Bay of Islands Holiday Homes 5 Beresford Street, Bay Of Islands, Russell, Northland 0202

"Awful experience - unfortunately we had booked a lovely week in Russell Northland well in advance of our trip. We paid a large deposit for a house at flagstaff and a couple of months out from our trip we were told our booked house accommodation was cancelled and no longer available in Russell. We last over approx $250 in conversion fees. The host Lesley was unfortunately not very sympathetic or kind. We were offered 1 option a good 10-12 min drive out of Russell but other than that nothing else and basically too bad. She was quite rude overall. We were coming from overseas with children and very difficult to change flights and itinerary at that point. Be warned that your accommodation can be cancelled without warning. In this small town it is very difficult to find an alternative at this time of year."

"A great collection of Holiday Homes, including some exceptional luxury properties."

"We recently stayed at 9 The Strand managed by Bay of Island Holiday Homes. The house was just beautiful. It has been recently renovated to a high standard and has lovely touches like beautiful bath towels, beach towels and linen. The house is very well equipped with absolutely everything you need. The view from the terrace is second to none. Bay of Islands Holiday Homes were excellent to deal with, the house was just spotless, and their communication was faultless - a wonderful holiday.. Thanks Lisa and Evan"

"The place is great it was immaculate with everything we needed. Lesley and Barry do a fantastic job and its worth every cent."

"Its companies like this that make AirBnB so successful. I haven't booked directly with a holiday home company in a long time and will definitely be put off doing so again in future as in this situation the customer doesn't have a leg to stand on where's with AirBnB I have felt totally protected in the past. From start to finish our experience was bad. In the beginning Lesley booked us in on some dates that were already booked by another person and so we ended up having to reshuffle our travel plans. Her manner throughout was very off-hand and not what you would expect from somebody working in tourism. The property which we check in was a pretty basic kind of bach, upon arrival we were immediately told that we should avoid using one of the three bedrooms due to some penguins that were nesting under there and disruptive at night (understandable but we should have been told in advance or compensated). The house could have been cleaner when we checked in, and we noticed there were 'crumbs' that hadn't been wiped away in the pantry which we later came to realise were mice droppings after a very disrupted nights sleep where several of our food items were knocked out of the pantry on multiple occasions waking us each time, when I finally finding a mouse inside our daughters packet of wheetbix at 5am. We had one night remaining out of 7 at this point and called Lesley requesting that we leave a day early and relocate to a hotel as we didn't feel comfortable in the environment anymore - we had to throw out our food and felt like the place was unclean. So I asked for a refund for the following night that we were not going to stay - NOT for the night we were terrorised by mice. Initially we were told we would be provided for a full refund for one night but later on Lesley decided to go back on her word and to only refund us 50%. We received no compensation what so ever for the other night, nor did we ever receive an apology from Lesley or Barry, her husband. We were only told 'this is beyond the owners control'. That doesn't mean we should be expected to pay for holiday accommodation whilst they sort their pest issue out... We were also accused of attracting the mice by leaving our rubbish in the outdoor bin provided - until we could make it to the refuse station, which had maggots in it (which we were also accused of causing). This came as no surprise as the house was riddled with flies every evening, not to mention the biting ants we found in the bed. Barry, was kind enough to dispose of the rubbish as we were unable to get to the refuse station before it closed due to a rare Tsunami evacuation, but obviously this wasn't OK with Lesley as it seems this is what caused her to retract her offer of the full nights refund, despite the fact that we had opted for the departure clean to be included in our booking. I would advise anyone to avoid booking with Bay of Islands Holiday Homes."