Little room at the inn as Houghton hotel’s big reveal draws a crowd
● The City of Gold welcomed sparkly new luxury lodgings to the fold when The Houghton Hotel opened its doors on Monday evening.
The big reveal of the resort — set in a development touted as Joburg’s Central Park, including a Jack Nicklaus signature golf course and multimillion-rand pads — drew an 800-strong crowd of mostly the business and wealth set.
I’d say this was a few too many guests for the unveiling of a 70-room hotel, with a crush to snap up the buffet of bamboo-boated steak salad, chickpea and zucchini salad and tomato and bocconcini skewers laid out on white-clothed tables.
It didn’t help that the welcome drink, a pink gin and pink iced-tea cocktail, was a tad too dry. “Life’s too short,” agreed another guest as he spotted me putting my drink down after one sip.
In the melee I spotted someone who was a fixture at the fanciest of do’s back in the Gwen Gill days. Edith Venter arrived not with her husband Johnny Schwartz, but with her youngest son with Bill Venter, Marc.
I noted that, back then, the hem of her dress was a little shorter, and the businesswoman- socialite nodded.
Then it was hello to unlucky-in-love Gina Myers, who — as you will know from last week’s Sunday Times — scored the final rose from SA’s first Bachelor, Lee Thompson. But their love didn’t blossom when the cameras stopped rolling.
“I really hope he takes out of it what I did. I came out with so much love for myself,” says Gina, cryptically.
Inside the hotel’s 500-seat conference venue (bound to be a great new addition to the social scene) we are welcomed by master of ceremonies Mark Barnes, whose tough day job is turning around the stuttering SA Post Office.
Mark introduces a band of men in suits, led by the hotel’s CEO, Arnold Forman.
Businessman and philanthropist Marc Lubner delivers the night’s poignant moment when he recalls how it was the dream of his father, industrialist Bertie Lubner, and Bertie’s brother Ronnie, to see the hotel built.
Next, Business Leadership SA’s Bonang Mohale uses the platform to drum up some post-election Ramaphoria, assuring the crowd that the worst is over now that “the criminals” have been dropped from the cabinet. Mmkay …
Then it’s a walk through the resort and up some stairs to take in what is set to be its biggest drawcard, a series of connected heated pools, and to witness the ribboncutting as violists and a saxophonist roam about.
Thankfully, a PR hands me a glass of champers. But, with long lines at the food stations in the hotel’s Nova Deli, H Restaurant and Skybar, I decide to make my exit rather than sample the rest of the food.