Botrivier Hotel

I sent the following email to the Botrivier Hotel Management on the 4th of May 2025 after our experience there for lunch on Sunday the 27th April 2025. Before writing this email, I phoned and discussed my disappointment with the lady in charge of large group bookings. Following that conversation, I sent this emai. To date (21 May 2025) there has been no response nor acknowledgement: Thank you for the chat on the phone last week and for allowing me to vent my anger and disappointment regarding our botched lunch booking on Sunday the 27th of April. As I said, I am not going to waste my time re-hashing the issues but I do offer the owners and management of Bot Rivier Hotel the following suggestions: 1. If your hotel can’t cope with large group bookings, DO NOT ACCEPT BOOKINGS SUCH AS THESE! We could easily have gone somewhere else on that day if we had anticipated how problematic it would have been for your management to cope with. 2. Suggest to a person ( such as me) when enquiring / making a group booking, to divide the group up into manageable table sizes eg 6 or 8. We certainly would not have minded being spilt into a couple of different tables. 3. Why not set the ‘booked’ tables up in the Dance Hall area automatically and keep the stoep area for walk-ins? In this way, you would be able to keep the table ‘reserved’ and would not have the problem of trying to get people to leave if they are sitting at a table reserved for someone else. 4. If and when you realise there is a potential problem with a booked table, why not contact the person who made the booking to ask them to delay coming or make other plans? We are all a cell phone call away! 5. When there is a problem, apologise sincerely and try to make it right eg ask the people to have a drink at the bar while you sort out Plan B. 6. DO NOT MAKE EXCUSES eg “You need to understand that we are busy / it’s a Sunday / It’s a long weekend / It’s a crowded train trip day!” All these things were already there when the booking was taken. Nothing had changed between then and now. 7. Respect the person who made the booking and was in charge of the arrangements and yes – now the person expressing anger / disappointment / frustration that things had gone wrong. I did not appreciate being ignored and dis-respected by management by asking my group for clarification of arrangements and not me. 8. Management need to respect the arrangements made by the person in charge of large bookings. If they don’t, what it the point of such a role? 9. We discussed the pre-ordering of food and payment thereof as well as the ordering of drinks from the cash bar to avoid the problem of a complicated bill at the end. This proved to be an absolute waste of time as these arrangements were ignored. I really tried hard to simplify the whole process and to make YOUR job easier by compiling a list that I will copy below for reference. 10. The young waitress was given the job of processing the credit card payments and

Unfortunately, this hotel is neglected for a long, long time. Furniture is brooken, shower with loose tiles and broken showerhead. What really worries me is the state of the electricity. The fire department should close up this hotel, because sockets are loose and damaged. The owner of his hotel must be thinking that an extreme lack of maintenance creates authenticity.

We wanted to make a booking with this hotel and called them twice. Each time we were told that they can't advise if they have any rooms and that somebody would contact us. This never happened and we therefore booked elsewhere. Still baffled why a simple request like availability could not be answered straight away. Surely all they needed to do was look in their booking register or diary. Makes one wonder how the overall service of the hotel would have been if they can't even handle booking enquiries!