Taking the advice from Frommer's New Zealand, 5th edition (2010) for a special place to stay, we called ahead and reserved a room at The Mud Hut in Rotorua (page 218) under "Moments." The way the place was described--"treat yourself to a first-hand experience Maori hospitality...where you'll be able to connect with Maori culture"--and the setting it apart from the rest of the recommended places as a "not to be missed moments in our trip," convinced us to pay double the price (NZ$295 instead of the listed NZ$285) than most of the better hotels in town.



Turns out that this working-class home was far from our ideal of a "chic cottage" and "drop-dead gorgeous B&B." Although the house is reasonably well appointed, it is cheaply made and the art on the walls and stacks of local brochures and pamphlets fail to justify the prominent place given this glowing recommendation. Most strikingly deceiving is the word "hospitality." To travelers, hospitality means human contact with the host and hostess. Instead, we only happened to bump into our landlord, Oscar, because we arrived earlier than 9 PM we had notified him, while he was hiding the key as he had informed us on the phone. He told us that all the instructions were on the sheet of paper and rushed away. We never saw nor heard from him again in the two days of our stay although he lived across the street. He never inquired whether we were comfortable (we had to take cold showers because the only hot water was the thermal water pumped from nearby lava rock into the outdoor tub), and there was no maid service to make the beds and change towels, which is offered in all B&Bs--and no breakfast was included other than boxed cereal in the pantry.



The charming hotels in town charge half the price and offer a lot more friendly atmosphere and "hospitality" with as much local art or music CDs and thermal water baths.



Luckily, this tourist trap was early in our trip. We learned to cross reference this book with Fodor's (which seemed to be more helpful) and never take their recommendations for special "moments," which is normally would be an important element in any travel.

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