Sonop

A granite outcrop at the southern extremity of the Namib, in the Karas region of southern Namibia. Zannier Hotels opened Sonop on 1 July 2019: ten tents raised on wooden decks over the boulders, interiors by Géraldine Dohogne in the manner of a 1920s British colonial expedition, on a private reserve of 5,600 hectares with its own landing strip. It is this register’s clearest case of a camp whose period is a decision rather than a history.

The house

Zannier Hotels was conceived by Arnaud Zannier in 2011 and Sonop is its second house in Namibia, after Omaanda near Windhoek. The design, the operator says, was settled on Zannier’s first view from the top of the boulders. The ground is what the press kit calls “enormous piles of granite rocks” left by volcanic activity, about thirty metres high. Rather than cut into that rock, the camp was raised above it on acacia-stilt platforms and wooden promontories, described in March 2020 as “Built entirely on stilts connected through sturdy elevated wooden decks”. Windhoek is roughly 500 kilometres away, an eighty-minute flight or a four-to-five-hour drive.

There are ten tents in two sizes: eight of 42 square metres and two of 75 square metres with two bedrooms and a shared sitting room. The interiors are by Géraldine Dohogne, the group’s head of interior design, in what the press kit calls “British colonial style from the 1920’s”. Zannier’s own account of the site has since shifted: the 2019 press kit gives the Karas region and 5,600 hectares, while the current hotel page gives the Hardap region, 13,800 acres and the edge of the NamibRand Nature Reserve. The area figures agree; the regions do not. The house holds three Michelin Keys in the guide’s 2026 selection, the only one in Namibia.

What distinguishes it

The camp opened on a named day, 1 July 2019 The group’s press kit gives the opening as 1 July 2019, eight months after the trade press announced the project in November 2018 with ten tents and a 5,600-hectare reserve. Trade coverage records the property as completed in 2019. The register notes the date because a camp styled on the 1920s is otherwise easy to misdate.

Nothing was cut into the rock The tents are built amid and on top of the granite boulders rather than into them, carried on acacia-stilt platforms and linked by raised wooden decks and promontories. The whole compound occupies what one published account measured as about one and a third acres on a boulder heap some thirty metres high. The structural decision is the opposite of excavation.

The period is a decor decision of 2019, not a history Géraldine Dohogne’s interiors draw on “British colonial expeditions of the 1920’s”, and the operator markets the house as a 1920s safari lodge and a tented camp for early twentieth-century explorers. No part of the camp dates from the 1920s and no expedition camped here then. The register records the styling as the operator’s claim about itself, not as provenance.

Ten tents, two sizes, and a stated floor on children Eight one-bedroom tents of 42 square metres take two adults and one child over six; two two-bedroom tents of 75 square metres take four adults and two children over six. Children under six are not accepted at all. The ceiling on the house is therefore about twenty-eight guests, on a reserve of 5,600 hectares.

The operator’s own account of where the camp is has changed The 2019 press kit and the trade reporting of 2018 both place Sonop in the Karas region on 5,600 hectares at the southern edge of the Namib. The hotel page as it now stands places it in the Hardap region, on 13,800 acres, at the edge of the NamibRand Nature Reserve of 202,200 hectares. Thirteen thousand eight hundred acres is 5,585 hectares, so the land is the same land; the region named for it is not the same region. The register carries both statements rather than choosing between them.

Signature rooms and dates

Competitive landscape

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