The Last Word
The Last Word is the South African boutique hotel brand offering intimate, luxurious escapes rooted in personalised hospitality - where every guest feels like the only guest. With a collection of privately owned properties in Cape Town and beyond, they create tailored experiences that celebrate local culture, quiet luxury, and effortless comfort.
Nicky Coenen
Founder
How did it all begin?
A family’s desire to share beautiful boutique places in unique locations. Creating an oasis, a hidden gem, a sanctuary for people to enjoy at their leisure. Elegant luxury in larger than normal rooms, spacious bathrooms with genuine warm hospitality. Fewer rooms create exclusive and intimate properties for discerning and savvy travellers. The name, The Last Word, comes from being the best of something enabling our guests to have the last word.
What sets your business apart?
“He who returns from a journey is not the same as he who left” - Chinese Proverb
An insightful observation. It sums up exactly what we want to achieve at Last Word. Provide a different travel experience that changes people for the better by simply making them happy. We want our guests to feel something as well as see something. In the arms of Last Word, you can lose yourself and find yourself at the same time. Elusive, mysterious, perhaps even secretive until all is revealed.
What is the concept behind your business or the problem you’re solving?
Today there is a fresh desire for a slowed-down holiday of comfort, cosiness and safety in an intimate, less crowded place of one’s own discovery – an elusive hideaway. Those are our islands in that sea of sameness where travellers can come ashore and live a little better, breathe a little deeper and surrender to nature, courtesy of humanity.
What is your brand vision?
A vision is just a more business-like expression of a wish or dream. Our dream ultimately is to create a well-known and respected brand of intimate hotels and safari camps, cherished by guests. This vision demands we be different. It demands we grow. It determines direction, the space we operate in, mapping out milestones, the things we need to do ourselves (action), the things we must follow (strategy) and the things we must be first to accomplish (innovation), even small things like a Crème Brûlée at turndown.
Beyond Boutique is the rare emotive space in which we dare to sail. We want to claim it as ours because of the prospects it holds, the warm-heartedness and safety and unforeseen promise.
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