The hotel is reputedly the first billion rand development in South Africa; the 131 rooms and suites set a high standard joining other recent developments in raising the understanding of what a five star hotel is. Here the rooms are large - the smallest bedrooms are 63sqm, compared to a normal development standard at this level of hotel of around 45sqm. Generously sized public areas and named chef restaurants (Nobu and Gordon Ramsay) all add to the attractions of a modern contemporary building designed by New York designer Adam D. Tihany with local architects Ruben Reddy and Dennis Fabian & Berman. Tihany said: "We wanted our design to embody the local sensibility, and the multi-layered contemporary and traditional cultures that make up Cape Town style.”

In the rooms and suites specially commissioned artwork by South African artists and photographers struggle to make a voice against a contemporary sensibility which, whilst using locally sourced materials such as the local Cape sandstone for the floors, turns it all into the international style that passes for quality around the globe. Contrast and compare the way in which the competitive refurbishment of the Cape Grace hotel, a few metres away on the harbour front, has successfully drawn on the Cape inheritance, or look at the inheritance expressed at Bushmans Kloof, and the anodyne modernism of this hotel becomes apparent. It is a modernism that would not be out of place in any major global city.

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