Royal Livingstone Victoria Falls Zambia Hotel by Anantara — Hotel in Southern Province

Stunning Property—But Horrible Billing and Accounting. Advise everyone to double check.

This property sits on river Zambezi and is stunning. When you first look at it you get an old British Colonial Lodge vibe. It sits 100 meters away from the Victoria falls.

The rooms are nice although I would say a little cramped. The balcony is huge, ideally you would have asked for a little more space in the room and a slightly smaller balcony would have been ideal as you spend more time in the room and the balconies are large enough for a bed, whereas you just need comfy chairs and a table.

The Food and dining is something that I feel can improve. Dining options are only 2 and both are just ok. Surely some more effort with specialty restaurants and other such things can help give the guests more options.

Now coming to our forgettable part of the stay. When we checked in, the young gentleman helping us check in blocked a certain amount on my credit card in ZMW (the local currency). At the time the figure seemed a bit off, but I decided to go ahead and check later. Once I reached my room I dug up my confirmation email. My confirmation email had the whole stay at 8800 AED (UAE dihram) whereas I got charged AED 9600. That’s nearly USD 300 discrepancy. I brought this up with the staff and they said they would investigate and get back to me.

Next day Mr Gift came and apologized, he told me that there is some issue with their USD credit card machine and hence charged me in ZMW hence the discrepancy. I asked him the conversion rate that they use and the rate he gave me was 20% above the rate mentioned on Google. Which for me is again surprising, I know all hotels use a higher conversion rate, that is not unusual but surely a 20-30% difference from Google exchange rate is very surprising. Anyway, he refunded the money and got the USD machine to swipe the right amount. He was also sweet enough to upgrade us to a suite which was amazing and we loved that.

Now while checking out, we were extra careful to check the bill since once bitten twice shy. We noticed that all the activities were written in the local currency and the final bill was in USD. I again told the front desk that we were charged for each activity in USD so are they sure there is no discrepancy. The gentleman again said that the system captures the bill in ZMW but he can see in his system that everything is in USD. I said ok and he swiped my card. While this was happening, I took my calculator out and started adding manually, I found that the USD amount and the ZMW amount is again different by nearly $100 and their system is not picking up the right amount. They again refunded the amount and charged the right amount.

The suprising bit was that the hotel frint desk assured us that the bill was right and that we don’t need to. Manually check because it is usual to give the bill in ZMW, but we insisted and used a manual calculator and found this out. I just hope they don’t do this with all their guests.

Also now that my credit card bill has come, I just noticed that everytime they refunded the money which was twice in this case, the credit card company charged another USD 30 per refund because it is a foreign currency refund. This is again normal practice for every credit card company. SO due to the hotels horrid billing practices I am now charged USD 60 for their mistakes.

The hotel and property are stunning, staff are polite, but such a billing mess is not expected of an Anantara property. They are really not organized; I really hope that all guests check and double check their bill and how much they are actually paying. They might be...

Upon arriving the view is breathtaking, staff are friendly and welcoming. There is wildlife walking around. There is amazing excursions, tours and attractions. This is however where everything stops. The first evening was buffet dinner. (This is my 3rd time back, we were celebrating a 30th,40th and an anniversary). The food was needless to say 2star. Meat was burned. The lady doing the barbecue kept squeezing oil on the meat creating a flame grill effect but what ended up in my plate was charcoal dipped in oil. The potato soup was mashed potatoes mixed with water and pepper. I ended up eating bread rolls. The excuse, they are 80% capacity and that buffet is the easiest to serve. We refused to pay for the dinner and we got an apology. The next morning starving hoping that it was only a bad evening we were surprised by yet another disaster. The beef sausage served tasted like dog food. My husband being in the meat industry and farming told the chef the sausage is off and that you can’t sell it as beef but rather tripe sausage because it was made out off intestines, heart and lung meat. They removed the sausage and apologised. The juice was not fresh. I tasted like a mix off very bad quality fruit juice mixed with water from the river. There was no cheese they put processed cheese slices on everything. We went on a water excursion and thankfully the chef there was great and we ended up eating all the high-tea food. It was puzzling that on the excursions the food was really good and fresh but at the hotel we are served very bad quality processed food. Staff are friendly but service is extremely slow. When ordering cocktails one have to get up to look for staff and remind them at the bar about your drink a couple of times. Also when one orders is seems the staff are not trained and you need to write down on their piece off paper for them what drinks you want to order. After complaining about the food experience the chef did offer a tasting meal because we requested a private dinner for the 30th and 40th birthday celebration. The meal was much better and edible. Was it a $100 pp worth meal? Not exactly but it was an improvement. The service by the waiter was great (Debrovski)!They also had fresh orange juice the next morning for us and service was a bit better. As much as we appreciate the improvement in service and food it was not supposed to be this bad in the first place. Not for a 5 star place. I requested if it would be possible for them to freeze my breast milk as I am still breastfeeding and want to take it back home. The response was that they have done it in the past and that it’s no problem. After the first day they didn’t freeze it and I had to discard the milk. Another manager offered to help and assured me they will freeze it. 2 days later, the same issue they didn’t freeze it and I had to discard all the milk. The head chef then said he will take over and make sure it is frozen. The day we checked out I collected the cooler bag and SUPRISE still not frozen! I mean how difficult is this request. I had to discard 4 days worth of breastmilk. We were a group of 8 people that spend a lot off money at the hotel but it’s a terrible feeling to leave feeling like you wasted money. We did enjoy zip lining , white river rafting, boat cruise, safari cruise, sitting in the angel pool at the edge of the falls. The excursions and beauty of the location were the only...

Royal Livingstone Victoria Falls Zambia Hotel by Anantara is the most impressive , luxurious hotel we’ve ever stayed in so far, and we’ve been to so many places all over the globe. The hotel comes with the whole package, brimming with the warm Zambian hospitality, impressive grounds, wildlife within the area, and plenty of activities for everyone. We were picked up from the airport to the ferry dock where we took the water taxi going to the hotel. We already saw crocodiles and hippos as we cruised the Zambezi River towards the hotel. We were welcomed by the singing and dancing staff. We were greeted by the manager (GIFT) who did everything to make our stay comfortable and unforgettable. He accommodated our requests. The grounds and the villas were well-kept, clean and immaculate. This hotel is within the Mosi-Oa Tunya park and expect to see a lot of giraffes, zebra, monkeys, antelopes, and other animals walking and feeding. It was always a sight to behold when the animals are just next to you and you feel safe next to them. We also enjoyed unlimited access to the Victoria Falls for free just by staying at the hotel. The staff is the probably the reason why this is one of the most special places we’ve been. Benjamin tirelessly drove us all over the resort. He was always happy to see us and always ready to take us anywhere, night or day. Noemi and Christine were assigned to our suite and made sure that we have everything we need in our suite. They were always around with their smiling faces. Boyd took care of us during pickups and drop-offs from the airport or hotel to cross the border in Zimbabwe. He helped us with border crossing and kept us safe during the trips. We had a Mukuni Boma dinner and had a blast learning about the culture. The show was spectacular as we tried different local cuisine. The daily breakfast was to-die-for. The food in the restaurants were really sumptuous and tasty. One of the best experiences we had in the hotel is the ultimate Zambezi River Dining Experience. This is a MUST experience you cannot miss. We were treated to a 5-star 4-course meal that reflects Zambian culture and hospitality in 4 different areas of the hotel grounds privately arranged for our family of 3. Chef Brenda cooked amazing meals from the appetizers to the main courses down to the dessert. Our maitre d’ Dobrowosky arranged everything for us and made sure that we have the best dining experience and that included the champagne and the wines!Amon and another person stayed with us to make sure that monkeys will not bother us during the experience. We can never thank you enough for making our stay here a memorable one. Thank you Laurie ( general manager) for that meaningful conversation about Zambian hospitality reflective of the staff in your hotel. Best regards to all and we cannot wait to be back here soon! We highly recommend this hotel to everybody!...