Sun International to lease landmark Sandton property

Sun International has signed a 20-year lease for a landmark hotel in Sandton - the Grayston - and will carry out an extensive R250 million upgrade and refurbishment from January.

The 346-room hotel, which is popular with business travellers because of its location near the JSE, Sandton Convention Centre, the commercial and retail district and the Gautrain station, will close at the end of this month when the current lease expires.

Sun International plans to reopen it as a "four-star plus" establishment early in 2013. It and the Cavaleros Group, which owns the hotel, will contribute equally to the cost of the refurbishment.

Garth Collins, who has taken over this week as acting chief executive of Sun International, said the group was not yet represented in Sandton and taking over the Grayston offered it "relatively short-term access to this key market".

It would also act as "a valuable stop-over point for our inbound visitors who arrive from abroad en route to our other properties around this country - especially Sun City and in Cape Town - and to our Zambezi resort in Zambia".

Collins said the deal would "secure Sun International's position in South Africa's premier business node and would complement the Table Bay Hotel in Cape Town, our other major urban hotel".

Sun International was one of the first hotel groups to realise the potential of investing in a hotel and casino in Nigeria, which has also attracted investment from international groups as well as from South Africa's Protea Hotels and Southern Sun. It has also invested profitably in a gaming resort near Santiago in Chile.

Its current investments, which help to provide jobs in depressed areas, include multimillion-rand enlargements and upgrades of the Boardwalk in Port Elizabeth and its resort hotel on the Wild Coast.

David Coutts-trotter has resigned as the chief executive of Sun International after five years in the job. Announcing his resignation, with immediate effect for personal reasons, the directors said yesterday that he had "made a significant contribution to the company and we wish him everything of the best".

Collins, an experienced executive who has been with Sun International for more than 40 years and is its director of gaming operations, will be acting chief executive "until the process of appointing a new chief executive is completed".

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