AC Hotel by Marriott

The atmosphere is decidedly business-like in the AC Hotel by Marriott near the Waterfront in Cape Town.

It’s efficient, stylishly functional, and the décor is all soft but masculine greys and pale woods. There are 188 rooms, some offering fabulous views of Table Mountain, Lion’s Head and Signal Hill, although mine looked out over the docks.

Each room features free wi-fi, a working area, a safe large enough to store your laptop, a huge flat screen TV screen, coffee making facilities and a bar fridge. Blackout curtains and good soundproofing help you get a decent sleep on the very comfy beds.

A nice touch is a little shop in the foyer where you can grab a snack to go and a bottle of wine to go with it.

Being a newly-built hotel in Cape Town there are no baths, just showers, but they’re brisk and business-like too. The water is supplied by a desalination plant that turns seawater into useable water, in a remarkable feat by the Amdec Group that will be large enough to supply water to all the buildings in the precinct when another drought hits.

The breakfast buffet has some delicious choices and there’s a lounge with a bar when you can relax in the evening. There’s a small gym, four flexible meeting rooms and a boardroom, and a touch of time-out-relaxation with an unheated pool surrounded by squishy chairs on the roof.

The current downside is that it feels too isolated, tucked away on Dockrail Road on the foreshore round the back of the convention centre. So it’s very handy if you’re there for a conference, but not great for tourists who want to be close to the action.
It’s part of the newly-opened Yacht Club built by the Amdec Group, so the rest of the striking glass-fronted building should soon be let out to companies to create a bit more hustle and bustle. There are also plans to open a shortcut through to the road leading to the V&A Waterfront, which will make getting to the sights easier. At the moment you can walk there in about 15 minutes by following a footpath under bridges by the canals, but it’s not a walk I’d want to do at night.

You can also get a voucher from the friendly reception staff to catch the City Sightseeing boat that chugs past the hotel every 20 minutes and takes you to the One & Only Hotel at the Waterfront.