ANEW Hotel Centurion Pretoria — Hotel in Gauteng

We stayed over at the "anew hotel" in Centurion. We were delighted with the service and the personal at the hotel and at the restaurant. As you enter the hotel you are overwhelmed with the fragrance of aromatic sent in the air, blocking the the stench from the lake outside the hotel. We were delighted to smell that the lake stench is not so bad any more because of all the efforts being done to get rid of the smell.

We were greeted warmly by the lady at reception and she gave all the details of the room and restaurants times etc.

As usual nothing always goes perfectly. As you would want it to be. To entre into the room we could not because the room key card did not work, I had to run down to get it reactivated again to gain access to the room. To enter into the room I had to use some force to get into the room because the dood does not have a perfect fit, for easy opening. Getting into the room we saw that the refrigerator was not standing in the space where it's supposed to be but standing in front of the cut out on the floor.

The unit is big and spacious, and it consists of 2 rooms, one with the kitchen net and a sleeper sofa, TV and AC.

The second room has the king sized double bed and bathroom. Here we had the problems of the TV in the room not plugged in or working, the telephone was not connected (no wire connecting it to the wall) the AC in the room was on floor level so whatever setting you want to put it on, it was blowing the air directly onto me and the wife. I could not set it so that it doesn't blow onto us and just Kool the room, it's in your face and body.

The duvet cover on the bed was not the correct size for the bed, the bed was a king size bed and the duvet cover was for a double sided bed and not king size bed.

I went down to reception again to ask them for the correct size duvet for the bed where the a other lady standing at the reception told me that they do not have King size beds in the hotel and that I don't know what I'm talking about, but she will go and have a look and see if the can find me a bigger duvet size for our bed.

When she brought the bigger size duvet cover, it was a king size duvet cover that she brought up.

The bathroom was clean and very spacious. The problem that we had was when taking a bath, there was no place/rack to put down your soap and shampoo when taking the bath. The vanity did not have doors on and you had this ugly open cabinet facing you the whole time.

We ordered toasted cheese sandwich and chips for room service and it took about 50mins for the toasted sandwiches to get to the room.

Dinner time we went to the restaurant and decided to have the buffet dinner. What a let down. There wasn't a good spread for a buffet, the option was roasted Chicken, beef stew and Chicken lezania that was so hot (🥵 spiced) that it burned the living daylights out of us. Roasted butternut, chips and baby marrow was the vegetables and for dessert they had chocolate brownie and some peppermint mouse.

The breakfast spread was good but again limited, the pork sossages looked nice, but again burned the living daylights out of us.

I spoke to the general manager and he explained that they are busy with renovations in the hotel, and was sorry for the things that's not in place or correct to normal standards.

But in overall we did enjoy the stay in the hotel and will visit it...

My colleagues and I organised a birthday surprise for my boss which was meant to be in her room before she checked in. We were promised a room drop and an upgrade and we delivered a gift from our team to put in the room. It is most disappointing to find out that she didn't receive any of the above even the gift we bought and delivered. I appreciate that she had a roof over her head over night but I'm not sure how you can mess up a whole planned surprise unless you really have no understanding of personalized service and the concept of going the extra mile or you are not even trying. One of my colleagues went to view the room my boss would be staying in and was unhappy with the cleanliness levels, she was shown another room which she approved but in the end my boss was given the room that hadn't been approved with the dirty couch. Both my colleague and I are former hoteliers and deep down in my heart I still consider myself as one, so we know it's possible to do better. It would have been great if this experience had gone the way it was planned considering that she was spending her birthday away from her family. I'm disappointed and...

While the staff at the hotel were kind, the rest of the communication was very poor. We booked our hotel and attempted to book transport from the airport (which they advertise), but after 6 emails they had not responded. Eventually they did once a travel agent reached out to them. Then our hotel reservation changed and after two weeks they failed to refund me. When I asked, they told me to email all of my information over a general email and proof I paid. I declined and asked for a different option that was more secure — for the next three weeks they did not respond. Once at the hotel, I told the general manager who instructed someone to fix it. When applying the refund, they charged my card a second time. They stated that they refunded me twice but I only received one refund and ended up disputing it with my credit card who gave me the refund. The only process felt dishonest and exhausting. This is a hotel chain and they should have a process to refund people quickly and safely instead of leaving it to the customer to email repeatedly without a response. Do not pre pay this hotel.

Also, the shower kept flooding the...