I was excited to visit Establishment Hotel after they reopened this August as they appear to have well-styled rooms with a boutique hotel charm. I was also interested to see how Marivale approached the accommodation side of things as they have an excellent collection of restaurants throughout Sydney including some of my absolute favourites. I understand that some of the issues I experienced may be due to difficulties with re-opening after the pandemic-forced closure, but for the majority of my complaints, there is no reasonable excuse. I was staying with my pregnant wife, and when we were choosing a place to stay we compared hotels based on their advertised inclusions from the hotel direct website. Our three most important features were a deep soaking tub, 24-hour room service, and a reasonable room size. According to Marivale’s posted information, the Establishment Room would be a suitable choice for us to relax for the night. We booked direct with the hotel, 3 days in advance. We were not told that there was not going to be 24-hour room service until we checked-in, well after the cancellation window had passed. When we arrived at the hotel at 3pm, we were told there would be no room service available until dinner, and then after dinner service, none for the remainder of the stay (breakfast was included, but reduced to either a ham and cheese croissant or a Danish with muesli and yogurt.) This lack of room service was not due to unforeseen circumstances but was rather planned by the hotel and they made no effort to communicate this to their guests at time of booking. Had I known, I would not have chosen to stay, as the comfort and convenience of 24-hour room service was one of our deciding factors in our staycation. We stayed in the first week of August, 2020, right as Australia’s second wave of Coronavirus was taking full swing. Establishment Hotel advertises itself as COVIDSAFE but this is far from the truth. There was no hand sanitizer available at common high-touch surfaces like lift buttons or the main entry. Worse than that, we were served our breakfast uncovered, as in no cloche or no plastic film, by a gentleman with no facemask who was breathing directly on our food. I am not sure if the hotel is in the middle of updating the wording on their website, or if they are in the process of training their reservation staff, but the wording on the hotels website during the booking process was “Full payment will be done at the hotel” and on the next page “No online payment. Your credit card details are only used to guarantee your booking. Our reservation system is secure.” They charged me the full amount at the time of booking, 3 days before my actual stay. I do not mind pre-paying for a hotel reservation, but lying about when you take payment is a form of fraud. In addition to these 3 serious complaints above, there are numerous little complaints that make the hotel seem noticeably inferior to other 4 and 5 star hotels around Sydney: No one introduced themselves over the phone during our stay, the minibar fridge latch was faulty and the door kept swinging open, they only provided 1 key for 2 guests, and the room requires a key at the door for the power to work, the bathtub is too narrow to sit in comfortably, the shower only has an overhead rainfall showerhead, there was stains on the shower curtain and someone else’s hair, the shower drains to the bathroom drain rather than the shower drain so all towels on the floor get soaked every time someone has a shower, the TV requires 2 remotes for operation, etc. …