Hotels near Groot Constantia-Trust, Constantia

All hotel staff are smiling and friendly and ask how your day is. And this is where they obviously believe their mission of providing the service ends. We checked-in and were led to our “Premier Suite” by a receptionist. As always, I inspected the room and asked to bring some simple things: extra water and towels, 2nd luggage rack, shower gel, couple of memory pillows, this kind of stuff. Of course, - she said and left us alone to unpack. We unpacked, went for lunch, came back – absolutely nothing materialized. I called reception again and couple more times till the end of a day before getting at least majority of things I was asking for. With exception for a couple of things that is possible to live without, like 2nd rack (we already found where to put one of our bags on) and shower gel. These ones I managed to achieve only after speaking with hotel’s GM couple of days later. In the afternoon I finally located the gym (no single sign for it) and found it without a single clean towel that I could use. On the contrary, the floor of the showers near it was covered by piles of used ones. Maybe the gym isn’t popular here after all. Next day we had some winery visits arranged, before leaving I personally put “make-up my room” sign on the door outside, gave some instructions of what must be done to reception (bring that shower gel!). Coming back in late afternoon we are seeing the same sign on the outside door, just turned “don’t disturb” side on. Strange – I have never seen house-keeping doing that after making-up the room, normally they remove the sign and put it inside. Opening the door we find that absolutely nothing was done in terms of making up the room (forget shower gel), but both TV in bedroom and living room are switched-on loud on football channel (!!!). Huh? I spoke with 2 managers about this: just “manager” and GM and they promised me “to come down to the bottom of this”. Maybe they did, just forgot to share. All in all, when staying in this place I had a feeling of being an unwilling participant of some TV prank show. When people around you are doing and saying some stupid things and watchers choking with laughter seeing your reaction on your face close-up on their TV-sets. They couldn’t even collect payment from my credit card properly when we were checking-out. I got a message from my bank saying the payment has been processed, while their machine said “declined”. We agreed with their GM that they would contact me if they didn’t get the money after all after I showed her a message from my bank. Indeed, the amount was credited back to my account after some time. When I asked my bank what it was, their answer was: the hotel cancelled their request immediately after payment was authorized. Of course, I paid them what was due using a link they sent me by mail – after they managed to send a correct one. Their first link was asking me to pay ZAR 0,00. :) All in all, if you are afraid, you might get bored on your holidays, this is the place f