Asara Wine Estate & Hotel

A good place full of tasty wine and food with a great view,will definitely go back if I get a chanceI loved it ...,...................

When I have visited Asara last time 2years ago I wrote in my diary: Beautiful estate, great food. This time we were somehow disappointed: The prises have gone through the roof for a mediocre lunch. The waiter (as well as I) forgot to remind me of my cap, which was not found when I called later.

Unfortunately I cannot say that this hotel is of a 5 star standard and definitely lacks the amenities and facilities to be considered as such. The rooms are very dated and basic and the housekeeping staff did a very minimal job; daily turn down was never complete before 3pm and included little more than tidying towels or providing a cookie by our bed; we had to ask twice for turn down to be complete and I noticed that toiletries were not replenished and basic supplies such as refrigerated water and tidying up glasses was not complete. Whilst the hotel restaurant had a beautiful view, the menu is very minimal and service is quite slow. The swimming pool itself is a decent size but is at the bottom of a steep grassy hill which is not fully paved. The rooms were also at least a 7 minute walk away from the reception area, up a hill and lots of stairs. On arrival to this hotel, we were not given a tour or any information about the facilities eg breakfast we had booked, nor offered a welcome drink or water. There was no ‘guest relations’ facility and no one could recommend any local attractions or restaurants; when we asked for recommendations of local wine tours we were given inaccurate information and had a wasted trip to a local vineyard that did not offer the type of tour that we had asked to be booked onto. Likewise, we were not warned that Ubers were difficult to come by in the area (we learned this the hard way when we nearly missed our dinner reservation) and the reception desk said they did not know of any local taxi companies to book for us. Unfortunately the worst part of our trip was that our shower door was broken and drain was blocked, meaning that when we showered the bathroom flooded and surrounding bedroom carpet got wet, leading to a wet and unpleasant floor throughout the room and significant smell of damp (which a few days later having travelled back to England we are still smelling on all of our clothes and belongings). Whilst the manager and staff were very apologetic about this and we understood that no rooms were spare to move us into, they lacked urgency or a proper response; we were first moved to an apartment on the site which was frankly disgusting and not comparable to the booking we had made, with no outside space or working aircon. The manager assured us he would fix the shower and inform us in 5 minutes of our re-entry to the room. Upon returning from dinner at 11pm at night, no attempt had been made to settle us back into our room with the luggage that had been previously moved into the apartment, and we hadn’t had an update from the manager or reception staff. A temporary fix was made to the shower, which subsequently flooded again the next day and non of the reception staff nor housekeeping asked if the situation had been resolved, did anything to rectify the damp smell or offered any form of compensation to us (apart from bringing us a snack as we got into our uber for dinner which whilst thoughtful did not impact or