English
Travel ecstasy
Budget hotels from Berlin to Bali: Stay in Madras for $4, Tokyo for $37, or New York for $99. Excerpt from the book 'Cheap Hotels' by Daisann McLane
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The strangest things can push the buttons of my hotel desire.
Linens, for instance. Most people come home from Italy raving about the food; I came home from my first trip to Italy with a permanent crush on Italian towels. Italian hotel bathrooms, even in the inexpensive places in which I was staying, all had spotless white linens, hanging beside the sink, the shower, even the bidet. In a few places, like the Hotel Terme Preistoriche in Montegrotto Terme, they were draped over a chrome rack heater with a temperature control. Raised on American terrycloth, I was unprepared for this encounter with the civilized Old World. True, my $65-a-night rooms in Italy were usually the size of a closet in one of those polycarbon-scented chambers at the Chicago Motel 6. But wouldn't you rather live in a closet wrapped in starched, ironed-and heated!-linen towels?
It delights me that Italians make fine linens a priority in their hotels, even the cheap ones. All around the world, each culture holds fast to its own version of hotel room comfort, and to the little detail that it would be unthinkable to overlook, even in the humblest lodging. In Japan, it is the teapot on the lacquer tray, beside a lacquer cup and a container of green tea. In the Amazon, it is the strong metal hooks on opposite walls, for hanging your own hammock during the afternoon siesta (when a bed mattress just wouldn't be right). In Thailand, always, there's a miniature house somewhere on the hotel premises, with little plastic people in it, and incense burning-a Thai trick to coax all the local spirits into the doll's house, so they won't roam the corridors and disturb your stay. The housekeepers in South Pacific guest houses will lay frangipani or ginger blossoms on your pillow every morning after they clean the room, that wilt slowly in the heat of the day, filling the air with intoxicating fragrance. The housekeepers in Bali whisper a little prayer and place tiny mysterious packets of rice, flowers, and spices wrapped in a banana leaf, on your doorstep.
Finding hotels with grace notes like these, which tell you as much about a given locality as any guidebook, is not a difficult thing right now. But I fear that may change. World tourism is a staggeringly big business. According to one group of analysts, in 2001 it accounted for 10.7 percent of the global gross domestic product, or one in every 12.2 jobs in the world. And its scope increases with each passing year. As tourism globalizes, private hotels melt into the arms of multi-national corporations, which prioritize standardization over individuality, consistency over quirkiness. While I have spent enough nights in sad, decrepit rooms to appreciate the joy of a familiar hotel chain every now and then, I fret about what may happen to the spirit houses, the wilted frangipani, the stiffly creased hand towel by the bidet.
I also worry about the philosophy that seems to be shaping the new boutique hotels that are currently popping up as alternatives to the chains in hip Western capital cities. The guru of these design-intensive lodgings, hotelier Ian Schrager, once proclaimed, "You are where you sleep, because where you sleep says to the world, 'This is who I am'." Yet a world in which the only alternative to staying in a chain hotel is to stay in lifestyle dormitories for the style-obsessed doesn't sound like much fun to me.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
The strangest things can push the buttons of my hotel desire.
Linens, for instance. Most people come home from Italy raving about the food; I came home from my first trip to Italy with a permanent crush on Italian towels. Italian hotel bathrooms, even in the inexpensive places in which I was staying, all had spotless white linens, hanging beside the sink, the shower, even the bidet. In a few places, like the Hotel Terme Preistoriche in Montegrotto Terme, they were draped over a chrome rack heater with a temperature control. Raised on American terrycloth, I was unprepared for this encounter with the civilized Old World. True, my $65-a-night rooms in Italy were usually the size of a closet in one of those polycarbon-scented chambers at the Chicago Motel 6. But wouldn't you rather live in a closet wrapped in starched, ironed-and heated!-linen towels?
It delights me that Italians make fine linens a priority in their hotels, even the cheap ones. All around the world, each culture holds fast to its own version of hotel room comfort, and to the little detail that it would be unthinkable to overlook, even in the humblest lodging. In Japan, it is the teapot on the lacquer tray, beside a lacquer cup and a container of green tea. In the Amazon, it is the strong metal hooks on opposite walls, for hanging your own hammock during the afternoon siesta (when a bed mattress just wouldn't be right). In Thailand, always, there's a miniature house somewhere on the hotel premises, with little plastic people in it, and incense burning-a Thai trick to coax all the local spirits into the doll's house, so they won't roam the corridors and disturb your stay. The housekeepers in South Pacific guest houses will lay frangipani or ginger blossoms on your pillow every morning after they clean the room, that wilt slowly in the heat of the day, filling the air with intoxicating fragrance. The housekeepers in Bali whisper a little prayer and place tiny mysterious packets of rice, flowers, and spices wrapped in a banana leaf, on your doorstep.
Finding hotels with grace notes like these, which tell you as much about a given locality as any guidebook, is not a difficult thing right now. But I fear that may change. World tourism is a staggeringly big business. According to one group of analysts, in 2001 it accounted for 10.7 percent of the global gross domestic product, or one in every 12.2 jobs in the world. And its scope increases with each passing year. As tourism globalizes, private hotels melt into the arms of multi-national corporations, which prioritize standardization over individuality, consistency over quirkiness. While I have spent enough nights in sad, decrepit rooms to appreciate the joy of a familiar hotel chain every now and then, I fret about what may happen to the spirit houses, the wilted frangipani, the stiffly creased hand towel by the bidet.
I also worry about the philosophy that seems to be shaping the new boutique hotels that are currently popping up as alternatives to the chains in hip Western capital cities. The guru of these design-intensive lodgings, hotelier Ian Schrager, once proclaimed, "You are where you sleep, because where you sleep says to the world, 'This is who I am'." Yet a world in which the only alternative to staying in a chain hotel is to stay in lifestyle dormitories for the style-obsessed doesn't sound like much fun to me.
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