I am sure this is a lovely property, however, we will never know, as the booking we made and received confirmation of was not honoured.
Yesterday morning, I made an enquiry about availability through the stay@paradisegardens.net.au address on their website. By the afternoon, I hadn't heard anything back, and as we needed to make a firm commitment to family, we went ahead with a reservation and booked and paid online. I received two emails, one confirming the reservation, and one confirming the credit card transaction.
Today I received a phone call responding to yesterday mornings email to say that the dates I enquired about yesterday were already booked out. To cut a very long and drawn out conversation short, I explained to the staff member that this was because I had already booked them through the online booking system last night. I asked him to check and confirm my reservation, and he said that I wasn't in the system, and the booking was listed for someone else. How could this be? I had already booked and received confirmation!
He then explained that there is a problem with the system that allows people to double book rooms. It was lucky that I asked him to check my booking, as we may not have known the room was double booked until we turned up at the property! Even if the error had been picked up and we had been warned, it may have been too late to make alternative arrangements. My partner and I have especially organised this time off, and it is not as simple as changing our dates as was suggested on the phone.
The bookings for this property are managed by an external organisation, not the business themselves. Even the phone number listed on the website for the property takes you through to the management group, rather than the owners of property direct.
This is a valuable reminder of the benefit in booking and communicating directly with the property owner, rather than relying on an organisation that manages bookings for them, as there is a greater chance that things will go wrong, as happened in this case. I didn't intend to book through a property manager, I found out about this property from my research on Tripadvisor, and thought I was emailing the property directly when I contacted them.
I don't think it is very fair to send people booking confirmations that have not actually been checked and 'confirmed' (as the word suggests), especially if there is a possibility that they might not actually be honoured! Our initial excitement has now been replaced with disappointment at missing out and frustration over having had our time wasted. We will have to start looking again for somewhere else to stay, although we will not be dealing with any 'Holiday Great Ocean Road' properties of course!