Relaxing on the deck of our Port Arthur cottage, waiting for the moonrise, a full-page advertisement for Hobart’s Corus Hotel had me curious. Good location, refurbished 4½-star property, room upgrade, complimentary wine and restaurant meal for A$98 a night. It wasn’t hard to sell Karen on the idea.

No Such Thing as a Free Meal?
Reception is lined with bright-eyed hospitality graduates eager to please and it’s apparent that the new owners are promoting an image change. Brushed steel and chrome, recessed lighting and bold flower arrangements signal style and chic. Trevor almost bursts with enthusiasm. Of course nothing is simple with promotional offers and confusion reigns. Occupancy is low so I sense an opening.

"We’ll be staying three nights if the room is appropriate," I bluff, ecstatic they hadn’t thrown us out for lowering the tone of the place. (We needed a laundry and I had tomato stains on my last decent t-shirt.)
"So we’ll be needing complimentary vouchers for each night."

Complimentary goodies apply to each booking, not each night, but who reads small print? Evidently not the staff. We get four vouchers instead of three for the intolerable delay caused by the confusion. How inconvenient. Maybe there is such a thing as a free meal.

What’s on TV?
From the underground carpark we catch the lift straight to our floor. The room is an oasis. King size bed, in-house movies, comfy lounging area with writing desk and plenty of marble in the bathroom. And those huge, thick, fluffy hotel towels. The tea and coffee facilities get a workout and we enjoy the city views from our balcony. Karen looks like the cat that swallowed the canary.

"Oceans Eleven is on at 11pm tonight and tomorrow night there’s Training Day," she says, checking the in-house movie guide. "I don’t think we’ve seen them."

We returned that night around 11:30pm, disappointed that we’d missed the start of the film. What we got was someone’s birthday party home video. A quick call to reception solved the problem. A new machine apparently, "We’re just trying it out." The next night the machine wasn’t turned on, and the last night we just wrote a list of what we wanted to watch and had our own in-house movie marathon.

The Moral
Two of the three nights we dine at Embers, the hotel’s stylish, modern restaurant. Jim, our host, is attentive and we indulge on woodfired pizzas, quality Australian cuisine and wine for the price of, well, nothing. That’s right, free meals and damn good ones too!

The moral? Allow for that occasional indulgence and keep your eyes peeled for low season bargains – the luxury places need us, they have to pay their bills too.