Came to Suva to visit my husbands family, the hotel was great and centrally located, The hotel was clean, comfortable and well presented. It is a little old and needs some work but the staff have great attitudes and were always helpful.

The staff in this hotel are always very friendly and you feel welcome every time you stay at this hotel. The facilities however are a bit old and some renovations would do it good. Internet is available in the rooms and lobby but overpriced unfortunatelly.

The Holiday Inn was clean, comfortable, and perfectly located right near the CBD along the water. The staff was incredibly helpful, especially when I got burn marks on my white shirt after using the iron in my room. Joseph, one of the managers, cleaned the marks off my shirt and got it back in time for my meeting. All the other staff were exceptionally friendly.

I travel to Suva quite frequently, and was recently in town for Fiji Fashion Week. This was my fifth visit this year and I have previously always stayed at the Tanoa Plaza, but on this occasion I foolishly did not book ahead and was turned away as they were fully booked. So I decided to check Holiday Inn and sure enough they had rooms available. I checked in Friday 14.10.11, the lady who served me was pleasant and was good enough to upgrade me from a garden view room to an ocean view room. If you're tossing up between the two rooms just go for the garden view and save $50, the ocean view room is really overlooking the pool with a partial ocean view, not exactly postcard worthy. Although the room was old it was clean and the linen was very good.

After attending the Pacific Fashion show on Saturday morning I decided to grab a late lunch and head back to the hotel before the evening show. I went to the ATM and to my disbelief some money was missing from my account. I quickly rushed back to my room to check my internet banking and sure enough $550 was taken out and the details of the transaction were not yet available. And as you can imagine this totally spoiled my evening. I woke up on Sunday to check my internet banking again and it had listed the transaction as a 'debit card authorisation' and I remembered when I checked in the lady asked me if I had a credit card to secure the room and I said no, but I do have a debit card, she accepted it and manually swiped it on one of those old swipers, which in my mind was just to record the card details.

When I checked out on Sunday afternoon I informed the lady at reception of the situation and she was able to produce the receipt showing that they debited the $550 the afternoon that I checked in and she could not give me an explanation as to why this amount was debited, what it represents (bond) or why they didn't inform me that this was going to be done when I first checked in. The lady seem non-sympathetic and told me to contact my bank and that it will take up to 7 working days to recover my money. Inhale 1 2 3 exhale 3 2 1, I had to bite my tongue, I was tired, hungover and no ready to deal with this, so luckily I have family in town and was able to stay with them.

Come Monday lunch time I though how ridiculous it was that I had to spend my own money to contact my bank in Australia to try and fix a mistake that was made by the hotel. I went in to expressed how upset I was and how much their mistake has inconvenienced me. Joyce at reception listened and seemed to be the most pro-active staff member helping me by calling my bank and seemed to want to get the problem fixed. After investigating she realised that there was a quick solution called an 'offline reversal' which in other words would put my money back into my account within 2 hours. Joyce asked me if this option was offered to me when I checked out the previous day? and I said Nope! you can only imagine how frustrated I was.

After organising the offline reversal I though asking for a complimentary nights stay wouldn't be too much to ask especially after this was clearly a mistake on their part. I had to speak to the Service Manager Ida and after explaining the situation to her she looked at me like I just asked for one of her kidneys, she came up with some excuse that the General Manager has to approve all complimentary stays and he's not in at the moment, yeah right! Ida was very quick to defend her staff and even she could not explain the $550 amount.

With all that said I have to give credit where its due, the buffet breakfast is exceptional, the kitchen, housekeeping, room service staff are all really friendly and attentive. To the reception and security staff, it wouldn't hurt to put a smile on your dial! and a customer service 101 class wouldn't go astray ;)

My final recommendation, when you arrive at Holiday Inn spend $2.50 and catch a cab up to Tanoa Plaza where all the staff are really lovely and and they don't take your money.