Novotel Melbourne On Collins

Not as good as i expected.
Checking in was a long winded process.
I prebooked and paid for a room well in advance to arriving for our 7 day stay and still had to wait 20 minutes plus to get my keycard.
Did not feel very welcomed.
Reception entrance very narrow and congested at times to get in and out of the elevators to rooms. One stage there was a function on and i had to queue up and push my way through to get to to our room.
Location is good and rooms acceptable and clean.

Stayed 3 nights. Location is excellent, can't go wrong there. Room is spacious and quite nice, no complaints. Compared to other hotel's prices, it was pretty reasonable too.
I was a bit disappointed that on our second day we were out for several hours and returned to our room not being made. And upon checking in on my first day, the toilet seat was a little dirty from previous guest (don't need to go into detail there).
My biggest disappointment is the pool. I selected this hotel because i have 2 young kids and wanted a heated indoor pool. The pool itself is fine but the water was freezing. There is no way that can be considered a heated pool. Big disappointment, we only used it once and never returned as we weren't keen on catching pneumonia.

the hotel was in a great location Breakfast was fantastic

Decent and clean room, reasonable prices. Not fancy, but it's my common home in Melbourne.

We stayed one night with 2 adults and 2 kids - the room itself was fine. Beds were comfortable, there was plenty of space and the blackout blinds were fantastic, we all had a good night’s sleep.
However, we had a huge delay in checking in - we arrived just after the 2pm check in time, to be told that our room wasn’t yet ready. Told it would be 20-30 minutes, offered some drinks at the bar as compensation. We asked how we would know when the room was ready - we were told we just had to come back to reception. So we gave it almost an hour, came back to find that our room still wasn’t ready - with no estimation on how much longer it would be. The front desk staff said she’d call the housekeeping staff to get an estimate and let us know - she then promptly avoided all eye contact with me and didn’t provide any update, until I went back to the desk to enquire. The room was finally ready at 4pm - that’s 2 hours after the advertised check in time, which was also confirmed that it would be fine when I booked. Our plans were completely disrupted and in some parts, cancelled, as we were having to wait around the foyer for so long as there was no other way of finding out that our room was ready, and nobody was giving us an update about the estimated time, which is even more frustrating when travelling with kids. We were offered a late check out as “compensation”, but honestly, no use as we’d already made plans for the following morning and day. The staff member also offered to waive the bond as compensation, and seemed surprised when I mentioned that the bond is reversible and that we wouldn’t be doing anything to warrant the bond not being refunded in the first place, so this was not in any way a compensatory measure.
I can’t fault the location, and the room itself was fine - but we won’t stay here again, purely because of the issues and delay with check in and the poor communication surrounding that.

Air conditioning died in the 38 °C heat wave. Had to pack our stuff and move to another room which was very inconvenient. There was not even a tooth paste. (for environment, no brush is acceptable. but no tooth paste? Come on this is a 4 star hotel!)
More like a big hostel with lots of single rooms in it.

Good thing was it's location. Close to everything.