Please do not be fooled by the fact that Brad and Angelina were guests at this establishment. Since their stay, a completely different set of management have taken over the running of this hotel, and all is not well at Burning Shore! While the views are exquisite, and the Suite has a very large bathroom complete with jacuzzi and walk-in wardrobe, the service at this establishment is severely lacking. Staff, incluing the much-absent management, are clearly resting on their laurels of having had celebreties stay there and did not go out of their way at all to make our stay in any way pleasant.
My husband and I booked 4 days as part of our honeymoon and were extremely excited about the location. On arrival, we were shown to the room, only to find the front door had been left open and someone had been lying on the bed watching TV, and simply left the room. Of course the room was in a fine state and had obviously been cleaned, but there was clearly no attention to detail when the room was (supposedly) marked ready for check-in and it was not the welcome one would expect in their much-publicised Suite. We had to call housekeeping on 2 days to ask for towels as they had forgotten to replace the old ones.
We had access to a gorgeous balcony overlooking the sea, and due to the severe heat in Nov, we asked for an umbrella so that we sould still sit out on the deck and enjoy the view, without being scorched by the sun. We spotted several unused umbrellas on the decking below us, but despite asking for one of these to be brought up to the room every day, by the time we checked out it had still not arrived.
We booked a table for dinner on our first night and were very disppointed. We were one of 3 tables in the restaurant (one of which left half way during their meal due to lack of service). The only waiter could hardly speak English and was more concerned with obtaining freshly pressed linen from the laundry and placing them on unused tables, than coming to take our order. After waiting 20 mins without even having seen a drinks menu, we got up to go and find him to ask for a glass of wine. The is only one winelist for the whole restaurant, so you have to wait your turn. It is rather boring as it bosts wines from all of 2 wine estates in South Africa (one of which is Nederburg so no surprises there). We ate at various other restaurants in Namibia and they all managed to present varied and exciting wine lists, so I do not believe its a matter of not being bale to source good wine.
Starters were as one would expect from the advertising of the restarant - well thought out and tasty. The Crayfish-in-a-glass was a fresh twist on the much-loved Prawn Cocktail. But the main course was prepared by what seemed like a completely different chef. I ordered a rather expensive "grilled sole with fresh prawns" but the fish which arrived was a regular piece of hake, smothered in bright yellow grilled cheese slices with a couple of frozen prawns, along with a side of discoloured frozen cauliflower, peas and carrots.
The ambience in the restaurant is quite depressing ; not only does no one eat there, but they play the same old 80's love songs all through the day and night!
We wanted to have room service breakfast for the duration of our stay and were told front desk we should phone our order through to Room Service. Turns out there is no Room Service, only the waiter in the restaurant who cannot speak English. We were told to simply pop down in the morning and dish up what we wanted from the buffet and they would bring it up to the room. I though the whole point of room service was being served the meal in your room without having to get up early! They would simply not indulge us and bring us a standard continental breakfast each day but insisted we pick our items each morning. The breakfast buffet does not change from day to day, and disappointingly carried no fresh fruit and no pastries.

The Suite is situated diretly above the restaurant and unfortunately all the cooking smells penetrate up the stairs and into the room, which makes it quite unpleasant to be in during the aftternoon. We actually had to make a point to leave the room, all windows and doors closed, so that the smell would not penetrate.

On check out, we were told that the credit card payment machine was not working (due to high winds) and we were asked to make a cash payment for our extras. They would not accept that we left our credit card details (which they had already used to take a deposit payment) but insisted that we drive the 30kms to Walvis Bay and back to draw cash and make a cash payment on departure. After a very long discussion with a member of staff who had only been at the hotel for a week and was not able to call her manager to discuss because she was not yet allowed to make calls to mobile phones, it was eventually agreed that they would take a card payment using our details, as soon as the machine was up and running.

I would urge real caution when booking Burning Shore, especially as they are currently renovating and rebuilding and the noise, which begings at 7am on weekday mornings and finishes by 6pm, is quite loud and disruptive and certainly would not allowe for a lie-in.

Our accommodation was fully prepaid so we were not left with any leverage if we were to check out early. All in all, not the best 4 days we ever had, which is a real shame as the hotel in a stunning location but this cannot make up for the fact that it is being badly managed.