Falsely Advertised And Badly Managed Hotel with Staff That Actually Just Don’t Care

What a useless and unhelpful set of people managing a property, that just ended up being a substandard and falsely advertised accomodation.

We made the booking through booking.com with the accommodation having a pretty decent rating. We arrived in Cape Town at 9am and asked if it’s possible to check in early, around 11 or 12, with the intention of leaving our bags at the reception for the duration of the wait while we went for breakfast. The receptionist told us we could wait 30 minutes and our room would be ready, so we did that. Instead of getting the room we booked, they sent us to a shoddy room with the second bed being in the lounge and right next to the kitchen, with no doors or privacy. We immediately went back downstairs and told them this is not the room we booked. They agreed and told us we would have to wait a bit longer to get the room we BOOKED AND PAID FOR ALREADY.

We went off for lunch and came back at the normal check in time around 2pm, only to be told that “sorry, the person who was in the bedroom the night before decided to extend their stay”, even though we had booked and paid for the room a few days before.

We got sent back to the same room and I immediately requested to speak to the management of the hotel. The receptionist and another lady working with him tried their best to refuse my request to speak to the manager, and when I eventually got onto the phone with the manager, he said he would refund half of my booking fee, of which we just decided to go with that seeing as it was almost impossible to get alternative accommodation at the same price in Cape Town.

The following day (29 December) we went back to the reception and we were told the manager is not in until the (30th December) so the refund could only be processed then. I left my details, but never got a call from the hotel manager even though I called them on numerous occasions to follow up, the manager was seemingly never available, all the way until the 2nd of January 2025, when I was due to leave Cape Town. I again went to the hotel to go and demand my refund, and the receptionist told me it’s not possible to do the refund unless the manager was physically there, yet the moment he called him, he was told to process the refund on their POS (point of sale) machine, showing he could have processed the refund on the very first day that I was promised this. Unfortunately it is now the 5th of January and I still have not received the refund, even though they seemed to have done it the day I was leaving.

All in all, a very frustrating experience with dishonest and nonchalant management and staff who do not even take accountability for the trouble they have caused. Be warned, the accommodation is not nearly as nice as the pictures show, it’s sp****ly furnished, and the staff actually just don’t care for the patrons of the hotel or their grief, caused by that very same staff compliment.