Hot new hotel for Cape Town

Meet the "designer" hotel targeting film stars, celebrities, name-droppers. Operator talks about new jobs, rates, perks.

As Sol Kerzner's six-star One & Only hotel resort reportedly retrenches staff, another group has revealed plans to operate a new luxury "designer" hotel in Cape Town.

The Hotel Missoni Cape Town is part of the luxury Missoni brand, which includes haute couture popular on the red carpet among the likes of actresses Cameron Diaz and Miley Cyrus. It is being referred to as the "true first fashion hotel".

The new hotel aims to capture the film star and celebrity market as well as business travellers looking for something more exciting and trendy than the average five-star hotel offers - and who will pay about 25% extra for checking in with the "in" crowd.

About R2m will be spend on furnishing each of the 157 rooms, which will include designer Missoni bed throws and other interesting Missoni products, The Rezidor Hotel Group told Realestateweb - part of JSE-listed Moneyweb Holdings - on Monday.

Interesting features of the hotel, on the corner of Castle and Burg streets, will include a roof-top terrace with cantilevered swimming pool and views of Table Mountain, spa and meeting rooms. As expected, the hotel will also include a top-notch restaurant, with private dining, and a bar.

The R340m property is scheduled to open in time for the 2010 soccer games, but this is just convenient timing, said Rezidor's vice president for business development (Africa) Andrew McLachlan.

The Rezidor group holds the worldwide license agreement to develop hotels under the Hotel Missoni brand name. It opened the first Hotel Missoni in Edinburgh earlier this month, it said, and has two other properties under development in Kuwait and Oman.

It does not envisage opening other Hotel Missonis in South Africa. Cape Town is seen as one of the few destinations on the entire continent that appeals to the real jet-setters.

The Hotel Missoni Cape Town is owned by Phelan Holdings, a South African property development company formed 7 years ago by Irish businessman Paschal Phelan, said Rezidor.

A newspaper reported at the weekend that the One & Only, which was recently launched to much fanfare, has retrenched staff. In April, Kerzner invited dozens of Hollywood A-listers to a grand opening. Manager Tony Romer-Lee told the Sunday Times staff had been retrenched from all divisions, blaming in part "an enhanced understanding of what is required to run the property".

"Based on this, combined with the economic climate and the onset of low season, we have regrettably had to make some staffing reductions," he is reported as saying.

McLachlan does not see these retrenchments as a sign that there is potentially not enough demand for more top-end hotel space in Cape Town. McLachlan said the ratio of staff to rooms is about seven staff members to one room at the One & Only where the Hotel Missoni Cape Town will have a ratio of just over one-to-one.

McLachlan says occupancy rates for five-star hotels in Cape Town are in the region of 72-76%. Occupancies were down about 15% for the first four months of this year, compared to the same period last year.

He did not give the specific rate details for the new hotel but said they would be in the region of 25% more than the going five-star rate.

The average room rate for the first four months of this year for five-star Cape Town hotels was about R1 900, he said, so a guesstimate is that it is likely the rate per night will be in the region of R2 400.

McLachlan says his group does not expect the South African five-star hotel market to be hammered much more by the global recession. In Europe, there are positive signs people are changing their spending patterns, which bodes well for hotels like the new Missoni operation, is his view.

He expects the hotel to create about 200 permanent jobs when it opens its doors.

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