Protea Hotel Cape Town Waterfront Breakwater Lodge — Hotel in V&A Waterfront

"An extremely high-end backpackers by the Marriott with good proximity to waterfront"

🖋️CONTEXT: I'm currently staying in one of their rooms on 26 NOV 2023, booked for 7 days. I am dreading the next 6 days. I've given it 2 STARS (as I couldn't bear a 1 STAR due to its location). Apologies for using my alt account as this is South Africa, and I don't want any unintended consequences for my review.

🖋️SUMMARY: I'd be harsh and say Marriott's Protea Waterfront is suitable for upmarket backpackers. Based on the rooms alone, you wouldn't think it's a 3 star hotel.

I've noted very small rooms even with a 'larger room' ordered, they've made bad decisions with furnishing their rooms (yes I understand the 'historical' narrative): 🤣Only ONE outlet near the entrance (far from bed) 🙄A very small desk 😳Almost no space to place your luggage handcarry must go on the floor/chaise lounge/small coffee table 😭Frosted glass to bathroom gives the illusion of a less confined space but lights up the entire room inconveniencing anyone else in the night 🤕Disproportionately large chaise lounge + coffee table combo guarantees you'll be knocking your shins. 🫠Aircon DOES NOT do cool 17 deg (as set on thermostat), really more like 21 deg... 🤔But seriously this is the least of its problems.

🙃LONG VERSION: MOST OF THE POINTS I'VE RAISED HERE OTHERS IN THE COMMENTS HAVE ALREADY POINTED OUT, SO I AM CERTAINLY NOT THE FIRST NOTICING THEM (MAKES ME FEEL NOT SO BAD TALKING ABOUT IT):

😵‍💫1) SMALL FOR A "LARGER ROOM" AND DISPROPORTIONATE FURNISHING MAKES IT LESS SPACIOUS: Ordered a 'LARGER ROOM' but a disproportionately LARGE chaise lounge occupies too much space there's hardly any room left to walk - this chaise lounge is conveniently paired with coffee table low enough for you to knock your shins into (due to the lack of space for luggage, handcarry etc). HURRAY! You can now walk within limited confines of an already small room and hit your shins while doing so EVERYTIME you walk in/out of your room.

😵‍💫2) YES, IT'S TRUE, THERE'S ONLY ONE SINGLE OUTLET FOR THE ROOM: and YES, it is located near the entrance, AS FAR from the bed as possible. So yes, I am NOT charging my devices using the outlet, I'm doing it via my 40k mah powerbank (while keeping my other powerbanks charged to the outlet). I think you expect this from a hostel, not a Marriott by any stretch of the imagination.

😵‍💫3) YES THE BATHROOM/TOILET IS PARTITIONED VIA FROST-GLASS: in agreement with what other commenters have said, the ENTIRE ROOM is lit at night if the bathroom is being used - surely this inconvenience CAN ONLY be suitable for a single-person use in the room NOT multiple people in room as advertised. BONUS!! The glass partition of the shower is designed so close to the room, you're 100% guaranteed to have water radiate 1-2 meters, which means SHOWER SPLASH WILL BE CROSS THE THRESHOLD FROM THE BATHROOM INTO THE FLOOR OF YOUR ROOM TOO.

I'm tempted to leave photos, but due to the sheer lack of space, the photos would look like a bombshell with handcarry, shopping, luggage absolutely shrewn everywhere. My professionalism would demand that edit and label the photos, which seems not worth the effort; I think my words would speak for itself.

PROS: 👍The staff seems nice 👍Location, 10 min walk to Waterfront.

CONS: ❌Room is small (even for an alleged "larger room") ❌Only suitable for 1 person use (at night, the inconvenience of light through the entire room via bathroom's frosted glass means room is only suitable for 1 person, not to mention the lack of space to actually be in) ❌Extremely inconvenient to have one single outlet located as far from the bed as possible (near door entrance) no less ❌ No power/generator during rolling power cuts (only automatic power cut lights provided)

UNSURE: ➖I'm giving the benefit of doubt that the food is OK (though looking at other comments, this might...

The hotel is just ok, nothing to write home about.

However the location 📍 of the hotel makes up for that, in that it is within close proximity to the Waterfront mall and The Aquarium. The position of the hall boosts up the points for the hotel.

What made my stat so amazing was the visit to the Stone restaurant and the friendly staff at the restaurant.

The experience of sitting outside to eat was horrific due to us as guests having to fight with and chase away the seagulls and birds trying to eat our food or flying over our food.

As guests we do want to eat outside on the veranda, however not at the cost of fighting for it our food with the birds and having rodents fly over our food which risks our food being contaminated.

I am sure you uphold GMP as a restaurant, please see to it that you do something about the birds interfering with the guests.

Sitting there and hearing the guests at the next table either screeming because the bird took their bacon off their plate and having to eat and throwing hands in the air to chase birds in the air was a horrible experience for me and my German friends who were sitting at a table next to me.

When I reported this issue, your waiters told me it was worse earlier on before I came.

So what I have seen in other restaurants, they appoint someone to deal with chasing the birds away or waiters are standing readily around our tables.

So please take the responsibility to let us experience enjoying breakfast on the veranda. It's got breathtaking views. We also want to savor that while we are dining.

The rooms were spacious and fitted with amenities.

The room is not ergonomically friendly at all.

While sitting at the table to work on my laptop, I had to raise my hands so high that it hurt my shoulder and my back was also hurting from sitting at that station in my room.

Even in the class rooms the furniture was not ergonomically friendly at all. Please look into improving that and using ergonomic furniture.

The shower maybe needs a door as it spills lots of water and leaves the floor wet despite using the bath mats.

The shower situation could be improved.

The housekeeping team cleaned our room quite late and did not replace the soap daily.

Overall the hotel experience was just OK, with lots of potential to enhance the...

Very disappointed with my stay. Let me be clear, the reason I am giving it a two star and not a one star is solely because of the nice gentlemen who helped me when I checked in. The room was in the “second” building, on the 2nd floor, and we checked in during load shedding. Now load shedding is beyond the hotel’s control but no one told me that there was no power upon checkin (and therefore no working lift). When I went (with 3 heavy suitcases) to the lift and found it not working, I went back to reception to point this out and the lady behind the desk looked at me and simply said “You need to take the stairs”. No offer (from her) to get someone to help. The young man who checked me in immediately then offered to help and enlisted the help of his colleague also.

Then came the room!! I do not believe this is worthy of the Marriott name. The room is small but that’s fine. What I was dumbfounded by is the fact that there is only 1 plug in the room which has a 3 plug, 2 plug and USB charging port. So if I have a phone, tablet, laptop, power bank, wireless earphones and smart watch, I cannot charge eveything at the same time - imagine the situation if there are two people staying in the room. To make it worse, the plug is by the entrance to the room (far away from the bed). We asked reception for an extension chord and they provided one within a few minutes. When the power came back on, I turned on the air conditioning and OMG…the noise!! It has a whirring sound that is so jarring and the higher the fan speed the worst the noise is.

The breakfast was good (food wise) but the service is way below par. They ran out of plates, glasses and coffee cups (the restaurant wasn’t even full). We sat at an outside table that had just been vacated and the wait staff didn’t even bother to bring us cutlery and coffee cups (despite seeing us sit down). I had to ask the omelette chef for a plate to partake in the hot buffet (maybe I’m wrong but I don’t think that’s his job).

So disappointing. I could not wait to leave the hotel. The hotel is within walking distance of the V&A Waterfront so location is optimal. I’m saddened to say that I would not...