Def not a 4 Star Hotel

With Covid most hotels in Durban are running specials. I paid extra for this hotel as it was rated as a four star hotel. This is a very deceptive rating as it was not even worth a one-star rating. Let us start with arrival. I check in and pay for parking - even though I am already paying a large sum to stay there. Once I park I realise that there is no elevator to take you to any of the hotel floors upstairs- nor is there a way to phone for a porter. Both my husband and myself have health issues but had to drag our luggage up a large flight of stairs to get to the ground floor which finally has an elevator. Get to our room. The fixtures and fittings are well past their prime. The room window has a large crack in it and most power points don't work at all. I finally find an obscure power point hidden under a table which I get my son to crawl under to plug in our devices to charge- luckily I brought a multi-plug from home as none of the two prong power outlets are working in the room. Next day go down to breakfast at 8am and there are large ques to get into the breakfast buffet. Everyone standing choked next to each other with no social distancing. Once we get into the restaurant tables are all jammed closed together with no social distancing. We were surrounded on all sides by tables closely packed together with no one wearing masks. Starving at this time so head to the buffet where a server dishes out for us. Get back to our table to find that all the food dished out for us from the chafing dishes was cold!! Couldn't find a waiter/waitress or staff member to complain to or ask to reheat our food or to get tea etc. Left our food as could find no one to help us. Later that day I got caught in a storm and needed to dry my hair. Then found out that hairdryer does not work. Tried to phone reception to report this and other faults and request a new hairdryer to find out that room phone does not work. So take out my cellphone, and explain to reception all my issues with the room and my urgent need for a hairdryer. They say they will send maintenance right up to sort out my issues and will send a hairdryer up immediately. After 30 minutes of waiting and getting colder by the minute, I take the elevator down to reception and insist that I receive a hairdryer that works immediately. To get me away from other guests who are checking in they apologise profusely and insist that both a hairdryer and maintenance will be up immediately. Well a hairdryer does come after another 10 minutes but it has a European plug. I explain to the lady that all the two prong power points in the room does not work- that the previous hair dryer was a 3 prong power point and that I cannot use this hairdryer and need one that can fit into the one working power point in the room. She just stared at me blankly and kept on saying repeatedly that she was just sent to give me the hairdryer and that maintenance will be coming up shortly and that if I have an issue I should phone the front desk. When I told her that the phone does not work- another blank stare and then she just turns away and walks off.

Wait the whole day for maintenance and no one shows up. It is now 8 hours later and I want to take a bath and change into PJ’s. Get into the shower and the water is ice cold…..let it run for ever and it only becomes slightly luke warm but not sufficient for a shower. Water in basin is hot but no hot water in shower. Now I am fuming and again phone reception to state that I have been waiting for more than 8 hours for maintenance to show up and that the only thing that works in my room is the lights and the tv – although even that is fuzzy!! I get the usual nonsense that maintenance will be right up- I state that I have been waiting for 8 hours and have complained on numerous occasions and that all I keep getting is apologies and no action.

Well maintenance finally shows up after more than 8 hours. The maintenance manager takes one look at all the faults and phones reception to move us to a new room. It is now around 9 pm at night. We are cold, tired, angry and frustrated. We have to pack up our room and by the time we move into our new room – slightly bigger than our old room- we are exhausted and our supper that we had ordered was now ice cold. We demanded to speak to a manager. One finally arrives and automatically starts apologising. We told him that he hasn’t even heard our complaint yet and that it seems like that is an automatic technique utilised by all staff at this hotel. To start apologising profusely and not to actually fix any issues!! We then listed all the faults in our room etc. and how we have waited for nearly the entire day for it to be sorted out. He pointed out that we had been moved to a slightly bigger room and surely this makes us happy. I told him that I did not ask for a bigger room, I would have been happy with the size of the room that I ordered if things in that room actually worked. And that since we were just going to eat our food and go to bed in the next 20 minutes the size of the new room was irrelevant to us. We pointed out that we had stayed in 4 star and 5 star hotels before and had paid extra for this hotel because it was meant to be a 4 star hotel but it cannot be one if nothing in their rooms work and if staff do not respond to complaints or try to rectify faults. We additionally pointed out that this was our first outing since Covid began and that they had taken a very special family weekend and ruined almost the entire time by providing us with sub-standard accommodation and staff who would not fix the problems. He offered us a ridiculously low discount for ONLY ONE NIGHT of our stay- even though issues were the same throughout the weekend. We told him that we were insulted by his offer and that we were willing to pay the full price had we received even half of what we should have. He then just turned and left.

Our food by now was too cold to eat and there was no way to reheat. The entire family went to bed hungry yet again. We checked out the next morning as early as we could- without eating breakfast.

Service at this hotel is putrid- staff do not care. The rooms have broken appliances and tired and old fixtures and fittings. The bathrooms have showers located in tubs – so if you have a mobility issue you will struggle to get in [ and the two adults did struggle as there were no handles to help you get into the shower only a handle for someone to use to sit up from the tub. Additionally the shower curtain does not keep water contained to the tub so after the first person has had a shower the entire floor of the bathroom is wet and soggy- which makes going to the toilet or using any of the bathroom facilities an unpleasant experience for other residents in the room.

Additionally and very importantly COVID protocols are not adhered to at all. There are guards stationed at the entrance but they allow people to enter without screening or sanitising. The restaurants do not adhere to social distancing at all as the tables are jam-packed next to each other- this despite the fact that they have closed numerous dining areas in the hotel which have been used to space people out adequately. SAVE YOUR MONEY AND GO TO A CHEAPER HOTEL – YOU WILL GET BETTER TREATMENT WITH ROOMS IN BETTER CONDITIONS AND SAFER COVID PREVENTION MEASURES THAN THIS SUPPOSED FOUR STAR HOTEL.