Waterfront Village — Local services in Foreshore

TL;DR - Incompetent and unprofessional senior management (Ms. Lize Swart and Mr. Shiraaz Lawrence) make this place a no go should something unforeseen occur. The standard mode of operation is to ignore emails and phone calls after an agreeing to refund a stay due to the apartment having no hot water, no air-conditioning and water damage throughout. Unfortunately, this isn't going to be a positive review purely due to the poor service from the staff and management at The Waterfront Village.

We checked in on the 31st of January 2025. The room we checked into had a water damaged cupboard with a scent to match. No hot water. No Airconditioning. No working shower. Despite multiple calls to reception and 4 attempts by the maintenance crew they were unable to resolve it nor move us to a better room due to availability. A refund was requested and agreed upon the same evening at 10pm after the last attempt to fix the issues.

The following day we were moved to another room which thankfully did not have any of these issues. The refund was again agreed upon for the first night by the on duty manager.

Over 4 months has gone by and I have been pushed between booking.com and the Waterfront Village with each party stating that the other party is to provide the resolution. After much back and forth they have explained that there is yet another party (HotelBeds.co.uk) involved in the booking.

The managers at the waterfront village have indicated that the refund has been processed in multiple emails yet a few weeks have gone by with the refund not arriving. I have asked for proof of the refund but the emails go unanswered. Calls are not returned as promised. Emails go ignored. Phone calls are not returned.

I would not recommend this establishment purely due to the poor management. It's a pity as the...

Disappointing from the second we arrived. We had intended to spend two nights here, but left after one, and booked a hotel instead.

Firstly, the check in process was quite off-putting, as rather than make you feel welcome and excited for your stay in Cape Town, they just list off a number of rules and things you're not allowed to do whilst staying there. You're not treated as a valued customer or guest, but more as a nuisance that they have to deal with.

The apartment itself, despite being marketed as "luxury", was anything but. Very basic and nothing at all like the photos we had seen as part of their marketing. I believe the apartments are all different, so we may have just been unlucky... Our balcony was also not private, with a walkway between us and the neighbouring apartments, which wasn't ideal.

There is construction going on during our stay (23/24 Nov) which we could hear from within the apartment. It was loud when we arrived around 4pm on Saturday and still going on until 7:30pm when we left to go out for dinner. It looked like they were starting up again on Sunday before we left.

The facilities in the room are basic but fine - although don't expect even a small bottle of water to be provided. There is washing detergent available if you ask for it, but when we asked it took so long to come that we gave up waiting and walked to the shops instead.

It was clean and safe so if that's all you need and don't care about service / the apartment itself, then you'll be fine. The marina...

Almost comically bad.

I’ve shared one of the marketing photos for this “luxury” apartment and the student accommodation-level property we were provided with. I’m not sure if South Africa has a version of the Trade Descriptions Act, but feel there is a solid case here for misrepresentation.

On arrival, you are “welcomed” by having a list of about 10 things you’re not allowed to do - loud music, laundry on balcony, have too many guests over etc - read to you. You are then provided with a further six-page document outlining further banned activities - such as flying a drone or bringing a shopping trolley into the complex - and the associated fines relating to them. We felt so welcome…

There were about five people working at reception when we were checking in and at some point they all just disappeared in various directions with no one telling us what on earth was going on and just left to our own devices.

Washing machine and tumble dryer worked fine, so there’s that. We did ask, as was offered to us, for washing powder but this never arrived so we had to get our own.

On any interaction with staff you are promptly reminded of fines - late check out etc - and made to feel like a criminal in waiting.

South Africa is a great country and we’ve felt so welcome wherever we’d been up until the Waterfront Village.

As we didn’t fancy staying in a glorified laundrette for longer than necessary, we left after one night of a planned two night stay and advise anyone else looking here to take their...