I recently had the awesome privilege of being invited by Rob Newman, owner of The Waterfront Guest House, to stay at his 5-star, self-catering guest house on the banks of the Port Owen Marina.  Never in your life have you experienced anything like this!

This guest house is just unbelievable. Not only do you have a stunning location, but luxury like I’d never experienced before – from air-conditioned bedrooms, to spa-baths in the bathrooms, to patios with breathtaking views over the Marina, to cosy fire places and delicious local wines.

Port Owen

This stunning 5-star, self-catering guest house is situated on the banks of the Port Owen Marina, just a one-and-a-half hour drive from Cape Town on the famous West Coast road (R27).

The abundant bird life is amazing and makes Port Owen a bird lover’s paradise, with tons of species of birds including Flamingo’s, Pelicans, Kingfishers, Heron’s and “Duikers”  just to name a few.  The fish life is also incredible, with a many fishing spots in the surrounding areas.

A swimming beach is just 5min drive from the guest house.

Facilities

The Waterfront Guest House has 6 bedrooms and can sleep up to fourteen people at a time.  Three of the bedrooms have king-size beds with electric blankets and two of the three bedrooms have luxurious en-suite bathrooms with spa-baths, showers and heated towel rails.  The other three bedrooms have single-beds with electric blankets and share a bathroom with a spa-bath, shower & heated towel rails.  There is also double sleeper couch in the lounge.

The open plan lounge and dining room has views over the marina and the kitchen is fully equipped with everything your heart desires – including a deep fryer, dishwasher, washing machine, tumble drier and 4 fridges/freezers with more than enough space store enough food to feed an army for a month!  There are even three braai/BBQ areas, 1 of which is a gas braai.

The spacious lounge is also equipped with a bar where you can make the most delicious sundowners to be enjoyed on the patio overlooking the marina with the sun setting behind the yachts.  After your cocktails, you can fire-up Waterfront Guest House‘s huge pizza oven on the outside patio for mouth watering home made pizzas.

The remote controlled garage is big enough to take 4 cars, and there is additional secure parking for up to 10 cars that ensures that there is always ample parking. There is even a birth available for your own boat directly in front of the guest house!

Hospitality

Hospitality is  definitely on the top of the list for owner Rob Newman. He went out of his way to make us feel welcome.  For the few nights that I spent here, I experienced warm hospitality, good food, good wine, breath taking views and superb luxury.  It was really hard to leave and I wished I could have stayed longer. I will most definitely be back!

Rob’s warm hospitality will make you feel right at home, and if you need anything, you can just pick up the phone and give him a call – he will make every effort to get exactly what you need, even if it means going out and buying it!  Rob’s knowledge of the area is excellent and, when staying 2 nights or more, he may give you a tour of the area by boat.

There truly is NO limit to Rob’s hospitality – even your fury friends are welcome upon arrangement.

Recommendation

For the most relaxed, luxurious and home-away-from-home holiday on the West Coast, I can highly recommend The Waterfront Guest House.  You will have such a good time, you’ll find it very hard to leave!

If you are interested in this fantastic holiday accommodation, be sure to visit our website for more information.

Choosing the winners

Since TravelGround opened only 6 months ago we have received almost 250,000 page views (see our blog post about our Traffic Growth in 2009) and thousands of accommodation enquiries, bookings and reviews. To choose the winners we simply calculated which accommodation establishments drew the most attention, potential bussiness and completed business in each region.

So, in truth we didn’t choose the winners – our users did!

The prize

Each winner has received a custom badge made for their website. Below we have a sample of the Award that was designed in-house here at TravelGround.com.

A sample of what each of the awards will look like when displayed in full

And the winners are…

We have 35 winners of TravelGround’s Most Popular Accommodation Awards for 2009. Each award is for a distinct region of South Africa. Click on any of the awards below to see the winner’s page on TravelGround.com.

You can have fun trying to figure out what the winner’s might have in common. You will quickly realise that the winners have extremely varied accommodations – from price ranges to star-gradings to service. Yet the specific prospects of each property drew guests to that page more than any in the surrounding region, and then prompted them to action. If you can figure out the pattern, please let us know!

Welcome to TravelGround: your travel playground…

Behind the scenes, ZissuTravel.com has been re-branding… TravelGround.com is the result and the website will be moving across to this new domain today. But not to worry, all your old links to ZissuTravel.com will still function.

We’re open for bookings…

Despite the inevitable delays caused by the necessary re-branding and server upgrades, TravelGround.com has recently opened its much anticipated secure-booking system to guests from across the globe. We have ensured that the system is smooth and intuitive.

TravelGround.com now has almost 500 prime South African establishments listed on the website, and we are continuing to grow. We look forward to keeping focused on each and every establishment on our website, and giving personalised service to every user.

Up till now our marketing efforts to accommodation owners have been focused on the Western Cape with small escapades into other regions such as East London and PE, and the response to Zissu has been wonderful.

Currently 127 suppliers of accommodations have joined the site (some of whom have listed multiple accommodations). This growing community has also joined Zissu Travel in writing over 280 activity guides to South Africa’s best tourism attractions.

Our forecasts show that, from the Easter weekend until our immanent launch at the end of the month, Zissu Travel will attract an additional 400 odd accommodation registrations. This is a conservative estimate based on the fact that we still have to follow 80% of our current leads.

Zissu Travel also expects that by the end of the month the website will contain over 1000 pages of content about South African regions and tourist activities. At launch these pages will be opened to public viewing, and will be maintained as a South African tourism ‘Wiki’, ready to grow into the greatest ever South African travel guide. Accommodation will begin to accept online bookings through Zissu Travel at the same time.

In a recent survey of Zissu Travel’s clients, one Cape Townian guest house owner, when referring to creating a listing on the site, wrote “We advertise on many websites and portals, and I cannot recall any which were as easy to create and use as yours.”

Despite the positive feedback, Zissu Travel is constantly endeavoring to make the process even smoother. The use of a Virtual Tour Guide that teaches accommodation owners how to manage their accommodations online has been one of the company’s greatest triumphs.