There is a serviced apartment complex in the Gold Coast’s Burleigh Heads that my family and I have been going to for almost ten years. When I got married all our guests stayed there too, so at a quick calculation I’d say we’ve contributed about $30,000 to their bottom line over the years.

For those who’ve never been there, Burleigh Heads is a beautiful beach that’s close enough to Surfers Paradise to feel connected to the action, but far enough to remain untouched by the overdevelopment other Gold Coast areas have suffered.

This complex was by far the nicest in the area, an area that is basically holiday accommodation the entire length of the coast. It was also very competitively priced for a relatively slick place with the beach just across the road.

In the last few months it has changed ownership and been renamed under its new brand and new management. It has also seriously gone down the gurgler and for all our loyalty over the years, I think we’ve done our dash with this place.

In a one week stay I can reel off this little list of failings:

• Dishwasher was broken: Not a good start for a 3 bedroom apartment with 4 kids under 10. We arrived on the Thursday and management sent someone on the following Wednesday (one day before we left) to check it out. Not to fix it mind, just to review it. Apparently management cannot fix anything inside the apartment, they can only tell the owners to do it.
• Main balcony sliding door jammed: Again, for a beach holiday with the balcony as the key selling feature it ain’t a good look. Maintenance guy came on Wednesday, six days into our stay and one day before we left and said “Yep, previous guests told us about this…”
• Two cereal bowls in the cupboard: Fun times for an apartment that sleeps 8.
• TV remote has broken battery cover and flat batteries: They couldn’t check the batteries and shove some cellotape round the thing?
• Towel rail missing the bar
• Tap dripping in the bathroom
• Bins don’t come with rubbish bags
• Apartment complex UP lift button not working: If you want to go upstairs from the 6th floor you have to push the down button, get in the lift and push UP button when inside. So if someone downstairs has pushed it before you, you’ll ride all the way down before you can go back up again.

Even when you’ve been a guest of this place as many years as we have there comes a point when you start to wonder why bother. If it takes a week for management to call in their maintenance people… If the resort do nothing more than man-the-front-desk and have no control over repairs inside the apartment… If standards keep slipping every time you go… It’s time to look around for a new place. Hell, why not pay more and go somewhere with some customer service? i.e. an extravagant place where they line their bins with bin bags…

Maybe the Gold Coast was a holiday mecca in its heyday and resorts didn’t have to lift a finger to fill the rooms – but those days are gone. Too many choices and holiday time too precious to waste doing the sort of maintenance you left home to avoid.

Management of these places have to lift their game because as guests we can forgive one or two oversights that are dealt with quickly, but lazy service and an entire checklist of chores and I’m looking for a new place to spend my hard earned money.