Aura Hotel Wellington

Last week was busy in Wellington, such that none of the hotels on the Ministry’s approved list were available. Not wanting to cancel the trip, I pushed a bit and got them to approve a stay at the Aura.

Fantastic location, cheap price, but many bad reviews…

Above is the nice-enough view from my window on an early drizzly morning. Well, not my room exactly, but the common area shared by my pod of six rooms, whose only windows gave onto the corridor and were therefore worse than useless… they let in unwanted noise and light and for what?

The Aura lives inside the James Smith Corner building, which was a big department store for most of its life. There were still some original 1930s details here and there.

So why and how does the Aura exist? There were too many little problems and weirdnesses to list here, but I can see why they had vacancy when all the other places were full. I’m glad I got to make the trip as planned, and nothing actually bad happened at the hotel, but I wouldn’t choose to stay there again.