Keurboomstrand, on South Africa’s Garden Route. Eight self-catering cottages set around a courtyard with a swimming pool, sauna and steam room, made by Karen Roos and Koos Bekker out of beach cottages they restored after decades of holidaying there with their children. It was reported on 4 March 2025 as the second South African property of the Babylonstoren family, and opened the same year. BLOU is the register’s case of a house that admits only its own returning guests.
The house
The owners came to the coast long before they built on it. “Our owners have been holidaying at Keurboomstrand on the Western Cape coast for decades,” Babylonstoren says, and the group’s LOOK supplement names them: “Blou’s owners, Karen Roos and Koos Bekker, who have been holidaying there with their children for decades.” Travel News reported on 4 March 2025 that they had restored and upgraded a run of beach cottages to make eight self-catering cottages “set around a central courtyard with a swimming pool, sauna and steam room”. Wanted counts five around the courtyard and three above the high-tide line.
BLOU is the newest of a set of estates assembled over nearly twenty years. Koos Bekker bought Babylonstoren, “founded in 1692”, in 2007, and Karen Roos restored it; the couple then reimagined a Georgian manor house in Somerset “as a hotel in time for its 2019 opening”. The group also holds Over-Amstel Boerderij, “first built in 1894”, and Vignamaggio in Tuscany, restored from 2017. Against those, BLOU is small and closed: “because so few cottages exist, and demand always outstrips supply, regrettably we can accept only guests who have already stayed at either of the farm hotels Babylonstoren or The Newt in Somerset”. Travel News records three nights minimum in March and April, two for the rest of the year.
What distinguishes it
A house you cannot book until you have stayed somewhere else Babylonstoren states that only guests who have already stayed at Babylonstoren or The Newt in Somerset may reserve at BLOU, and gives the reason as supply: “because so few cottages exist, and demand always outstrips supply”. The rule is published, not discreet. It makes the register’s other two houses the entrance to this one.
Eight cottages, five around a courtyard and three on the edge Travel News describes eight self-catering cottages “set around a central courtyard with a swimming pool, sauna and steam room”. Wanted counts five around the courtyard and three on the bluff above the high-tide line, bookable as one- or two-bedroom. The LOOK account says three of the eight sit “right on the beach”.
It was a family holiday before it was a property The owners have holidayed at Keurboomstrand for decades with their children, and built BLOU out of beach cottages they “restored and upgraded” over years. The house was not sited by a search. It was sited by habit.
The minimum stay moves with the season Travel News records three nights as the minimum in March and April, and two nights for the rest of the year. The high-season window published by the group runs from 1 February to 30 April. A house of eight cottages manages demand by lengthening the stay rather than by adding keys.
The second South African house of a family holding four countries Babylonstoren was bought in 2007 and dates from 1692; The Newt in Somerset opened in 2019; Over-Amstel Boerderij on the Amstel was first built in 1894; the restoration of Vignamaggio in Tuscany began in 2017. BLOU, reported in March 2025, is the first house in that set built as a holiday rather than as a farm or an estate.
A guest who has never stayed at Babylonstoren or The Newt in Somerset cannot book it at all, whatever they are willing to pay. The cottages are self-catering: there is no kitchen working on a guest’s behalf and no restaurant on the site. In March and April the house will not take a stay shorter than three nights.
Signature rooms and dates
Competitive landscape
Sources
What the entry rests on, read 13 October 2026. Each reference records the facts it supports, so a disputed line can be traced to the account it came from.