Cairns Beach Resort

Nice, too bad it's so far from the city center => Uber

I read the Expedia listing, searching for Daily Housekeeping Included. There it was! But the print farther down the page said, "Daily Housekeeping included with a fee." A fee. An additional fee. I hadn't noticed, on the day I signed up. But wait! There's more. They don't remove the trash during 'housekeeping.' Guests are expected to remove their own trash. I took it out on departing, but just realized while writing this that i failed to remove the trash from the bathroom. I wonder how that will affect billing. I got good sounding words from the staff, but I did not get good service from the hotel. I am told that individual apartments are privately held, but are serviced operated by a company. Whether that is the issue or not, there are issues with the place. Internet service sucked when I visited. 90% of the time, service was slow or absent, despite several WiFi points of entry. The password they provided would fail. The connection would drop, and my machines could not connect. And I'm a tech dude. Hours lost uploading and communicating. Bonus! The television uses WiFi, so it would hang or regularly freeze during a program, or drop connection entirely. The staff faithfully did their duties, like advising me about a shipment coming in. At least the first one. I collected the second one at the front desk, allegedly before they could make contact. Mixed feelings about the operators. When they serviced my room ("We do that after eight days"), after I went off about housekeeping, they did a poor job cleaning the floors. The second time was better. The third time, it was spot cleaned where the cleaner noticed anything, thus missing other areas. They also use no fitted sheets. The bottom sheet is guaranteed to come loose, sooner or later. They don't do the dishes when they service the rooms. "They treat it like you're renting an apartment," one local advised me. This should NOT be called a resort. It is not a place to go to relax and be pampered. It is not heaping luxury. There is a charge to rent sunbathing towels from the front desk, and room towels are not to be used poolside. In my case, as this is a chlorinated pool, the water irritated and reddened my eyes for the ensuing afternoon. Finally, the front desk is staffed for a limited time everyday. Not at all Saturdays. There's a phone handy to call and get assistance, so you must wait outdoors in the heat. Which, for someone unused to tropical temperatures, can be debilitating. So that's the place. Now, the neighborhood. Nice. Off the beaten track. There are four nearby eateries, where food and prices are both good. While the rooms come with kitchenettes, featuring both a stove and refrigerator/freezer, the Spar grocery store is perhaps two kilometers away. This is fine if you are driving, but not for those on foot. I took the bus, mostly, so to get to Cairns Central (the city center) is probably a 40 minute drive each direction. It's maybe 20 minutes to the Smithfield Shopping Center (Americans would call it a shopping mall - but thriving), as they would call Cairns Central Mall (which is much larger). There's a wait for the busses, busses which are almost always delayed during regular business hours. The bus stop roofs don't shade the benches most of the day. Holloways Beach (don't use an apostrophe) is a nice strand, with a lifeguard on duty sometimes, and the shark net deployed some of the time. I was there when they were deploying it, and as of this writing, I haven't seen it reeled in. Walk down the sidewalk and you will see metallic starlings nested in hanging around and in 'basket' nests. Gulls and terns fly about and walk the beaches. Take off your footwear, and walk the sandy beach as far as Barron River's end at the sea, and you might spot osprey patrolling. Black cockatiels wreck havoc in the treetops as they feed. It's a good place to explore. I moved to a hotel in Cairns North instead. I will miss the food, and the personal service that came from getting to know the staff.

10-10-25 We stayed here for a wedding up the road but wish we just got an Uber ride from city centre. At first appearance the place was nice and friendly staff. We got to our room and thought it wasn’t too bad. Once we started looking, the …