The Bolton Hotel, Wellington, New Zealand

This was my second stay at The Bolton Hotel in Wellington. In a previous job I’d stayed here for a couple of night right after the hotel opened back in 2004 (I think it was ’04… it was a boozy trip… so the memories have faded!).

The hotel is just off The Terrace in a really convenient location near the Beehive and just a 15 minutes walk to where I was working.

The Bolton Hotel, Wellington, New Zealand

The Bolton is a boutique hotel. There’s probably only 8 or so rooms per floor so it has that small hotel feeling (despite the 142 rooms that the hotel actually has). Even the reception area on the ground floor belies the size of the hotel.

I’d been upgraded to a one bedroom premier suite. King sized bed, separate lounge room and a galley kitchen. Huge bathroom too, as I’d been given a disabled room. Only downside was that I looked into the apartment building next door rather than onto the parkland or downtown Wellington… but since I was at work all day it didn’t really matter that much!

Onto the important stuff:

  • Room was very nicely appointed
  • Bed and pillows were great. I had 2 nights of magnificent sleep (despite the timezone change)
  • Room was very quiet… in fact,  didn’t head anything!
  • Room service dinner was OK, probably 7 out of 10 (see below)
  • Free newspaper
  • Internet was pretty standard, but you had to call reception and get an access code to connect. Every other hotel can do this on line… why can’t the Bolton?

The room service

I was feeling a bit peckish after the flight from Melbourne so decided to try room service. Not much on the menu took my fancy so settled on a Red Beef Curry. Don’t get me wrong, the curry was nice, but you could tell that it’d been stewing away for a while and there were some crusty bits from where it hadn’t been stirred often enough. Should have known something was up when they said they’d be up in 15 minutes with my food… and they were!

The glass of Pinot was nice though.

In all, a nice hotel, but the InterContinental is still my favorite in Wellington.