Life & Leisure Boutique Guesthouse — Hotel in Stellenbosch Local Municipality

Do not believe the pictures.||Ensure you are in fact in the guest house or farmed out prior to paying. We ended up in STUDENT digs, noisy, smelly and NOT what I believed I was buying into.||Enquired about load shedding at check in informed there was none during our stay. Woke at 5 am plunged in darkness with no candles or torch.||Enquired about a pre-dinner drink at the pool and was informed that not possible and led to bar area. Through the belly of the hotel, past offices, laundries, a conference room with screens and unwrapped televisions all over table, no air conditioning and despite some lovely furniture due to heat not feasible to remain.||I imagined myself in the beautifully decorated space as ADVERTISED reading books enjoying the pool and having a lovely dinner. Celebrating 9 years without our 5 children was meant to be memorable in a good way. Hysterical if it wasn’t so sad. We did have a lovely dinner at least. ||Celestino was efficient on the phone and in person but I feel deeply misled. He didn’t offer to help my husband carry luggage which I found odd considering the length of the journey to our room. ||There is no WiFi. One soap and no moisturizer. Like a budget prison cell with the sound effects of slamming metal security gates and drunk students. Broken balcony door. Cockroaches and wafting smells of pot noodle.||Do not be fooled.||I attempted to address this privately to ensure steps would be taken not to deceive guests in this way. I sent email on Sunday, Monday twice and subsequently got “you will get a reply from owner,” still haven’t. Responded again this morning if I don’t hear back by 12 pm today I will leave public review....||I hope the above is helpful to future guests.|I rang the guesthouse and made a booking from photos online. Distinct feeling of a Venice experience. Overpriced trickery with zero reflection as the next load of unsuspecting tourists will be checking in imminently. If they are happy or disgusted makes zero difference.||AVOID...

When booking I indicated that late check-in would be required and requested a call back, but heard nothing. I then called on the date and confirmed that we had dinner reservations and would be checking in between 21h00 and 22h00 and was told by Melanie that it would not be a problem. We arrived at 21h15 to find no one there. Telephone and "after hours" number not answered, even contacted the neighborhood watch but to no avail. Now being completely stranded we ended up having to check in to another hotel ten o'clock at night on what was supposed to be a very special occasion. What was truly shocking was the way Melanie handled the situation when I called the next morning. After a perfunctory apology she seemed surprised that her suggestion of "moving the booking to another date" did not sit well with me. She then said that she would find out from the person who was supposed to be on duty what happened and promised to get back to me - needless to say she didn't. I...

After check in, we were shown to our rooms. Our first surprise was that only one room was en-suite, the other two had to share a toilet and bathroom. Second surprise was the en-suite room toilet was broken by a previous guest and not working. The attitude of the receptionist was “well you all know each other.” We were not told about it on check in and after one of our party checked the toilet he suggested they get a plumber to fix it. The receptionist was not interested. |We were not told where breakfast was served - in the building next door. |We were not told there was a swimming pool or bar area. In fact all the staff on reception made no effort to help or welcome us. Very disappointing. |The rooms were full of mosquitoes with no spray or insect repellent. |The only plus was that the breakfast staff were amazing. The hot...