Johannesburg’s Iconic Hotels: The Life and Death of the Two Carltons

Abstract

The establishment of an accommodation sector is crucial for the development of any tourism destination as they are the most visible manifestation of tourism. Urban hotels have been developed to accommodate a range of tourists and they comprise of a range of social and business spaces that are often identified as prestige developments for their funders. Iconic city hotels are assets for the destination and can become symbols of modernism and development. The aim of this chapter is to contribute to scholarship on hotel geographies of the past. More specifically the focus is on the rise and fall of two iconic luxury hotels in Johannesburg, South Africa’s major economic centre. Both hotels were called ‘The Carlton’. In many respects, The Carlton in Johannesburg was as iconic as Raffles in Singapore or Peninsula in Hong Kong. The paper builds upon and parallels the works of McNeill (2008) and McNeill and McNamara (2009) on hotels as civic landmarks and in particular their central role in the development of inner cities.