Exclusive Cape Town hotel delivers innovative decor and the perfect stay

Brian Berkman says that revenge travel (that is, making up for opportunities to travel lost to the pandemic), casual staff dress, acclaimed art and a reservations-with-deposit entry policy all make The Silo Hotel what it is.

- Brian Berkman

Luis Pinheiro is wearing jeans and an open-necked shirt. He is clutching his Royal Portfolio branded travel coffee cup. “It was quite ambitious of founder Liz Biden to go with a no-jacket, no-tie and staff in jeans policy. Other five-star hoteliers at the time were shocked,” he says.

He is general manager of The Royal Portfolio’s Silo Hotel in Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront and this month he will have been there for seven years, making this his longest-running GM position.

With GM roles at other top hotels such as Belmond’s Reid’s Palace in Madeira, Belmond Mount Nelson, The Table Bay and Leeu Estates in Franschhoek on his CV, he knows the luxury hotel business better than most.

“The Bidens invited me to visit the construction site in 2015 and I saw the building with about 1 600 workers on the site. The hotel opened six months before the Zeitz MOCAA [Museum of Contemporary Art Africa] so you can imagine the number of people who wanted to see inside this extraordinary building.

SIX STAFF FOR EACH GUEST 

“We only have 28 rooms, and each room costs us R4 000 a night whether occupied or not, and that is not including the salary for our 160 staff. In terms of staff-to-guest ratio, The Silo has more than six staff members per guest. In contrast, many other five-star hotels have only half or one staff member per guest,” says Pinheiro.

The building, designed by UK-based Heatherwick Studio, features ‘pillow’ glass windows that evoke memories of a ship’s lantern. Each room decorated by Biden is a treasure trove of African art, furniture and found objects.