UniLodge Royal Melbourne - City Student Accommodation

Had a great stay for the whole year in URM. Their facilities are well maintained and well functioned. The staff are always friendly and helpful. Also, the events are always nice and well thought:)

Alright, I'll keep things super clear,
If you are an international student,
lost in a new country and not able to get the needed support
Unilodge Royal Melbourne is the right place for you,
I have been living in unilodge for almost about 2 year now
And I have to say the accommodation has not once disappointed me,
From student experience to customer service,
These guys are really good at what they are doing,
The unilodge staff, especially Vihaa,
Jason and Nicole have not just been staff but good friends to me.
I would highly recommend this place if you are new to Melbourne and a lost student.

Just moved in here over a month, but I like the location close to the campus, great facilities, and so many activities to meet friends and get to know about the city. The most importantly, very nice and helpful staff team (have to mention the most lovely staff Nicole who helped me soooo much during and after moving-in!).
The only thing that could be improved is the dryers in the laundry room. Most of them can't completely dry my clothes after 1 hr high heat temp.

The building is really good and I'm having a great experience. The staff is very nice, friendly and helpful. They will go out of their way to help you with anything. The events are also very interesting, with a good variety of activities. The rooms are functional, modern and have pretty much everything that you need. It's very close to the University of Melbourne and ideal for student life. Also, sound proofing is very effective when it comes to noises from within the building.

The only thing that is not ideal is how hot the rooms get during the summer. They have wall fans and now they are offering air con systems to be installed in the rooms. If this was the default, they would get 5 stars.

The street tends to get some heavy/noisy traffic early in the morning, but if you close your windows, it's ok.

Despite nice facilities and (mostly) friendly staff, I wouldn't recommend staying at UniLodge Royal Melbourne. Studio rooms are unbearably hot in the summer months - during the day they will be near uninhabitable and will take a long time to cool at night (especially if you're staying in a room without a balcony door to open). Wall-mounted fans also bizarrely only provide airflow to a very small percentage of the studio apartments in some rooms.

Problems with the stability of the internet are also common. The service will go through a cycle of experiencing problems and being fixed every few months - especially frustrating when this occurs during exam/assignment season. Advertised common study areas are basically useless if you end up hiking to the nearest library every exam out of the fear of having the internet drop out.

For the price you'll be paying for a very small room you could easily organise your own rental accommodation. Problems with the units and services provided simply undermine any convenience factor presented by student accommodation. I highly recommend having a look at organising accommodation through a service like Flatmates and looking to supplement the benefits of the Residential Life Program through participating in university clubs and events.

I love living here, my room is perfect for me as a student, applying was so easy, the staff are really nice and the residential programs are really awesome! Only thing is the heat when there is sun 25c+, but this can be fixed with ur own aircon:)

I have to be fair and honest, the staffs are nice and very supportive of all of the concerns we asked about, however, I still do not recommend this place. During this rental crisis, while students are struggling to find a safe place to live, they were trying to make money from students out of nowhere. I and my friends almost signed the contract until we read the offer carefully. They were asking for 240$ for something called a “departure fee”, and they tried to explain that as a cleaning fee, preparation fee, and something like that for a tiny room in a shared apartment with 5 people, so that means every person in that shared apartment have to pay the same (compulsory fee). What makes me so annoyed is that they don’t do that in another Unilodge, like Unilodge Melbourne Central or Unilodge Elizabeth Street, probably because the price at Unilodge Royal is cheaper than those places a little bit, but considering all the factors like location, unreasonable charge, not near the bus or tram station, this place is not worth it. I do not want to blame the staff, they are all very nice, probably they are just doing what has been told by the top people.

Unsafe, uninhabitable and illegal room temperatures from November-February. If you don’t reside here over summer then this review may not effect you.

Rmit (the self-acclaimed progressive uni with a centre of innovative ‘justice’) segregates all their indigenous scholarship students in this building knowing it unsafe and uninhabitable history and neglecting to provide coolers to make it safe or alternatively relocate the students (shock horror) with the non-indigenous students in the affluent city locations. It’s seems like a failure of duty of care and wilful negligence on rmits behalf. We've been sending Rmit emails about these illegal conditions since 2020. It's what we call modern day racism, no surprise, the indigenous unit has a white woman manager.

When the temperature outside is anything over 25 degrees, the rooms become a sauna 15 degrees higher inside, the rooms open a tiny 2-3 inch’s provided no ventilation and the little fan blows hot air on you. Last week went from 20 degrees on the Friday up to 35 degrees Saturday and Sunday (outside). It felt like 50 inside. Students were in bed passing in and out of consciousness and sick with dehydration for days following. Meanwhile students from other uni’s here had their uni support them with a cooler in their rooms.

Rmit was first made aware by indigenous scholarship students of the dire situation in 2020 yet they not only continue to place students here, but are placing them here without a cooler and when students share their concerns rmit discriminates against which students they’ll reimburse/buy one for.

*** unilodge suggests and supports use of portable cooler or use of small common area with air flow but with covid rampant right now, an entire floor of students can’t reasonably fit into a 8-10 seater small floor common area.

If you have subjects, study, assessment and exams over summer, you’re going to suffer serious health and academic disadvantages here unless your have $1500-2k lump cash to buy a cooler. These are things to think about before living here unilodge and before accepting an offer with rmit.

The cooler may help keep the room at a legal temperature but then you’re stuck with the ambulance noise from the hospital opposite (and emergency helicopter landing pad next to us) fire and police stations, main road traffic. If your headache isn’t from heat stroke it will probably be from noise pollution.

This weekends forecast 26 degrees, sounds perfect… if you’re anywhere but inside these ovens. Fyi the pic is of students attempting to block the heat with car windscreen shields. Doesn’t work.

Simply too hot to stay in. I find it really hard to sleep in here and it really impacted my mental and physical health.

Good service, good public facilities.

The internet often interrupted, even after maintenance there is no change. Not only playing games, even the normal study and work will be interrupted because of the Internet

There is no AC in the room, and the air is not circulating. In summer, the room is much hotter than outside. Believe me, in summer, it can reach 40 degrees in the room

Great amenities and amazing support staff. Everyone is committed to a friendly and supporting environment. I especially appreciated Ananya's help throughout my stay at Unilodge. She is very sweet and always willing to help!

Did alot of research and fact finding before we booked.inspected a few places. But believe me if you want location and room. This is a great
place. All inclusive rent with a new building and well decorated room. Chris and elizabeth are both great people

This unilodge is pretty bad in money terms, they charge really High for cleaning fees, that is my only main issue, 240$ for departure cleaning is so wack and messed up, even when you have kept your room neat and tidy, I spent almost 2 days in cleaning of my room and I did a good job at cleaning it, they charged so much, and even after that I got a mail which said extra 150$ would be charged for mattress steam cleaning, (240+150) this has been really bad experience for me. Anyway, they have good ambience and student entertainment things like (foosball, pool table etc.)

Just stayed at this Unilodge location. As a student I was able to book a room for a night as it's during the holidays. Amazing new building and an amazing location. Would definitely recommend this place over a hostel to any students.