Rovos Rail’s website claims that they operate ‘the most luxurious train in the world’ and the Thacks Award panel agree that they have a near-perfect product. Sadly, the perfection which alludes them seems to be largely out of their control. So being totally objective, we have decided not to award them with one of the 2021 Thacks Awards until things have settled or improved.
Top 3 Highlights of the Trip Which Stood Out:
Comfort and style – the rooms with their ensuite bathrooms were spacious and comfortable, including great vanities and a personal minibar that you could get stocked up with whatever you want at no additional cost
Service – Rovos scores 10/10 for their welcoming and friendly staff, clearly handpicked by the owner and having broad smiles and good training
Winelist – we were very pleased to see that wines like Two Oceans weren’t offered and the South African wines on offer were good vintages with quite a few Michelangelo Award winners
Established in 1989 and with a great reputation three decades later, our reservations for two Deluxe Suites were made in 2019 and the 25% deposit was paid – originally for a June 2020 departure date, which got postponed to July, then September, then again to 2021. Sadly, Rovos Rail missed out on a 2021 Top 5 Winner Thacks Award through no fault of their own. Blame a global pandemic with 9 and 10 scores on all categories for ‘Ambience’, ‘Exclusivity’ and ‘Service’… but just two and one point short of award accolade on ‘Overall Experience’ and ‘Value for Money’ which came in at an 7 and 8/10 respectively for our trip which is seemingly down to deteriorating infrastructure and staffing of the SA rail network (although not in direct control of Rovos as we saw, a key element to a business like this), and mounting costs on cancelled and rebooked airline tickets from Europe, and locally to Johannesburg and from Cape Town for our June 2021 trip which in itself was scarred by the fact that the global pandemic had already resulted in numerous cancellations and re-bookings. Part of the additional costs for this re-booking (x4) was the subsequent collapse of SAA, Kulula and Mango airlines in South Africa which meant that new flight tickets had to be booked on three ocassions! Most of the flight changes had to be paid for and the business rescue of these airlines in South Africa (with which we ironically made bookings with them all over the course of booking and re-booking!) has also cost a lot of time and money. Luckily the Pretoria and Cape Town accommodations could be rebooked without cost; but planning around the flights for 4 people through a pandemic had been a nightmare – and although we got to spend an extra night on ‘the most luxurious train in the world’ we missed out on some sleep and a night of our booking in Cape Town which we couldn’t get refunded or changed due to the last-minute delay. As we already mentioned, we do appreciate that Rovos didn’t cause the pandemic or re-bookings so our experience has been bittersweet for a long awaited and much anticipated journey which then suffered delays and on one occasion a missing train driver and another driver (not Rovos staff, but contracted by them) who refused to work a few minutes overtime to allow the onward journey for many paying customers.
The reason for the lower scores in two of the five key Thacks Awards categories was probably isolated to our specific journey and required some guests to disembark and get taxi’ed to Cape Town as we lost a lot of time which resulted in our Sunday anticipated arrival to Cape Town ending in a Monday morning arrival. Via bus. This will have been okay for a reasonable time except for the fact that we were first told we’d need to wake up at 530am to get off the train by 7am; then once we’d been woken were told that we’d lost more time and could go back to bed but that we’d now only arrive later in Paarl and then will have to catch a bus to Cape Town.
The mood was somewhat subdued the previous day already when we were informed that the 2nd stop (that we were all looking forward to) in Matjiesfontein would not happen, and we frustratingly sat stationary for a good few hours and didn’t move for a few previous hours after our stop in Kimberley. We also missed the green scenery and views of Cape Town and the Winelands as we passed through those areas in the dark of the night due to the delays.
Thanks Rovos! We might see you for the Zimbabwe or Durban trip next when normality is restored.
Training the Most Luxurious written by John Thackray – one of the international Thacks Awards panelists, living in Spain. When not traveling and wine-tasting, John is an iGaming specialist reporting into director level in the sports betting industry with a degree in Information Technology.
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