The Oyster Box: The re-birth of a legend
It’s not every day that legends are made (let alone re-born) – even in the hotel business! So the other day this brief, almost laconic item rose above the usual clutter:
‘Legendary hotel to reopen
Umhlanga Rocks, Durban Kwa-Zulu, Natal, South Africa
‘The Oyster Box, part of the Red Carnation Hotel collection, South Africa’s legendary boutique hotel, reopens on 1 October 2009. The 90-room property on the beach with its own oyster beds [sic] has undergone major alterations and additions. It now incorporates eight villas with their own pools; a 4,500 square feet Presidential Suite with pool. It has four restaurants [the hotel not the Suite]; four bars; meeting and function rooms; cinema; a traditional eastern Hamam spa and gymnasium. The opening coincides with the inaugural Emirates flight from Dubai to Durban six days a week.’
The item was written, I understand, with obvious pride and affection, by Beatrice (‘Mrs. T’) Tollman, president and founder of Red Carnation Hotels, a family-owned collection of 4- and 5-star family-owned luxury boutique hotels, and a legendary ‘hands-on’ hotelier.
The Oyster Box, ‘sitting grandly on the dramatic shoreline of the Indian Ocean, overlooking the iconic lighthouse of Umhlanga,’ is Red Carnation’s third South African property. The Twelve Apostles Hotel & Spa in Cape Town, winner of ‘Top City Hotel in Africa and The Middle East’ in Travel & Leisure magazine’s 2009 Awards; and Bushman’s Kloof Wilderness Reserve and Wellness Spa in the Cederberg Mountains, recently voted ‘Best Hotel in the World.’
In the interest of ‘truthful journalism,’ I should declare an interest. I’m writing this piece for pleasure, not for profit. But I have built up my own collection of interviews with Red Carnation staff, from hotel managers and concierges to chefs doormen, which are posted as ‘podcasts’ on RCH’s web site (www.redcarnation.com) and come to some critically affectionate understanding of this unusual company. I also voiced the video tours of the RCH properties and got brownie points when one of them won an award recently..
‘Journalists should not have friends,’ I can hear the editor over my shoulder saying. (The editor, Russell J. Boner, my boss and sometimes reluctant mentor at McGraw-Hill’s International Management magazine, was a veteran of the Wall Street Journal’s puritanical newsroom.)
Well, okay. But I have to say that several of the Red Carnation hotels that I have experienced are among the very best of any hotels I have known; often achieving that elusive amalgam of comfort, friendliness and efficiency that I call hospitality.
‘Hello, Oyster Box? I’d like to book a beach-view double with a king-size oyster bed, please!’