The Owners of Schoone Oordt

We realised, when sitting down to write this, that our last diary entry was Christmas 2019! How crazy is that? Quite a lot has happened since then (hasn’t it just?!). The most newsworthy of which, I imagine, is that we, the owners of Schoone Oordt, are back and managing it ourselves again. Even though we have always been very much involved in the property, it is now truly a family-run business again…. Kids, dogs, cats and a bunch of Koi (more on the Koi in another post, Richard has plans). We’ve always wanted guests to feel as though they are visiting with the best of friends and now couldn’t be truer. A stay with us is an authentic, unpretentious, deliciously luxurious, focus on food, South African hospitality experience (as some of you already know). We honestly look forward to continuing the love and care for a long time to come…

Everybody with a tourism/hospitality/travel business has had to hunker down, consolidate, cut costs and try their best to make it through to the other side. We are no exception. We used the time during Lockdown to sort out, clean up, organise, streamline and generally dig our hands deeply back into the business. It did feel good. Gave us a chance to reset. Along with the obvious refreshing of the property, we also had to rethink and relook at our team. Luckily, we did not have to retrench too many people and we are very fortunate to be able to keep (almost) the original team that we started Schoone Oordt with. Isn’t that something?! It does feel a bit like starting from scratch again.

We did quite a lot of work on the Gardens during Lockdown and they are looking beautiful
The Wisteria is always my favourite, it’s almost as old as the house itself.
We have had some wonderful local support since re-opening on the 14th August and we are so grateful for those people brave enough to support and trust us during these crazy times. Understandingly, we have a long road ahead and we are not expecting much until September/October this year. We do hope to feel the buzz and throw our arms wide to welcome more than just a handful of guests at the end of this year though. Perhaps we’ll even be able to hug again by then… Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

We do have some specials running at the moment, a particularly good 2-night one, so if you feel like you need to get out of the city, come and see us. We also have some plans (once fibre is officially here) to offer weekly or monthly remote working specials along with all sorts of nature-social distancing-good food-kind of activities.

What do you think?

Until we speak again, keep strong, keep well, keep a sense of humour, keep connected, keep kind, keep loving and see you on the other side…

Thank you to Elana van Zyl for the fabulous family picture and Tasha Seccombe for the rest.