PLETTENBERG BAY NEWS - The Beacon Island Resort, which has become a Plett landmark over the years, recently celebrated its 50th birthday.

On Monday 21 November, members of the Beacon Island Resort Board, Southern Sun executives and employees gathered to celebrate this milestone. 

Patty Butterworth, CEO of Plett Tourism, congratulated the Beacon Island Resort on its 50 years, and Laurance Hodes, chairman of the board of the Beacon Island Resort, raised a toast to welcoming guests for many more decades to come.

The hotel first opened in its current form as a Southern Sun hotel in December 1972, introducing holidaymakers to a new resort experience that brought business and job creation opportunities to the then small seaside town. 

It was first known as the Beacon Isle Hotel and was the brainchild of visionary hotelier Sol Kerzner.

The site on which it is built has a distinctive history. At the turn of the twentieth century it was a whaling station and later became the location of a small hotel in 1940. 

In 1972, this was demolished and replaced with the six-storey Beacon Isle Hotel developed by the Brian Stocks Group and designed by architect André Hoffe.

The hotel was the first building in South Africa designed with a large multi-storey atrium and features six tiers of access galleries that lead to the rooms, positioned around the sky-lit space.

The whole hotel structure is supported by two great arches that come down to ground at four points.

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