Gardenia Boutique Hotel — Hotel in Gauteng

Beautiful place but has the worst service, and not because of all the staff but because of one lady called Happiness.

This was on 4th July 2022. Breakfast starts at 06:30 but Happiness (who stays on the hotel premises) only set up at 07:20 which made us late for work, worse thing is some gentleman even went there and said "sorry guys, I will no longer be having breakfast as I really need to leave now". She mentioned that there is bread, eggs, pork/beef sausage, bacon, tomato and mushrooms. We chose all of the above as we normally do, to our surprise only a 2 slice sandwich was brought to us with bacon, cheese and eggs inside, whereby I even found a strand of hair. She did not even mention why she is bringing something different, also did not even apologize for starting the breakfast late.

Later during the day I noticed that my room did not have a towel, I went to ask her at 14:50 that my room does not have a towel and I think you might have forgotten. She told me that there was load shedding between 10:00-12:00 so the tumble dryers did not work at that time, so my towel is still wet and there's nothing she can do about it. But if that was the case, why didn't she dry them after 12:00 when electricity was back? I heard her speaking loudly to her colleague that "if he complains about a towel, I will give him a wet one and he can go complain about it on the internet", is this really the right attitude to have?

I even noticed that room 2 was not serviced at all and there's a guest who checked into a messed up room, bed not done, nothing. We noticed all this including the dirty room because we were sitting on the pool aide. This lady chooses when she feels like working or not and seems to be very comfortable with this behaviour. The hotel is a very very beautiful place but unfortunately will not be coming back due to this lady running an entire hotel like it's a small shop that is in her back yard.

The way the beds were made, one could just see that the person was just in a rush to finish the job. I have never seen such, and the problem is not the hotel, it is this Happiness lady.

We were here the previous week as well and we're surprised when on my second night my towel was exchanged with a red and white beach towel, this is not of hotel standard.

The morning of the 5th July 2022 we had breakfast listening to Happiness make a noise about how she wants to resign and how she hs had enough. This was very very unprofessional of her, very...

The hotel needs to be cleaned, the couches & chairs were dirty. They had stains from years. The bed was not very comfortable, it looked and felt old. In our room we found the ironing board already set out which is tacky. It should have been folded and put away in the ample cupboard space. The was an ironing board and no iron in the room. This place is by far not a 4 star establishment and the rating needs to be reviewed. It is not a boutique hotel, more like a bed and breakfast. At breakfast, there was a lot of disappointments from the ordering station, then the tables were dirty with ants everywhere. You can tell that the cleaning staff do not remove the place mats when they clean (if they really do clean). The place mats on the tables are dirty and sticky. I wish my wipes to clean. the cutlery was dirty which I had to wipe with the wipes as well. like I mentioned, this felt like I booked at a hostel rather than a boutique hotel. I would not be recommending this place to anyone even a student on a budget. The owners/management should really consider a total refurbishment and renovation. The phone line in the rooms did not work in both our rooms. I was totally disappointed. The furniture by the pool is worn out and torn. To top it off, the night guard/receptionist was annoying. At 21:00 when we got back from dinner, we are a group of 4 mature ladies in our 30s and he just kept on guarding us and insisting that we keep the noise down, while we were not even making any noise. I even asked him what noise is he referring to. We were not playing music, we even had the tv at low volume and used our inside voices. I was very offended and felt that we were being profiled because we are young black. Each time we would go outside for a smoke at the balcony and he would say we need to keep it down other people are sleeping. I asked hi how when we are not even playing music and we are using our inside voices. He then responded by saying even us opening the...

My Wife and I stayed here on the weekend of the 28th- 29th September. Our friends recommend this place having stayed here 5-6 years ago, however with new owners this place is now shocking. The list concerns just grew longer by the hour when we were there.

To name a few: -Room floors were not cleaned, could see slippage marks on the tiles. -Toilet rolls not replaced, left with enough to blow half a nose. -Not enough towels, and to find one towel had a tear in it. -Sheet on the bed had a tear in it. -Duvet inner was too big for the duvet cover, so it is just tucked in under the mattress. -Shower was not cleaned properly, and neighboring room friends shower has tiles missing, that actually was cutting their feet. -We were left outside the front gate for 15minutes as they use a cell to gate system, when we eventually got inside, they said they had to load airtime so they could open the gate. Gaining access should not be happening even with a 1 Star hotel. -We paid for Breakfast for both mornings, but we couldn't risk being even more disappointed, so we did not even eat there. -Other guests had a party in the night, which we had to contact reception desk to have music and loud noises way past 24h00. -The outside fire pits were used as dirt bins of booze bottles and chicken boxes, which were still there on Sunday morning from Friday nights noise pollutants party.

I could go on, but my keyboard might break, but I think the new owner needs to take a serious look at how this place is being run into the ground.

The only pro of the place is that it is well located to areas we needed to be, which is irrelevant when there are many other places around that I am sure will make you want to come back.

The Gardenia is now it is just a dirty mismanaged shell of a Boutique...