Disappointing Honeymoon Experience with Poor Planning and Service
We recently booked our honeymoon to South Africa with Trailfinders, and unfortunately, the experience fell far below our expectations. Despite explaining from the beginning that our baby was our top priority, it seemed like no consideration was given to him when planning our flights or accommodation.
To start with, after checking out of our lodge at Amakhala at 11am, we were left with nowhere to go until our flight at 9:30pm, which was extremely inconvenient with a baby. There was a 3:30pm flight available aswell as many others every hour that would have aligned perfectly with checkout, allowing us to land, have dinner, and get our baby in bed by 7pm—ideal for the early start the next morning. This was a huge oversight in the planning process. Arrived at Johannesburg at close to 11pm to get the shuttle bus to our hotel but we'll just be getting there to sleep as we're up again at 5am to check in our baggage, again!! As the luggage had to be collected at Johannesburg on our transfer to Mauritius. Our hotel wasn't even on the airport grounds and were doing all this with a baby. We're booked in for breakfast at 7am and we can't even have it. Absolutely shocking planning.
Our flight to Cape Town via Dubai also included a 4-hour layover during the night, which caused further disruption to our baby’s sleep. We could have flown direct from Heathrow for 11 hours, but instead, we endured this unnecessarily long, exhausting journey after already flying 9 hours.
The trip planning as a whole lacked foresight. For example, we had a single night booked in Franschhoek for wine tasting, but couldn’t partake as we had to drive 4 hours the next morning to our next destination. The accommodation throughout the trip was very basic, with no special honeymoon touches as promised—no complimentary wine or champagne, no private dinner, and no turndown service, despite it being noted in our booking that these would be included.
We also had a significant issue at the start of the trip, as a car seat was not provided, which led to us losing a day of our holiday trying to source one ourselves. This mishap caused us to backtrack and drive through the night for 4 hours, missing out on the scenic Route 62 views and unnecessarily putting ourselves at risk driving in an unfamiliar country with an 11-month-old baby.
To make matters worse, we requested a breakdown of costs after feeling that the holiday, which cost £10,000, didn’t match up to the value we expected. We spoke to other travelers who were on similar trips with better accommodation at nearly half the price, yet Trailfinders refused to provide any cost transparency.
Overall, the planning and service were far below the standard we expected, especially for such a special trip. We are incredibly disappointed with the experience and will not be recommending Trailfinders to others.
This trip would have been stressful enough for 2 adults let alone with an 11 month old baby which infuriates us as we specifically mentioned this to our travel advisor prior to booking and it's been just thrown together without any proper planning.