The Palace of the Lost City

A palace at the edge of the bushveld.

The Palace of the Lost City is the flagship hotel of the Sun City resort, two hours from Johannesburg on the edge of the Pilanesberg. Sol Kerzner's idea, realised by the American architects Jerry Allison and James Langenheim, was a palace built on a legend: a royal city lost to an earthquake, with only the palace surviving. It opened in 1992 after 28 months of construction, with close to 10,000 people on site at the peak, at a cost of R830 million.

The scale is still startling. The entrance is carried on six columns styled as bamboo trees standing on elephant feet, the dome rises 25 metres above the lobby, and the Crystal Court's chandelier holds 10,000 pieces of rock crystal. A bronze of Shawu, one of the great Kruger tuskers, stands four and a half metres tall in the atrium. Around the hotel lie 25 hectares of planted jungle and waterscapes running down to the Valley of Waves, opened in 1996, and the resort's Gary Player golf course. A 2022 refurbishment added the Royal Spa and Salon, taking the room count to roughly 326.

It is the most famous five-star hotel in the country, a place that has hosted Michael Jackson, Queen and Oprah Winfrey, and it runs at a volume most luxury hotels never see.

The partnership

Hospitality Classics has supplied the hospitality trade from Johannesburg since 1972. We make three ranges of our own, Elements, Soak and Botánico, and we import Molton Brown from London for the trade in Africa. For a property like this one the work is less about a single product than about a standard: a room set that is right for the guest, delivered on time, in the sizes and quantities housekeeping needs, every week of the year.

That means hotel sizes alongside full retail formats, consistent fragrance across bath, body and hair care, and packaging that can carry the property's own identity. It also means an account manager who knows the hotel, forecasts with it around peak season, and keeps the back-of-house stocked without the property having to think about it.