Kruger Park Lodge — Hotel in Mbombela

I love the area, but this visit to Kruger Lodge made that I will never go again and wull not suggest.

Book in was fine and chalet to, but then things goes south. On going to bed on the first evening the bedding was dirty with what looks like coffee stain or something. How does a chalet get quality checked?

To make thing worse the mattresses was shot. When sitting on the bed the whole mattress lifts as the coils collapses. By the turn in night myself and mattress was halve way on the floor. The next morning around 10h00 I phoned reception to please ask housekeeping to have a look at the mattress. That did not happen. By 12h00 iesh the cleaning lady came and i asked her as reception or someone did not communicate. She said no problem she will get maintance to bring a queen mattress or 2 x threequarters. By 15h00 my patience was wearing thin, but phoned housekeeping direct and the manager was not available. Then I phone maintance, noone heard about a issue and said i phone housekeeping.... ok now I reached a point where no normal channels was working. I phone reception to please speak to the GM, but no GM in on then the weekend, so asked to speak to the 2IC also not available, but will phone me back. Now around 15h30 i get a phone baxk from a very arrogant guy by the name Happy.

Now here I ask for maybe other mattresses or a single queen as all lodges will and must have spare mattresses, but no I get told there is no extra and I must just be happy with what we have in the chalet. Now the blood boils over and tell him to organize something.

Here us where i do not how thus guy is in charge when the GM is nit there. Het phones back about 10min later with he cannot help, so I have think for guy to a that does this for a living, I ask how about a empty chalet and we get that mattresses / single queen? Ooh he says maybe that will work, but there is non with queen bed. Not sure how as the main bedroom has queen and the other bedrooms have singles pushed together.

The housekeeping guy comes and checks the matresses and said ok he git keys for another chalet, lets go and check thus matresses is better. Atlast some brains... We take a drive and enter the chalet. Guess what mattress the main bedroom has, jip a queen, but got told they where order to only take the single mattress by Happy. Nice guy... Ok we check the mattress and they where much better. The maintance guy comes and we chat and he also asked but why do we not just load the queen as we are removing both mattresses. It is the same as removing one queen, but ok here we are. We get the mattress and we off.

So to get the mattress sorted 8 hours, lovely.

Now my other gripe was there is 2 single duvets on the mattress push togther in the room, why not a queen duvet. At least by Tuesday i got a housekeeper that understood and got the duvet sorted and put a queen fitted sheet to make the 2 singles a queen.

The chairs in the lounge are very uncomfortable and no proper back support.

Thursday morning at 4h15 had the smoke sensor go ape. Turnout was faulty. Funny thing with that, it turns out non of the smoke/fire alerms are connected to a warning board anywhere. The mainrance guy says the guesr must contact reception in a emergance. Ok, in a fire with grass roof chalet perfect. My question, all good if someone is there, what about a emptt chalet in the off season?

The they started drilling on the chalets outside walls, not just ours.

We desided to pack up early and leave

My final issues here is not once we got contacted by a department head or GM or an apolagy. The communication in that place is extreamly bad, but not for them to phone us 5 times out of 7 days stay to try and sell time...

We booked through Inyamatane properties who advertise 2 luxury properties. We stayed in lodge 236B. On arrival the lodge smelt damp and musty and we thought maybe it hadn't been occupied recently. The bathroom window had been left open and then we realised the smell was from there-it was a really bad sewerage smell and when the toilet was flushed it was coming up in the sink. The cleaner obviously knew about it but didn't report it. When we did the maintenance team came quickly to unblock pipes etc but the smell lingered throughout our 3 night stay.|Kruger Park Lodge is a huge complex with lovely well kept grounds and only a 10 minute drive from Phabeni gate in the Kruger. |The restaurant was good-food portions were huge, staff were very friendly and the food specials were excellent value for money- 2 huge pizzas for R149.|236B lodge was very dark inside and when there is loadshedding which we had during our stay, there was nothing-no torches, no different globes in the lamps etc. Lights had to be on all the time during the day as there was a lot of trees outside.|This property is advertised as luxury but it was dated- an old fridge which couldn't cope with loadshedding, dirty or mouldy black marks at the bottom of the white walls. the whole place could do with an upgrade and a really good clean.|Having said all this the beds were really comfortable, the upstairs bedroom was huge with a large tv and sitting area and huge bathroom with double sinks-this was one of the reasons we chose this lodge. Some good maintenance work and it would be much improved-the guest comment book mentioned problems with the plumbing over a year ago so obviously it still isn't sorted.|Kruger Park lodge is a safe complex with lovely staff and only a 5 minute drive away from a shopping mall, supermarkets, petrol station etc....

What is important to note that most of the self-catering chalets are privately owned and are maintained and managed by the lodge. The Lodge/Resort itself is large and well maintained, the free roaming buck give you a sense of relaxation and idyllic living. We were left wanting with the unit we stayed in though. The air-conditioned units are serviced daily. While our overall stay was not terrible we all had slightly higher expectations of the 4 star facility. The carpet in the one bedroom was stained and very unsightly. The one patio door could not be opened at all and the decking was broken in places indicating a longer term of lacking maintenance. The set of keys we were given to the unit didn't open most of the doors, we eventually managed to get the kitchen door opened. The kitchen was meant to be fitted with a dishwasher which wasn't there. The kitchen sink had more mould than silicone sealing and some of the walls were splattered or stained. One of the outlets meant to be used for the kettle/toaster was very loose (possibly dangerous). Our refrigerator was dirty, there was significant evidence of blood (likely from defrosted meat) caked onto the shelves and vegetable crisper. While the bedrooms were clean enough (apart from the carpet stain) the mattress on the bed I had was not designed for anyone over 80 kgs. The units do not have Wi-Fi but do have a basic package of DSTV (which doesn't have much of a variety of channels but does include M-Net & 2 decent movie channels). The DVD player was a nice touch, the TV could do with being a bigger size. We have stayed at the Kruger Park Lodge before and have not had issues in the past, but are left disappointed with the most...