Ant's Lodges - South Africa

Christine who has been on 6 In The Saddle rides. Magnificent | Good, reliable, well cared for horses. Friendly knowledgeable guides.

Do you have any comments about the accommodation and food?

I really struggled with the very late dinners. At home I would eat between 5 to 6 pm. Although the dinner is set for 8 pm, this is when people slowly come together, have a drink, then the chef is called to explain the menu. By the time you actually get the first course it is usually 8.30 or even 8.45 and you often don’t finish till almost 10 pm. This caused me digestive problems leading to sleepless nights as well as very low blood sugar beforehand.
I did ask a couple of times for an earlier dinner, but this obviously creates a lot of work for the staff, which I didn’t want to put them through regularly. I also didn’t want to be antisocial.
I spoke to many other guests about this and everybody apart from one person would have also preferred an earlier dinner.

A mini fridge and a comfy chair in the room would have been great.

How could we improve the quality of pre-holiday information that we send?

I didn’t quite have the right clothing, a better rate quote would have been handy, also address for the Christmas dinner. I could’ve also done with more shorts and more riding trousers. I needed less T-shirts and shirts as the laundry facilities were excellent.

How could we improve the way we handled your booking and payment?

Due to the part-time work of my agent there were partially long delays, when trying to get the information for the holiday and booking it. E.g. a question asked on Friday afternoon would not be answered till Monday morning. This caused me to lose out on the flight on my preferred departure day and I ended up leaving a day later than hoped for.

I would prefer to have question answered on the same day and not have to wait until the allocated agent is back at work.

[Tanya from ITS replies: I'm really pleased to hear that you enjoyed your holiday at Ant's over Christmas. Please note that our emails are monitored over the weekend by the directors and all urgent emails are replied to, so I am sorry if you experienced any delay in the response you received]