category, and last year we were No. 8 in NZ.  This year we have gone up one ranking and have scored in the top ten in the South Pacific category which includes all of Australia as well.

It’s great to see Trip Advisor Awards are continuing to develop because they reward hard work judged by untold numbers of real guests!

So, if you are looking for great service in Christchurch, stay at a great motel which has been judged by the guests themselves.  Stay at a motel that has won in the Best Service category 4 years in a row. Stay at CentrePoint on Colombo Motel!

We’re once again elated and humbled but before we give ourselves a well deserved pat on the back, we’ll say thanks to all our guests who took the time to review us on Trip Advisor! 

As for our pat on the back, it might just be a nice bottle of wine with dinner this evening while continuing to provide more great service to our wonderful guests!

TripAdvisor Travelers' Choice Award - 3 in a row!!

Wow, 3 in a row! We blogged about our first Trip Advisor Travellers’ Choice Award in 2011 and blogged about the second award last year too.  We’re super proud to say we’ve done it again this year in the awards announced recently!

Yes, Best Service Awards 3 years in a row. 

This year we are No. 8 on the list of Top 25 Hotels for Service in New Zealand and No. 15 on the list of Top 25 Hotels for Service in the South Pacific.  This follows a top 10 finish in 2011 and another award in 2012.

This is the 11^th year of the awards and the first year that NZ has had its own category.  The first 2 awards we received were in the South Pacific Category but this year we are No. 8 in NZ!!  Great to see that these awards are developing as they reward hard work and are judged by untold numbers of real guests!

In another sign that the Awards are evolving, there is a good variety of winners spread throughout NZ this year.  In fact, apart from The George Hotel (winner in Top 25 Hotels in NZ category), this year we are the only Christchurch Hotel to feature in the awards as opposed to 4 motels last year.

So, if you are looking for great service in Christchurch, stay at a great motel which has been judged by the guests themselves.  Stay at a motel that has won in the Best Service category 3 years in a row. Stay at CentrePoint on Colombo Motel!

We’re once again elated and humbled but before we give ourselves a well deserved pat on the back, we’ll say thanks to all those guests who took the time to review us on Trip Advisor! 

As for us, well it might just be a nice bottle of wine with dinner this evening while continuing to provide more great service to our wonderful guests!

It’s been a good day!

Today has been a busy day on the Motel front with a wide range of good news rolling in…..

Lonely Planet has released its new, post-quake Christchurch & Canterbury chapter from the upcoming Lonely Planet New Zealand guide,
 

We are there on Page 12 between the Jailhouse and The George.  Look at that! 3 top accommodation providers from different genres all together - ranging from $30 to $886!! Jailhouse – Top Backpacker, CentrePoint on Colombo – Top Motel, The George – Top Hotel!  Will also mention Orari B&B – Top B&B just to our left!! 
We congratulate Lonely Planet on producing a comprehensive guide to post quake Christchurch that can easily be said to be the best guide to our new city at time of printing!!  Most noticeable is that they have shown the central city area is alive and well and very much a place to visit!!
We are proud to be recognised in this way by one of the world’s top travel magazines and look forward to welcoming LP users to Christchurch!

A recent traveller, (Trip Advisor name; OmNomNomDePlume) who found us on twitter and drove in with ½ the South Island on his car reviewed us on Trip Advisor in probably one of the longest reviews we’ve ever had!!  It kinda summed up a lot of what we do and recognised the effort we put into helping the travelling public get the most out of their visit to Christchurch.  Made us laugh and smile! Have a read….here

Received the latest update for our all new motel website that we are working on.  Starting to come on nicely and that gave us an extra little buzz!!  Sorry but it’s all under wraps till we can get it together……..stay tuned.

Gotta live the good times and we did indeed today!!

CentrePoint on Colombo wins again!

 

 (Making room for another one!!)

 

We blogged about our first Trip Advisor Traveller’s Choice Award last year and we’re proud to say we’ve done it again this year in the awards announced today! 

Only this time instead of just 1 section we’ve won in 2.  CentrePoint on Colombo Motel is in the Top 10 Hotels for Best Value (it’s actually called “bargain” but that doesn’t fit well grammatically so we used the English translation of the Japanese language page phrase!) and an award winner in the Best Service in South Pacific Category by TripAdvisor in its 2012 Travelers’ Choice Awards.

We’re pretty happy but before we give ourselves a well deserved pat on the back, we’ll say thanks to all those guests who took the time to review us on Trip Advisor!  

Best Service 2 years in a row is great but we do find this year’s addition of the “bargain” title an interesting one because it’s the section we most often get marked down in guest reviews.  We often get told we are expensive... so does this mean can we raise our rates?!

It’s interesting to see that this year, 4 Christchurch Motels have made it into the top 25 for Best Service and 3 in the Bargain category – meaning that despite the shakes Christchurch is a place where you’ll get Great Service at a Good Price.

After recently being lauded by the Lonely Planet as one of the most exciting cities in New Zealand, Christchurch has now been given accolades from visitors over the last year and we hope that our RTO – Christchurch and Canterbury Tourism – uses this piece of good news to encourage more people to visit the city.

As for us, well it might just be a nice bottle of wine with dinner this evening!

Trip Advisor Sympathy Vote

Sometimes it doesn’t matter how you get it as long as you get it!  And today, here from disaster central in Muntchurch is one of those stories.

Over the last 3 years we’ve worked hard and that’s been recognised by the travelling public who have written nice, not so nice and sometimes not really nice at all things about us on Trip Advisor.  Thanks to a happy aggregate of these varying opinions, CentrePoint on Colombo Motel has been in the top 2 Hotels in Christchurch since 25 Aug 2009.

One reason we’ve done it is because we deliver what we promise.  If our website says you’ll get a smile on arrival than that is indeed what you’ll get.  None of those “but we thought we would get….” Stories here!

This presented us with a dilemma after the 22 Feb earthquake.  In the space of 20 seconds almost everything good about us was destroyed.  True, a lot of people are entertained by Jeff’s ???(you choose the adjective) way of looking at the world and impressed by Naomi’s attention to detail, but we also got lots of points for being so close to the best Christchurch has to offer, and we lost all that. 

What’s more we were cordoned and curfewed for 17 days.  The dilemma was, how could we possibly take people’s money (we don’t do this only for love you know!) without feeling guilty.  These people booked on the good side of the shakey shake believing they would be staying in one of the best places in Christchurch!  The reality post 22 Feb was very different.  We still need the money to survive but we didn’t want to unnecessarily make people come and stay either.  The last thing we wanted was unhappy guests.  We’d rather try find a new type of guest that we can make happy. 

Cancellations galore rolled in after the quake, and we advised people to avoid Christchurch if they could, but we were able to fill a lot of rooms with international media and disaster recovery personal and this was our happy median - we were not disappointing anyone and we were able to sell rooms and keep some cash flowing in.

But we were concerned about how we could maintain our Trip Advisor status!  Sure Christchurch is seriously munted but it’ll slowly get better and we’ll be here guiding visitors and making sure they get the best out of what there is left of Christchurch.  So it would be nice to keep our ranking!

Step up the sympathy vote!!  What we have noticed since the quake is a lot of our previous guests stepping up and taking the time to write their reviews now.  It is truly uplifting. What can we say?

First we say thanks, thanks for writing and thanks for thinking of us. Second we say thanks again, cos it gives us a little lump in our throats to read the messages of encouragement from so many guests that have stayed with us in the past.

Our motel has been bloody good in the past and will be bloody good again, we just need to get through these first few months till Christchurch gets off its knees and past guest’s comments is one way we’ll do it.

To those who have taken the time – thanks. To those who haven’t – now’s good!

In the meantime, we’ll be getting info out as best we can, telling people about the situation at CentrePoint on Colombo Motel and how we can help you enjoy Christchurch.  Sometimes that will involve telling potential guests to stay in another part of town, but we’d rather do that than just taking their money.

CentrePoint on Colombo honoured in the 2011 Trip Advisor Travellers’ Choice Awards – Part 2

We have already blogged about winning this award, but now there’s more!  It would be nice to be able to write about something other than a bloody earthquake, but it just about impossible and today is no exception.

Since 25 Aug 2009 we have been ranked either 1 or 2 on Trip Advisor in Christchurch.  If you want to know why just read the 244 reviews we have.  In short we do it by keeping our motel in tip top shape, offering bloody good service, having friendly personalities and being close to the best of Christchurch.

Our efforts were rewarded and we were honoured this year to win the Trip Advisor Travellers’ Choice Awards.  And we have now received the plaque and room cards to go with the award!  Only problem is that there was a bloody great earthquake in the middle that has changed everything.

The future is uncertain in our present position, we are still only a short walk to town, but town is not there and won’t be for quite some time!  We are also limited in restaurant choices.  Sometimes we think we may as well be on Mars.

 
But this is life in post quake Christchurch so we’ll just go on as a motel in tip top shape, offering bloody good service with friendly personalities ……close to the Red Zone.