Great South African hospitality, built from South African foundations.
Founded in 1999 by Liz and Phil Biden on the conviction that great South African luxury hospitality should be built from South African foundations, The Royal Portfolio spans four properties — Royal Malewane, La Residence, Birkenhead House, and The Silo Hotel — each an expression of a specific South African landscape and cultural context.
SafariSeven® works with The Royal Portfolio because that founding conviction has been consistently maintained. Twenty-five years after Liz and Phil Biden converted their Kruger vacation home into Royal Malewane, the collection remains family-owned and family-operated, and the South African sensibility — grounded, textured, genuinely of its place — has not been diluted by scale or external investment. That consistency is worth working with.
Liz and Phil Biden began with a specific situation: a family vacation home in the Thornybush Game Reserve, adjacent to the western Kruger National Park. In 1999, they converted it into Royal Malewane, a safari lodge built not to an international luxury template but to what Liz Biden understood as the standard of South African hospitality at its finest — warm, personal, expert, and specific to the landscape it inhabits.
The conviction behind that conversion — that great South African luxury hospitality should be built from South African foundations, not from imported templates — shaped every property that followed. La Residence in Franschhoek, Birkenhead House in Hermanus, The Silo Hotel in Cape Town's V&A Waterfront grain silo: each is an expression of a specific South African environment, designed by a family that lives in and knows these places, not by a luxury group with a global brand standard.
The Royal Portfolio Foundation's partnership with the Cape Leopard Trust protects a population of leopards in the Cape Fold Mountains whose ecology and behaviour are distinct from their savannah cousins — an under-studied population in one of South Africa's most biodiverse landscapes, where survival depends on coexistence with farming communities.
The Cape Leopard Trust conducts long-term research and community engagement across the Cape Fold Mountains — the coastal and inland mountain ranges that frame the Western Cape — monitoring a leopard population whose territory overlaps extensively with wine farms, fruit orchards, and small livestock holdings. The Dyer Island Conservation Trust works in Walker Bay with the Marine Big 5 species — white sharks, African penguins, Cape fur seals, common dolphins, and southern right whales — in waters immediately adjacent to Birkenhead House in Hermanus.
"The conservation challenge is coexistence: keeping leopards alive in a landscape where human economic activity is dense."
Royal Malewane sits in the Thornybush Game Reserve, a private concession that shares an open boundary with the Kruger National Park — giving it access to a wildlife population that moves freely across the greater Kruger ecosystem. The reserve is known for exceptional Big Five sightings and, in particular, for a leopard population that is among the most reliably encountered in the region. Royal Malewane's service standard — careful, personal, unhurried — reflects Liz Biden's original conviction that great hospitality should feel like a private home, not a five-star hotel.
La Residence in Franschhoek sits in the heart of the Cape Winelands — a valley of extraordinary visual character, nineteenth-century Cape Dutch architecture, and some of South Africa's finest food and wine. The property is designed with the eclectic visual confidence that characterises the Biden family's aesthetic: rich with colour, texture, and specificity, and entirely unlike the neutral luxury of an international hotel.
Birkenhead House in Hermanus overlooks Walker Bay — one of the world's finest land-based whale watching sites, where southern right whales calve between July and November in waters visible from the property. The Silo Hotel occupies the grain silo complex of Cape Town's V&A Waterfront, converted by Heatherwick Studio into one of South Africa's most architecturally distinctive hotels. Together, the three Cape properties form a coherent South African picture that begins where Royal Malewane ends.
Together they form a complete South African itinerary from wilderness to winelands to city and ocean.
Adjacent to Kruger — Big Five, exceptional leopard.
Explore South Africa →Cape Winelands — fine dining, wine country.
Explore South Africa →Walker Bay whale watching — coastal South Africa.
Explore South Africa →Heatherwick Studio conversion of the V&A Waterfront grain silo — architecturally significant.
Explore South Africa →The Royal Portfolio includes four properties: Royal Malewane in the Thornybush Game Reserve adjacent to Kruger (Big Five, exceptional leopard); La Residence in Franschhoek (Cape Winelands, fine dining, wine country); Birkenhead House in Hermanus (Walker Bay whale watching, coastal South Africa); and The Silo Hotel in Cape Town (Heatherwick Studio conversion of the V&A Waterfront grain silo, architecturally significant). Together they form a complete South African itinerary from wilderness to winelands to city and ocean.
The Royal Portfolio Foundation partners with two South African conservation organisations. The Cape Leopard Trust works across the Cape Fold Mountains to monitor and protect a leopard population whose ecology — mountain terrain, coexistence with farming communities, distinct prey and ranging behaviour — is fundamentally different from savannah leopards. The Dyer Island Conservation Trust operates in Walker Bay, working with the five species of the Marine Big 5: white sharks, African penguins, Cape fur seals, common dolphins, and southern right whales. Both organisations conduct active scientific research in landscapes the Biden family has long-standing relationships with.
The Royal Portfolio was founded in 1999 by Liz and Phil Biden, a South African family whose starting point was their own vacation home in the Thornybush Game Reserve adjacent to Kruger. The founding conviction — that great South African luxury hospitality should be built from South African foundations — has shaped every property they have developed since. The collection remains family-owned and family-operated: no external investors, no corporate group, and a family aesthetic that is visible in every property.
Cape Town is a natural beginning or ending point for a Southern Africa itinerary, and The Silo Hotel provides the finest urban base in the city for a guest arriving from or departing to a Kruger or greater Africa safari. The hotel occupies the converted grain silo at the V&A Waterfront — designed by Heatherwick Studio, with extraordinary harbour and mountain views and the full Royal Portfolio standard of personal service. Two or three nights in Cape Town at The Silo, combined with Royal Malewane in the Kruger region, constitutes one of the most satisfying South Africa journeys available.
Speak with a SafariSeven® Travel Designer to shape a private safari around The Royal Portfolio, matched to your season, your pace, and the experience you are seeking.
