Motel owners' fury at student rampage

Cleveland Motel owner Cynthia Hawkins says one room was completely wrecked and covered in vomit.

Two Rotorua motel owners are furious at what they say was "trashing" of their rooms by Victoria University students at the Uni Games last week.

More than 130 students taking part in the games were evicted from the Havana Motor Lodge and Cleveland Motel for behaving "like a pack of wild animals".

But games organisers say the moteliers overreacted, punishing a large group of students for the actions of a few and acting in an "inhumane and unjustifiable" way towards the main group.

Victoria University leaders plan to meet student representatives this week to discuss reports that the motel rooms were left littered with vomit, glass and broken furniture, and say they are treating the allegations seriously.

No arrests were made but both moteliers say the students caused several thousand dollars worth of damage and they plan to bill the university for the costs.

Havana Motor Lodge was the first to evict students, asking a room of four students to leave on Tuesday, a night after they arrived in Rotorua for the five-day games.

The motel then evicted a further 40 students on Thursday morning, and Cleveland asked 88 students to leave on Thursday night.

Havana owner Jan Stevenson said she asked the first four to leave after they smashed a window and spilled red wine in their room.

"I showed no mercy there and I thought, 'Oh well, this will deter them [the other students]', but nothing did," she said yesterday.

"They were honestly like a pack of wild animals. It was horrible."

Mrs Stevenson, 52, said she decided to evict the remaining students after they defied non-smoking rules, and left alcohol and food rubbish everywhere.

"They're meant to be poor, impoverished students but I've never seen so much alcohol ever consumed."

She had to shampoo carpets in at least 12 rooms and dryclean every duvet and bedspread when they left, She estimated the clean-up would cost $5000 to $6000.

Cleveland Motel owner Cynthia Hawkins told a similar story, saying she had already recorded damage worth $2300, including a broken bed and wrecked toasters and kettles.

After discovering a television set ruined by beer spilled through it, she said the final cost would likely be about $3500.

"We had one room totally trashed and it had vomit from one end to the next. You couldn't move in it because it had so many crates of beer."

Ms Hawkins said the students were intoxicated from the day they arrived and ignored rules banning glass in the motel's mineral pool.

"Beer bottles were floating around in the pool."

University Sport New Zealand, which organised the games, is investigating the students' behaviour.

But president Hamish Hopkinson said Victoria had won the games and it was wrong to suggest all the team's students had run amok in the motels.

"It was unfortunate that a small number of students misbehaved but the reaction from the motel owners was over-the-top and inhumane and unjustifiable."

He said the 88 students at Cleveland Motel had been told to leave at 10.30pm on Thursday in pouring rain, prompting University Sport NZ to call police.

Senior Sergeant Brent Crowe said police had gone to the motel and the students had vacated without incident.