Retiring hotel genius Sol Kerzner – quite simply, one-of-a-kind

Two decades back, I finally cracked a television interview with South Africa’s then best known businessman, hotelier Sol Kerzner. He insisted it be filmed on the newly created artificial beach at his five star Le Touessrok resort in Mauritius. As flights were irregular, I ended up staying in the hotel for almost a week. The interview itself was special – Sol tackled allegations of bribery head on and chuckled his way through most of a half hour that duly aired in primetime on SABC TV. After the shoot, he went his way and left cameraman Dennis Goddard and I to go ours. staying away from any further interaction. Which supports the view expressed in this interview with David Coutts-Trotter that although Kerzner was prepared to stand squarely in the spotlight when it was good for business, in truth he is a very private man. Coutts-Trotter, like Kerzner, is a chartered accountant. He ran Kerzner’s Southern African creation Sun International between 2006 and 2011. And as the financial director of Kersaf, kept a close eye on Sol’s global expansions when, in his 50s, he moved onto a bigger stage. This week Kerzner sold out of his NYSE-listed group and stepped down as chairman. So we asked Coutts-Trotter to visit the Biznews studio to reminisce about the 78 year old Troyveville-raised hospitality superstar with the strange accent. – AH  

DAVID COUTTS-TROTTER:  Alec, I would have met Sol pretty much shortly after I’d joined what was then Kersaf Investments.  You know, I spent a year and a bit as a Financial Manager and became a Financial Director quite shortly after joining, so basically, from that moment on, because we had a huge investment in his business, I began to interact with Sol.

ALEC HOGG:  He’s also a Chartered Accountant.

DAVID COUTTS-TROTTER:  Yes absolutely.

ALEC HOGG:  So you spoke the same language.

DAVID COUTTS-TROTTER:  Not sure of the same language but similar, yes.

ALEC HOGG:  But it just…

DAVID COUTTS-TROTTER:  I mean Sol was financially incredibly astute and, you know, numbers were very very easy for him.

ALEC HOGG:  When did that go back?  How long?  When was it that you joined Kerzner International?

DAVID COUTTS-TROTTER:  Well, I started at Kersaf in the early 90’s, so was it 1993, so really just about the time that Sol was already starting to grow that business, so that was after the initial acquisition of the Bohemian business from Merv Griffin and before the development of the First Atlantis.

ALEC HOGG:  And by that stage, he’d starting leaving South Africa.

DAVID COUTTS-TROTTER:  Yes, very much, yes.  He was no longer, once I joined Sun International or Kersaf in South Africa; he wasn’t at all involved in the South African business.

ALEC HOGG:  The offshore story or the offshore development that Sol Kerzner has done in that period is not well known to South Africans.

DAVID COUTTS-TROTTER:  No, I don’t think it is.  I think it is to a certain degree, but it is generally not been, I guess, that well publicised.

ALEC HOGG:  And how big is he?  How’s he regarded in the global sense?

DAVID COUTTS-TROTTER:  I think Sol, as a hotel – let’s call it a resort- and particularly a developer, obviously also an operator, but as a developer, as a visionary, creating those destination resort businesses, you know, he’s right up there.  He’d be right up there with a Steve Wynn and, in some ways before those, somebody like Steve Wynn, in terms of if you date when he did his first big things.  He is therefore very highly regarded, I think, in the international community, in this business.

ALEC HOGG:  And which resorts would be well known that he has created globally?

Another of Sol Kerzner's iconic resorts - Atlantis in the Bahamas
Another of Sol Kerzner’s iconic resorts – Atlantis in the Bahamas

DAVID COUTTS-TROTTER:  Well, I think, obviously Sun City.  Sun City was pretty unique in its times.  If you go back to Sun City in the late 70’s, even before that, I think some of the hotels down in Natal, Durban etcetera, I think the kind of model that he brought to hoteling, even then was unique.  Certainly, I think Sun City would be the first of those kind of destination resorts, and then, from there on Atlantis.  I think Atlantis in the Bahamas, replicated into Dubai and I believe it is now going to be happening in China, from what I hear.

ALEC HOGG:  And the One-And-Only brand?

DAVID COUTTS-TROTTER:  Yes, the One-And-Only brand was…most of those businesses were there.  They were already hotel, resorts, etcetera and that was really a big rebranding.  That was at the time that Sol and the South African Sun International, if you like, split and he rebranded all of his businesses from Sun International, Hotels Limited, which it was called then, to Kerzner International and within that, the high-end smaller hotel resort businesses, he was looking for a separate brand.  There’s no doubt it’s become, I think, a very well known brand in the hospitality, high-end hospitality industry globally now.

ALEC HOGG:  What did you learn from the man, David?

DAVID COUTTS-TROTTER:  I think, for me, Sol had an incredible intellect, incisive, fast thinking, as I say, very, very numerate etcetera, a lot of vision when it came to the whole development, in terms of what you’re trying to create and how you create it.  The other big thing I think was just energy.  The man had unbelievable energy.  I remember being at the opening of the first Atlantis in the Bahamas, which goes back now many years and my son was I think, six months old or three months old, when we were over there for the opening.  I got father duties in the morning at 06:00 or whatever, when the child wakes up, put it in the pram, take it downstairs, and push it around.  There were many workers around, doing things and the only senior Executive that you saw around was Sol Kerzner going crazy, because it’s three or four days until opening, and things need to happen and, you know, this man was out there well before 06:00 in the morning.

ALEC HOGG:  His family as well.  He had his son, Butch, who died prematurely.  Clearly, that took a bit out of him.

DAVID COUTTS-TROTTER:  Yes, no doubt Alec.  You know Butch had already been appointed as a Chief Executive of the Company.  Not that long before they had actually taken Kerzner International private.  It was very leveraged and I think that has put them under pressure.  That was in 2006.  2008 came along…global travel pressure and the whole financial issues of the time, I think, put him under enormous pressure and I think without Butch that became a much more difficult thing to manage.  I’m pretty sure that at the time they did that deal, Butch had some further plans in terms of dramatically reducing that leverage over the short-term, which I think then fell apart with him passing.  I think that was very tough and basically, Sol stepped back into the saddle again, which is not an easy thing in a global multi-destination business, building big things like, at that stage, Atlantis in Dubai.  However, being Sol, he did it, you know, and he brings as I say, that energy drive, focus, and passion to things and he has always done that.

ALEC HOGG:  He is 78 now; this is his resignation or stepping-down as Chairman of his own business.  Is this it?  Are we going to see any more of him or do you expect him to go off, into the sunset?

DAVID COUTTS-TROTTER:  I would think so.  I wouldn’t ever say that, but I would think that is very much his plan.  I think, clearly, in being able to sell a large chunk of what is a family business with partners but private, being able to sell another large chunk of it, has rather allowed him and made him feel comfortable to step back and let somebody else take over.  If the family owns a big chunk of the business then Sol wants to be quite close to it.  I don’t think he’s the type of person who sits back and watches, so to me, that’s obviously been the strategy.  He’s now found the right buyer, they have the money, and people they’ve been working with for a long time, so I think he’s comfortable, probably, that they can take over and take it forward.

ALEC HOGG:  One of a kind.  It is not often you hear hoteliers, in any country, being famous enough to be spoken about in households, watching television.  What was it that made him so special, do you think?

DAVID COUTTS-TROTTER:  I guess it’s the properties, which he developed originally, in South Africa.  He lived led an interesting life as well.  He was a very charismatic…

ALEC HOGG:  Beautiful women on his arm.

DAVID COUTTS-TROTTER:  Absolutely.

ALEC HOGG:  Continuously.

DAVID COUTTS-TROTTER:  Yes – he was generally, very charismatic and entertaining.  He was a wonderful entertainer.  To sit and have dinner at the same table, as Sol Kerzner was also a privilege, not that he was a big fancy eater or anything but, I mean, you know he could tell a good story and he’d seen a few things in his time.

ALEC HOGG:  What’s your favourite story that he’s told you?

DAVID COUTTS-TROTTER:  Ah, gee.  I don’t know.  I don’t know if you can repeat it on radio.

ALEC HOGG:  He must have found a way to court Anneline Kriel, who was then Miss World, and probably a foot taller than he was.

DAVID COUTTS-TROTTER:  I couldn’t tell you about that.

ALEC HOGG: He didn’t…

DAVID COUTTS-TROTTER:  No, I wouldn’t know.  No, he’s a discreet man as well, I think, when it came…  He’s also quite a private, personal kind of man.  I think he has his friends and I think people are always looking for a story out of Sol, but I’m not sure that he was…  I think it was good for the business he was ‘I’ll be the face and do some kind of famous things’ and what have you, but in many respects, I think he tried to live – often – more privately than maybe people think.

ALEC HOGG:  But he did have very famous friends.

DAVID COUTTS-TROTTER:  Oh, indeed, yes.

ALEC HOGG:  I suppose that goes with the territory, as you have very famous friends.

DAVID COUTTS-TROTTER:  Yes, I guess in that kind of business you are going to meet those people, yes, and Sol certainly did it and I think he leveraged it well, and it was good for the business.

ALEC HOGG:  His legacy here in South Africa.  I went to, I was at a Beverly Hills last weekend for a birthday and spent the night at the hotel, and its aged well, since 1964, when he brought it in as the first 5-Star hotel, that kind of legacy.

DAVID COUTTS-TROTTER:  Look, I think his legacy to the hospitality, hoteling industry is enormous, including the fact that he’s put a lot of money into the Johannesburg – whatever it is – Hotel School, etcetera, so financially he’s continued to support the industry, to an extent, in South Africa.  There is no doubt that he really put it on the map.  He built some iconic properties.  There are managers still out there in the business, that are obviously getting on a bit now, but they started under Kerzner, they worked for him, they ran around, getting properties going and started and operating properly, under his kind of vision and leadership.  I think he has greatly influenced many, many lives.  There’s no doubt that if you have to say, ‘who’s the doyenne of the South African hospitality industry’, – despite the fact that he might not really have done a lot of business here, other than obviously, the One and Only in Cape Town, in the last twenty-years or whatever – I think most people would mention Sol first.

ALEC HOGG:  Would he come back to this country?

DAVID COUTTS-TROTTER:  Look, Sol spends a fair amount of time here every year.  You know he has a home down in the Western Cape, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he spent a bit more time at that home.  I think it is one of his favourites.  However, as I say, I would imagine he is retiring now.  I’m not sure that he’s going to be doing a lot more business as such.

 

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