Back to the days of the Royal Hotel

Clocks arrayed along the wall are all stopped, New York, London, Sydney, Tokyo are offline as Durban’s Royal Hotel pauses to take stock as a new future dawns.

Nine days ago, on March 4, a capacity crowd gathered to see the 170-year-old hotel auctioned in its own prime functions venue, the Prince Alfred Room — named after Alfred, Prince of Wales. He was the first royal to stay there, in 1860, and the one who put royal in its name. Since then, royals including the Duke of Cornwall (later King George V), King Goodwill Zwelithini and Queen Elizabeth II have been hosted.

The historic landmark was knocked down for R78m, going to Durban’s homegrown hotel magnate Saandu Naidu, founder of the Coastlands Hotels Group. At its peak in the 1980s, the hotel employed about 550 staff. Now it has just 105, serving 206 rooms and four restaurants and bars.

In 1988, the Three Cities Group took over the hotel, using it as a training centre as well as a fully fledged hotel. Large numbers of staff were retrenched and replaced by hotel and catering students, reporting to a qualified department head. Guests, though, were often disappointed by inconsistency. Surviving staff felt their mentoring capacity was spread far too thin. There was a vicious spiral of plummeting occupancy and falling custom. This was compounded when the Durban municipality in effect allowed the city’s business elite to decamp to the rival Umhlanga Ridge hub.

In 2012, flamboyant Swazi billionaire Moses Motsa fell in love with the property, according to his agent, Blackie Swart. But with occupancy hovering around 20%, he discovered this Grand Old Lady was more demanding than other hotel properties. “He particularly wanted to sell to someone who also respected the Royal’s heritage and would run it as the hotel it should be,” says Swart. “So he’s delighted Saandu Naidu was the successful bidder.”

Also delighted to hear that the new owner intends to restore the Royal as a haven of glamour and luxury service is the longest-serving staff member, reservations manager Kisten Naidoo. He worked his way up from page via waiter and wine steward and administrative posts, meeting celebrities such as the late Nelson Mandela and musicians and actors such as Phil Collins, Danny Glover, Cliff Richard and Jonathan Butler.

“My whole adult life has been here in this hotel. I’m so grateful it will stay a hotel and won’t become offices or anything else — and we can look forward to the return of the good times,” he said.

Still vivid in Naidoo’s memory is his first day as a page at the hotel, almost 33 years ago on July 2 1982.

“I was wearing a page’s full white uniform and turban and standing in position in front of the huge tapestry in the lobby when my father looked up from his place at the desk as head concierge. He didn’t know I’d applied for the job and was really shocked — but he got used to it by the end of the day. I’d matriculated at Avoca High School but we were a poor family, with five brothers and two sisters, living in a rented home. There was no money … to go to college.”

Knowing the Royal gave preference to recruiting family members of staff, Naidoo had visited the hotel just the previous day to apply. The only person he shared his secret with was his mother — who was thrilled at the thought of another income easing the tight family budget.

Head porter (and later guest manager) then was Rajagopaul Pillay.

“I have vivid memories of his unfailingly warm welcome during our childhood visits — despite the fact that my sisters and I would exhaustively test the lifts,” recalls Linda Duminy, who wrote the meticulously researched Royal Hotel: History In The Making, to mark its 150th anniversary in 1995.

THE Royal traces its roots back to McDonald’s Commercial Hotel, founded in 1845, says Duminy — when it was one of only a handful of buildings around the bay. From those early days, it established itself as a place of both revelry and serious business. Durban’s first regatta in May 1846, for instance, was followed by a dinner that began at 7pm. By 5am the next morning, “hackney coaches and wheelbarrows were at a premium”, according to De Natalier.

Later, in 1848, the town’s first public institution, the Durban Botanic Gardens, would be planned at the hotel during the inaugural meeting of the Natal Agricultural and Horticultural Society. At the society’s annual dinner, four years later, the gardens’ curator, Mark McKen, gave the first public talk on sugar-growing in the region.

“This early connection between the hotel and agriculture persisted,” notes Duminy. “Sugar farmers and their families from the coastal areas always regarded the Royal as their base in Durban, as did farmers from East Griqualand and other areas.”

Business people from home and abroad, tourists with an appetite for luxury, and celebrities seeking publicity or discretion — from Sir Harry Smith in 1848, then governor of the Cape Colony, to the heavymetal group Iron Maiden a century-and-ahalf later, the Royal has seen them all.

Learning the demands of diverse clientele came early in Naidoo’s career. First, he was promoted to waiter and wine steward in the Palm Court Restaurant. This breakfast, lunch and dinner venue stood behind reception and is now a lounge, its kitchen space converted into a hair and beauty salon. Back then, though, Naidoo remembers the telex clattering out the news and the stock-exchange prices in a little booth at the back of the Palm Court — now occupied by an ATM.

The Ulundi, with its colonial-style décor, traditionally headlined the Royal’s acclaimed Indian cuisine offerings but is now franchised out and its opening hours are limited. Shut completely is The Carvery, which served from a vast copper beer vat moved from a Johannesburg factory yard and winched into place by crane during the hotel’s 1973 rebuild.

The Top of the Royal, on the hotel’s 21st floor, once dispensed cocktails along with breathtaking views of Durban in the evening’s “blue hour”, accompanied by jazz and blues favourites on the piano. Now it serves breakfasts.

Still open for lunch and dinner is the Royal Grill, where loeries and other subtropical wonders gallivant in stainedglass glory that dates back to 1917. Here, Naidoo learnt the more arcane rituals of silver service and à la carte. “We worked shifts — making a very long day, from 10am to about half past midnight.” The occasional taste of tiramisu or chocolate mousse from the Grill’s renowned dessert trolley was some consolation.

BY THEN, Naidoo had managed to start buying his wife and family of three daughters a home in Phoenix, north of the city centre. Like his own father, he did not realise that one of his own daughters was destined to follow in the footsteps.

“My father-in-law was chef in charge of the Top of the Royal buffet and also pastry chef,” he recalls. “Now our youngest, Daphne, is sous-chef at a hotel in Gateway — thanks to a bursary to the International Hotel School awarded for the child of a staff member. It was a two-year bursary, worth R25,000 and it meant everything to us.”

A stint on the Royal switchboard proved a low in Naidoo’s Royal work experience, however. “The shifts were morning, late and night — and, jissis, if you did the graveyard shift at night, you did it for a whole month. That’s why I applied to move to a post as reservations clerk.

“I didn’t know anything about reservations — and I started with a typewriter and a telex machine with the bell going off beside me. There used to be five of us … but now I do group bookings, online, and am sales co-ordinator as well. Life is so much easier now with a computer, though. I just press a button.…”

Naidoo already has one long-service watch but he’s hoping to continue his tradition of service under the new management. “My mother had died by the time my father was able to go to India — I’d love my wife and I to make that journey together after I retire.”

In every era, the Royal has had a chequered phase — but it’s still there as it looks back to celebrate its 170th birthday.

It also looks forward to a new era when, if all goes according to plan, those international clocks at reception should be ticking away again and Naidoo will be booking in locals and globetrotters alike.

My whole adult life has been here in this hotel. I’m so grateful it will stay a hotel and won’t become offices or anything else

Sugar farmers and their families from the coastal areas always regarded the Royal as their base in Durban