Cape Town - Hoteliers claiming "six-star" ratings for their establishments, positioning their hotels as superior to the established five-star hotels, are about to see stars.
There is no official six-star rating in South Africa.
Salifou Siddo, the executive director of the Grading Council of SA, said South African hotel star grading was part of an international grading system, in which the highest rating was five stars.
Last year a Cape Town hotel group was warned by the council that their claim to be a six-star establishment was illegal in terms of their association and they had to cease making the claim.
Siddo said the council was aware of others claiming a sixth star and similar letters would be sent to them.
He was responding to announcements that two multimillion rand hotel developments launched in Cape Town in the past few days were being described as "six star".
Graeme Stephens, development director of Sol Kerzner's One and Only resorts, which will build a 150-room hotel in the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront marina, cheerfully admitted that the description was only "a phrase coined to indicate that a hotel is at the top end of the five-star market".
He said that five-star hotels varied a great deal. Stars are awarded on the basis of amenities supplied and "some just scrape through".
Paschal Phelan, the developer of a R269 million hotel in Greenpoint, said that although there was at present no such thing as a six-star hotel "in the nomenclature of the South African grading system", he was confident that it would come for those offering exceptionally high standards.
In the meantime, he thought the additional star would be awarded in the minds of the guests.
Phelan's development, on the site of an earlier hotel in Green Point, will retain the original name Claridges.
The cost of the Kerzner International One and Only hotel has not yet been calculated. But the rooms are expected to cost R3 million each to build and furnish and they will each have a minimum area of 65m2.
Stephens said the development was aimed at "an international elite", some of whom had already visited game lodges in South Africa such as Mala-Mala, while others had mentally listed coming here as something to do when they were confident of finding a holiday hotel that met their requirements.