Lanherne Guest House — Hotel in Makana Local Municipality

As a consequence of my work I get to travel fairly often, and end up staying in a variety of establishments ranging from very basic “backpacker” Bed & Breakfast establishments, to high end luxury hotels and lodges.||I have a fairly reasonable understanding of the hospitality industry and grading and what to expect. And generally most establishments meet their grading expectations. However, the Lanherne Guest House is an exception. I don’t know who awarded this establishment a 4 star grading, because it doesn’t even come close. I have stayed in 2 star establishments which are better. Allow me to expand.||I have come to Grahamstown to do some work, and my client arranged this accommodation for me. My requirements are fairly specific. I am a television journalist, and usually have expensive equipment in my vehicle, so off-street parking is more than essential. As I also edit my stories in my accommodation on a laptop, I need a work space which will take 2 monitors and my laptop and the odd accessory. And I am partial to a proper bathroom, particularly if I am staying for a longish period. I am staying at this establishment for 6 nights, so having a full bathroom would have been nice.||This establishment has a total of 7 rooms, and is established in one of the older houses in Westhill in Grahamstown. The public areas are spacious and well maintained. The deal is bed and breakfast and the usual smattering of cereals and fruit/yoghurt combinations are in attendance. They also supplement this with a “full English” breakfast, should you require it. The one mortal sin for any establishment, in my opinion, is making weak coffee. There is not much worse than getting up in the morning, going through to breakfast expecting some freshly ground coffee and discovering that it is weak and listless. Either the coffee is very cheap or they are watering it down. It is tasteless and doesn’t conform to the description of coffee in my book, it is brown relatively tasteless water. The rest of the breakfast is acceptable, and the cook obliged my need for poached eggs.||||The room could be described as functional and compact. It is attached via an interleading door to another room, and the soundproofing is not very good. I can continually hear the conversations going on next door, and they can certainly hear me, of that there is no doubt. Usually the only noise that I make is either when I am on the phone or Skype. In the room is a small fridge with water and milk, a kettle and a variety of pre-packaged beverages, instant coffee, tea, creamer, sweetener and sugar. There are a number of plug points in the room which is a plus. There is a cupboard with hanging space and shelves, with a built in mini-safe for valuables (Which wasn't working) and a pedestal fan.||The bathroom is what I would term a half bathroom. It contains a toilet, wash basin and a shower cubicle. There are the usual Shampoo & body was accessories available. The facilities are modern. But the water temperature was luke warm at best. I tend to be up and showering at around 05:00 in the morning, usually long before anyone else has arisen, and I could easily stand under the shower just running full hot without any problem. My preference is for hotter showers.||||Wi-Fi is offered as a feature, however it seems more often than not unavailable. On numerous occasions on this trip, I have had to ask management to re-boot their modem, they do not seem to monitor this. As I tend to arise early and need to check emails and weather, this is a continual irritation. When it is functioning, it is slow at best. I think the final nail in this establishments coffin is the signs on the wall in the room which firstly indicate that as electricity is expensive, could you please limit your usage and wherever possible restrict your lighting to the bedside lights. The lighting in the ceiling consists of halogen 50w mini-spots, which could easily be replaced with energy efficient LED lights to solve their consumption problem, something they should consider as these LED bulbs roughly 10% of the power required by the halogen lights. The second sign indicates that ladies with hair styles which use products which have the potential to stain the white linen (With an exclamation mark!) will be charged for the cleaning/replacement of such items. And it suggests that the guest should use some kind of protection. I don’t know many people who travel around with such protection and perhaps it should be the establishment which offers a night hair cap should it be required. This smacks of some kind of instruction which would be given to naughty school children. This is not something which affects me, but it indicates at attitude on the part of the management which to my opinion is unwelcoming.||||There is provision for guests to have a barbeque (Braai in SA terms) on the verandah and on the one night, I was returning from working around 22:00, and discovered the car par overfull. There are 7 rooms and eight parking spaces, yet there were 11 cars in the carpark. One of the guests had “guests” over and had let them into the on property parking space to park. The result was cars double parked and access was nigh on impossible. I feel that this is unacceptable and management should be aware. The parking is for residents who are staying at the establishment, and people who are visiting guests should park outside. As I have security issues with a vehicle which usually has a lot of TV production accessories inside, I just eventually blocked up the final bit of spare space in the parking area. After spending a long day out shooting natural history material, the very last thing I want is to do is to try and negotiate parking space which should be available.||||I am quite familiar with the international rating system and relevant criteria. All in all, I consider this establishment to be about a 2 star establishment, yet somehow it is rated 4 star. My client, who arranged this accommodation indicated what they are charging them for my stay and based on this information, it is excessive. ||||I have stayed in fairly luxurious establishments for less. To my mind 4 star indicates a level of personal luxury and a management structure which should be on top of issues which can affect their guests stay in their...

With reference to Silliusmillius53 I could not disagree more. I am sure he/she has got confused. I have stayed at Lanherne on numerous occasions and in different rooms each time. Staff? Fantastic, Dumasani is the friendliest most helpful manager I have ever met. You want to know where to eat or visit in Grahamstown ask him. Food, a super breakfast of your choice, most B+B's I have stayed at I did not get a chance to have preferences for breakfast. Lots of hot water and electricity. The electricity notices in the rooms are just a reminder of the Eskom requests which are in the interests of the country. When Grahamstown is without water or electricity, which is frequent this B+B will have both in abundance. Borehole and generator. I never struggled for parking even during Festival when they are full for the full 11 days. If silliusmillius53 has special requests then he/she should do their own bookings themselves and request a full bathroom, bigger room with large tables to accommodate the equipment they travel with which is abnormal. Most people may travel with a laptop not a setup with 2 monitors. As for the coffee, great for me but we all have different tastes, it is like someone who is used to the power of a Ferrari, being given an ordinary car to drive. The same with coffee, an establishment like this cannot serve the strongest or the weakest coffee, they cater for the majority. In conclusion I would like to say that I have travelled extensively too, and have stayed in many different types of accommodation. When reviewing an establishment you need to be very careful being hyper critical about small things. If you had NO water then complain, if you became ill because of the coffee, then complain, if your room was filthy and you had bugs in the bed then complain. You also have the choice of moving elsewhere yet you stayed 6 days. A lot of small towns have B+B's started out of necessity, no hotels or people trying to make a living. Reckless criticism is not nice and it is not nice to splash it out on a medium like this. Direct contact with the owner would be the way to go, remember too that we all have bad days so maybe silliusmillius53...

We were in Grahamstown for the first time attending the Last weekend of the Arts Festival. We met withDumisani and he took us to another shabby establishment a little further than the main guesthouse. When we made our booking, we were not told that we will be taken to another place different to what saw on the website. When we got there, the room was still being cleaned and we were told to wait a little. The bed had no bedside tables nor a headboard, the room had no chairs or couches. When we raised issue with the set up, we were give 2 plastic chairs.| |We immediately told Dumisani that we are not happy thus far and would would prefer to leave and asked for our refund( we had prepaid the full amount in advance). He told us that that we are free to go and will not give be giving us a refund. When questioned the refund policy and asked for the owner, he said he’s one of the owners and there was no one else that can talk to us. He said we must tell him within 10mins whether we are staying or leaving as he has other people waiting and willing to take up the space. ||After exhausting all possibilities to get alternative accomodation in Grahamstown , we ended up staying. Long story short, we will never stay here again, and this was extremely poor...