3 Lux Suites

We specifically searched for hotels because we didn’t want to stay at a guesthouse, B&B, or Airbnb. We were looking for high-quality service from professionals who have attended hospitality school and are qualified in their field. What we got was the complete opposite, yet we paid hotel prices when we should have been paying guesthouse prices. I’ve been to many hotels across the country, and this is by far the worst. Mpumalanga and Cape Town usually have the best hospitality, so to find a “hotel” in Mpumalanga with such poor service is quite disheartening. I was quite disappointed by my experience at “3 Lux Hotel” from the moment I arrived. Upon entering the reception area, I was surprised to find that the staff weren’t in uniform. Instead, they were dressed casually—and not in a coordinated, professional manner, but more like they just grabbed whatever was in their closets that morning. It didn’t give off the polished, luxury vibe I was expecting. Things didn’t improve at check-in. There were no computers at the reception desk, which struck me as very odd for a hotel. I had to manually fill out all my information and booking details on paper. In this day and age, this felt extremely outdated and inconvenient. I couldn’t believe a place that markets itself as a luxury hotel would have such an unprofessional and inefficient system. Then, we were allocated a family room, but the trouble didn’t end there. The hotel’s website has no clear specification of how many people each family room can accommodate, leading to confusion. We had to go back and forth with the staff regarding our room situation. Eventually, they decided that we would need two separate rooms because they claimed we couldn’t all sleep in one. This decision was baffling since the family room they initially allocated to us had two double beds across two bedrooms in one apartment—perfect for our group of three adults, two toddlers, and one child under ten. Despite this, they insisted on giving us two separate rooms with double beds, which didn’t make sense considering the family room would have comfortably accommodated us. To make matters worse, separating our rooms increased our total cost, adding unnecessary frustration to the experience. On our way to the hotel, we were constantly called and asked what time we would arrive, which added to our stress. We arrived around 7:30 to 8:00 PM, and were told that our dinner was prepared and would be ready when we checked in. However, after the hassle of booking our rooms, we had to wait an additional two hours just to get our dinner. They informed us that the hotel doesn’t have a restaurant, which is why the delay occurred. When we finally received our food, it was cold. After waiting two hours, we were served a cold meal, which left us wondering what the point of the wait even was. What made this even more frustrating was that we specifically chose a hotel over guest houses or B&Bs because we wanted a fresh, hot dinner in a proper dini