We had a five day stay in Cape Town and centred ourselves in the modern Westin Cape Town hotel. We had a terrific stay at this property, and really enjoyed our suite, the Executive Lounge, along with the central location of the property.

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This post is one chapter on our trip to South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mauritius and the United Arab Emirates. This trip was redeemed through American Airlines AAdvantage & Alaska Mileage Plan. For more information on how this trip was booked, please see our trip introduction here. For other parts of the trip, please see this index.

If you enjoyed this post, please follow us here or on social media through Facebook, Twitter or Instagram for more travel tips and hacks on how to “Upgrade Your Travels”.

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Review: Westin Cape Town – Guest room 1 King, Cape Town, South Africa

“Still one of my favourite modern chain hotels in Cape Town, it continues with it’s world class Executive Lounge that offers a great Eggs Benedict breakfast, over interesting & inspiring city views ”

We’ve previously stayed at the Westin Cape Town, South Africa and had a terrific stay. If you want to see more about our time there, I recommend that you read our earlier review on the hotel. In this post, I will just cover off what is different and new about the property.

How we Booked:

Last time we stayed at this property, we redeemed Starwood Preferred Guest points to stay for a free stay. This time, we ended up on a paid rate of 1,800 ZAR ($127 USD) for 5 nights with a total of 9,000 ZAR ($635 USD) for the entire stay. I felt that we couldn’t go wrong with this paid rate for a four star hotel that was well situated in the Cape Town downtown area.

If you’re considering an award stay, the hotel today remains a reasonable deal as a Marriott Rewards Category 5 Program under the new Marriott Bonvoy regime. The rooms remain available for 35,000 Marriott Bonvoy Points (or the equivalent of 11,666 Starwood Preferred Guest points by today’s 1:3 value), with the fifth night free on reward stays of 5 nights. At an approximately value of 0.005 cents per Marriott Bonvoy point, if you can get a room rate under $175 USD, you’d be better off paying cash. If the room is over $175 USD, you’re likely better off redeeming points if you’re okay with the lost opportunity earning cost. Thanks to Marriott / Starwood merger, there are also lots of Protea Hotels in the Cape Town area that are of lower category points that may also provide other redemption opportunities.

Getting to the Westin Cape Town:

While we’ve previously used the hotel car service in order to get from the Cape town International Airport to the Westin Cape Town, this time, we were splitting our time between Cape Town and the Winelands. We were also getting in a shark diving trip in Gansbaai so it made sense to have our own transportation. I booked a care rental for the duration of our stay with Hertz Gold Counter. When I arrived to collect the car at Cape Town International Airport, when I declined the Hertz Collision Damage Waiver insurance, Hertz decided to place a 70,000 South African Rand ($4,900 USD) Charge (not a pre-authorization) on my American Express card. This was not a negotiable arrangement. It seems that the pre-authorization concept hasn’t hit the car rental market in Southern Africa yet as we had a similar experience in Namibia. I was of course told that this would be cancelled shortly after the car was returned but I made a note to ourselves to get to the airport early to take care of the cancellation.

We self drove to the Westin Cape Town. It was centrally located near the end of downtown and is in reasonable proximity to all Cape Town attractions.

We really enjoyed the rooms. We had been upgraded to an Executive Suite the last time and enjoyed the Executive Lounge for brunch as well. I was able to locate a great paid rate and as a result, it was a no-brainer for us to stay there again.

Checking into to the Westin Cape Town:

At check in, we had our loyalty status recognized. Unfortunately, we missed out on the Platinum upgrade with lots of apologies from the front desk. This was likely due to a convention in the hotel at the time.

The hotel continued to participate in the now discontinued program “Make a Green Choice”, where you could waive housekeeping in exchange for 500 Starwood Preferred Guest points. The hotel also now participates in the SMS service request feature.

A first for me, we received a SPG voucher good for 300 ZAR Rand ($20 USD) of Food and Beverage as a result of missing the upgrade.

The Room: Guest Room, 1King

The Standard Room is a Guest Room with One King. While it’s a lot less exciting than an Executive Suite, it’s still pretty comfortable and was of great value for the price paid. It’s a bit of a standard sized compact space, although admittedly with all the sightseeing, we didn’t spend a whole lot of time in the room itself.

The room had a lot of storage space in the form of shelving and armoires, and included a small desk for working.

With the smaller standard room, the initial impressions were not as good as our past Executive Suite. The room was a bit dark and worn. Despite full windows, we were on the north side of the building away from any direct sunlight. However, the place warmed up to us and its clear everyone is making an effort.

The hotel offered the convenient What’s App Chat Feature, allowing access to many service related items.

The rooms are looking a bit worn, and we some stains in the carpet. with some maintenance issues (coffee machine inoperative, showers scalding hot no matter what temperature you set the dial). Despite this, the Executive Lounge Breakfast is excellent and without any additional payment for SPG / Marriott Platinums, and the concierge desk did an excellent job of resolving the issue of MrsWT73’s lost luggage by confirming an arrival time and location of the bag when we failed to get a proper and working reference number from the carrier.

Around the Hotel:

The Executive Lounge:

We had several breakfasts in the Westin Executive Lounge, which is situated on the 19th floor of the Westin Cape Town. The Executive Lounge had spectacular views. Since our last visit, the Westin had re=purposed this space and it now doubles as “On 19”, meaning that part of the space is open to the public as a restaurant for lunch and dinner. The platinum breakfast is still available here with the usual Cap Classique sparking on offer at breakfast.

The Bottom Line on the Westin Cape Town:

All in all, the Westin Cape Town is still my go to property in Cape Town, even with the Marriott acquisition of Protea Hotels in the Southern African area. In addition, the concierge here were super helpful in assisting with the return of our luggage, and that’s worth it’s weight in gold.

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If you’ve stayed at the Westin Cape Town, did it meet your needs for your stay in Cape Town, South Africa?

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