hotels by Felicity Roberts

4 Chapter

NORTHERN EUROPE ELEGANCE AND GRACE

ravel around Northern Europe was once restricted to explorers seeking the advantages of trade with remoter parts of Russia. In more recent times Lapland’s icy landscape and sub-zero temperatures are no longer a deterrent, but rather an attraction for visitors seeking an authentic ‘wilderness’ experience. Today tourists are drawn to the shrinking world of reindeer and polar bear while further south the Low Countries provide genteel hospitality for tourists from all over the world.

Over the centuries the often austere and inhospitable terrains of northern Europe deterred many a traveller. When expedition leaders set sail in search of trade routes that would lead to the riches of the Orient, it was not uncommon for some brave souls to perish in snowy wastelands. Indeed, no one would have predicted then that travellers would willingly visit the Polar Circle for pleasure as many do today. “In many early temporary lodgings only sleeping facilities were available – innkeepers provided fire, water, salt and cooking utensils. Guests were often received only upon receipt of a certificate of good conduct from a priest – or, in some cases, upon an appeal to ‘God’s will’ and mercy. Prayers before and after meals were a must; guests were locked in their rooms for the night and innkeepers retained their clothing as a guarantee.”

So chronicled a historian in 1908, describing hostelries that were a far cry from the elegant establishments that opened their doors in the nineteenth and twentieth century, when European life became more cosmopolitan. Well-heeled travellers began to demand superior lodging and better quality meals – and all across Scandinavia, innkeepers were hard-pressed to meet demand.

THE HOTEL D’ANGLETERRE One of the first to serve European high society was the Hotel D’Angleterre in Copenhagen. Originally conceived by a couple of Royal court retainers who left the Danish king’s service to open a restaurant, the pair sold their business in the late 1700s to a visionary chef, Gottfried Rau, who took the establishment to new heights. By 1840, under new ownership, the hotel was doubling up as a concert hall – hosting the debut concert, ‘La Strauss’ of Danish composer, HC Lumbye, among others

GREAT, GRAND & FAMOUS HOTELS

– and for years was synonymous with the city’s musical entertainment. Later, the hotel was to see its fortunes shaped by political events. During World War One, refugees fleeing the Russian Revolution overran the Hotel D’Angleterre, filling the hotel’s restaurant to capacity and creating a continual buzz in the hotel’s palm court. But, when the rubles ran out, the nobility was compelled to abandon the hotel and, like its former patrons’ jewels, the Hotel D’Angleterre’s lustre faded. Then, just as the hotel began to recover from the post-war depression, the Germans occupied Denmark on 9 April 1940 and the German army promptly made Hotel D’Angleterre its headquarters.

NO RTH ERN EU RO PE: E L E G A N C E A N D G R A C E

FROM THE ARCTIC CIRCLE TO THE EUROPEAN UNION

Opposite: A view of Stockholm showing the harbour and the old town. Below: The Hotel d’Angleterre sits on the old square, Kongens Nytorv, in the heart of Copenhagen.

CH APTE R 4

Fruit of a Venetian Dynasty

The bauer grün Icehotel T Frozen Wonderland

he Bauer-Grünwald first opened its doors in 1880. The original hotel was a joint venture between an experienced Venetian hotelier in Mr Bauer, and an ambitious Austrian, Julius Grünwald. Grünwald cehotel is an indulgence in pure fantasy. From its genesis as virtually a one married the Bauer daughter and another hotel dynasty was born. room igloo, some 50,000 visitors now flock annually to this wonderland of ice. Located in the small village of Jukkasjarvi, 200 kilometres inside the Arctic Circle, Icehotel is constructed and reshaped every year.

The basic concept is to ‘borrow’ ice from the crystal clear water of the Torne River, create a fabulous structure and let nature melt it back into the river at the end of the season. Then find the best local and international talent to create the atmosphere. Artists cut and chisel new ice sculptures, concept bars take shape, and over 50 themed rooms (and suites) are decked out. The result is a sophisticated blend of art, architecture and modern design. The Icehotel is also adventurous in its approach to food using Swedish staples such as reindeer and arctic brambles to create innovative modern dishes. Visitors are enthralled by the silence and serenity of the Icehotel environment. Being so far north and only operating in the winter there are few hours of daylight thus adding to the surreal nature of this hotel.

A YEARLY LABOUR OF LOVE Whilst basic engineering tests need to be carried out with each yearly construction, essentially designers and artists have a blank canvas on which to work. No large block of ice or snow will be the same, so artistic licence is a given. The challenge is

to make each design better than the previous year. Nonetheless, some fundamental components are always recreated: hotel reception, a hall of pillars, an Iceart exhibition, the Absolut Icebar, Icehotel cinema, the Icechurch and, naturally, the hotel rooms themselves. The museum feel comes from individual artefacts and artistic interpretations of different forms and space. Construction begins in October of each year for completion by December when guests arrive for their personal ‘White Christmas’. Snow is formed over large arched steel sections, and then moved after a couple of days to various locations. Pillars of ice then add extra strength to the snow arches. The magic of an ice hotel has already touched thousands of visitors to Jukkasjarvi. Now a second hotel has opened in the area of Duchesnay outside Québec, Canada. Seems that the fantasy of staying in an igloo has great appeal.

A DREAM COME TRUE Yngve Bergqvist is the person acknowledged as the ‘father’ of the Icehotel. A passionate traveller and lover of snow and white-water sports, he believed

that Sweden could be as attractive in the cold darkness of winter as it was during the months of the midnight sun. The first step in realising this dream was the construction of an art gallery made entirely out of snow: an igloo structure on the frozen Torne River. ARTic Hall opened in 1990 for an exhibition by French artist Jannot Derit. The idea of an ice hotel logically followed for Yngve and, in fact, ARTic Hall was really the first module in a series of future complementary and connecting structures. Today the Icehotel is not only the culmination of a dream, but an opportunity every year for artists, architects, designers and engineers to create another unique hotel – albeit with a short lifespan.

Opposite Above: A piano made of ice pictured at the Icehotel January, 2002 in Jukkasjarvi, Sweden. Opposite below left: Yngve Bergqvist, acknowledged as the ‘father’ of the Icehotel. Opposite below right: A bedroom in the Icehotel.

NO RTH ERN EU RO PE: E L E G A N C E A N D G R A C E

GREAT, GRAND & FAMOUS HOTELS

Chapter

CH APTE R 5

MIDDLE & EASTERN EUROPE IMPERIAL SPLENDOUR

nce, taking tea at a grand hotel was like visiting a palace. Unsurprising, when it was often at the behest of reigning monarchs that these great buildings arose. Royalty loved to dine there; they could put up visitors when their own palaces were unmodernised; they welcomed the notion of their cities equalling Paris, London and New York and they realised that the age of commerce now reigned supreme. Trade and tourism required lodgings just as splendid as their own.

In early twentieth century Europe, Bolshevism, Marxism and National Socialism were among the popular movements that overthrew monarchies or militarily fortified republics only to replace them, in most instances, with their own form of oppressive police state. After the Great War, pacifism had its day briefly, but the supporters of the movement for multilateral disarmament and the international labour movement were forced to look on in horror as the fledgling League of Nations foundered on the shores of Lake Geneva and World War Two took centre stage, bowing out to a final Iron Curtain. It was the age of the photographic record, and our grand hotels can be seen in the background of public rallies and demonstrations. More shockingly, their gracious ballrooms and dining halls provide glittering backdrops for celebrations where light

music and hospitality So many of the great hotels proudly feature snaps of famous musical celebrities in their archives. Sometimes it’s because the musicians

bounces off menacing military insignia as well as glassware and plate. More often than not, a photo follows of a bombed out smoking ruin, and then over years, sometimes decades, we see the building rise again, restored from the ashes. When neither operating as hotels nor reduced to rubble, these buildings were pressed into public service. The Vier Jahrezeiten in Hamburg was a British officers’ club. The Grandhotel Pupp in Karlovy-Vary was a holiday centre for Czechoslovak Army officers in the Soviet era. The Adlon in Berlin and The Grand Hotel Europe in St Petersburg were both military hospitals during the war with the latter going on to be a homeless shelter, orphanage, quarantine station and government offices. But the unofficial, non-photographed goingson must have been even more fascinating than the documented ones. Most hotels try to stay open to all comers without taking sides in

musical clientele’s taste correctly. Local boy Herbert Von Karajan launched the first Easter

Beethoven’s Days and Mozart’s Days.

Festival from the hotel and it’s been famous as

The Grand Hotel Royal in Budapest features

jet set, like Maria Callas. Sometimes they are

to the ear and eye that Luciana Pavarotti sang

performing in the concert hall or opera house of

a farewell concert in it in 2006, followed by a

that city, and just need a place to stay. The Grand

gala dinner.

Hotel Europe falls into that category because it

But the best example of symbiosis between

is literally across the road from the home of the

music and hospitality in this region must surely

St Petersburg Philharmonic Society in the grand

be Mozart and Salzburg. The Goldener Hirsch

premises built as the Club of Nobility in 1839 and

claims to be the first hotel to name one of its

now the city’s leading concert hall.

rooms after the town’s favourite son and it is the

town. The Grandhotel Pupp in Karlov-Vary has

Below: Herbert von Karajan at a rehearsal in the Golden Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna, 1966.

Contest of Singing as well as Dvorak’s Autumn,

a grand ballroom with ambience so delightful

of the package that entices the musicians into

Opposite: The main staircase of the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia.

held here annually, such as the Antonin Dvorak

are also part of the glamorous international

But sometimes the hotel in question is part

political disputes. After all, who knows which side will win, and if you welcome both parties you double your business. The Adlon was known as “little Switzerland in Germany” during the Third Reich. There was never an empty room. But while swastikas may have hung downstairs, Allied war correspondent William L. Shirer filed reports upstairs. Some interesting conversations must have been had off the record, large sums of money would have been arranged to cross borders undetected and espionage would have been rife. This was nothing new. Austrian hotels buzzed with plots against Hapsburg princes and Russian anarchists had planted a bomb in the Adlon in 1913 in an attempt to kill the visiting Tsar.

MID D L E & EASTERN EU RO PE: I M P E R I A L S P L E N D O U R

SURVIVING TURBULENT TIMES

a post performance gathering place, and the accommodation of choice for Festival performers and audiences ever since.

heart of the annual Salzburg Festival held in July and August. The ‘Goldener Hirsch’ Salzburg was a mere

an ornate Festive or Ceremonial Hall within it.

rustic hunting lodge dating back to 1564

Its interior architecture is stunning and features

when Harriet Walderdorff (daughter of English

a huge concert organ built in situ in 1926. This

portrait painter, John Quincy Adam) acquired

theatre is an important part of Karlov-Vary’s

it in 1939. Other Austrian hoteliers were

cultural life. Its Symphony Orchestra plays here

appalled that Harriet installed softwood floors

and there is a Salon Orchestra exclusive to the

and traditional rag rugs instead of Turkish

hotel. International musical competitions are

carpets and chandeliers. But she had read her

GREAT, GRAND & FAMOUS HOTELS

CH APTE R 6

Chapter

SOUTHERN EUROPE

REGAL PLEASURES

he southern part of Europe has always had two major adavantages over the North. Firstly, it enjoys a much better climate – for those who like to follow the sun, it remains a desired destination. Monuments erected 2000 years ago provide the region’s second great drawcard, for this is the cradle of Western civilisation. However, you can’t trade on sunshine and history indefinitely. Today, Lisbon and Barcelona must strive to be as smart as Paris and Berlin were a century before.

In the ancient world, with cities like Carthage, Athens, Rome, Jerusalem, Byzantium and Baghdad trading all the time, it could be said that, after military manoeuvres, business travel was the reason for the greatest movement of people. The Romans built villas to provide accommodation for travellers on government business and they developed thermal baths for leisure and for recuperation from the dusty road. But the barbarians who followed were much less mobile, living in smaller tribal communities separated by language, appearance and custom. Wealthy, educated young Americans, equally steeped in Latin and Greek paid well for “antiques” that became the basis of huge US art collections. Henry James’ novel The Golden Bowl details the acquisitiveness of a William Randolph Hearst figure. He is enraptured by the beauty of ancient craftsmanship and desirous of gathering as much of it as he can to influence those living on the fast-expanding raw frontiers of America’s nascent civilisation. Before the railways opened up mass tourism, Pompeii, Turkey and Athens were as popular as Venice, Rome and Florence. All involved sea voyages and fairly humble accommodation in pensiones and boarding houses. Hans Christian Andersen, the Danish writer, known to us today chiefly for his fairytales, astonished his friends and publishers by going as far as Turkey in 1840 by stagecoach and steamship.

But in the end the South was forced to offer what the North was offering to attract the same business. It had never had the same industrial muscle since it lacked the natural resources of coal, gas, iron that would attract manufacturing. But eventually the railways extended right across Europe to carry tourists and mass-produced goods when individual car ownership and road haulage on freeways were unknown. And that travel by train along with the destination hotel, could be designed to be part of the exotic luxury experience. Luxury travel on that scale is unlikely ever to be revived. Some tourists from oil-rich countries do seek it, but the main areas of growth are business uses – conferences and conventions as well as accommodation for travelling dealmakers – and cheap airline package holidays. For the worker living in greater London, the Costa del Sol today is almost as accessible as Brighton was 100 years ago. In 1990, 135 million tourists stayed in the Mediterranean coastal regions, including 75 million from abroad – mostly from European countries – representing around 16 percent of all international tourism. The South still had the climate card to play. A quiet little place in the sun where the pace of life was slower but the service up to big city standard was deemed to be relaxing. So retreats like Reid’s Palace Hotel on the island of Madeira did well as health resorts.

G R E AT, G R A N D & FA M OU S H OT E L S

SOU TH ERN EU RO PE: R E G A L P L E A S U R E S

COLLECTING THE CLASSICS

Left: Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875), Danish author and poet, around 1865. Below: Holidaymakers enjoy the serene blue waters of the Mediterranean at Ibiza’s Cala Benirras beach.

7 Chapter

THE UNITED KINGDOM

FROM NOBILITY TO CELEBRITY

he United Kingdom was once the land of hope and glory, the beating heart of the mighty British Empire. England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales were brimful of aristocratic wealth, the refined sensibilities of the peerage and regal splendour. This was reflected in the imposing elegance of the architecture, the vast country estates and a level of social display unmatched in the rest of the world. Some of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most prestigious grand hotels bloomed on British soil, hotels that, to this day, attract the cream of society â&#x20AC;&#x201C; from nobility to celebrity.

TH E U NITED KINGD O M: F R O M N O B I L I T Y T O C E L E B R I T Y

Between 1801 and 1900 the city was swelled by over six million souls, people pouring to the capital to be a part of the most concentrated era of change the world has ever seen, the Industrial Revolution. Britain was the workshop of the world, driving innovation, development and industrialisation, and ensuring the generation of vast reserves of capital. The development of the hotel industry can be attributed to one man, George Stephenson, a mechanical engineer who designed the first steam locomotive, The Rocket. A pioneer of his time, Stephenson is known as the ‘Father of the Railways.’ As the country skidded towards the future on the twin tracks of the steam-powered railways, the demand for accommodation became a shrill call and the féted architects of the time swung into business, designing and building railway hotels.

CATERING TO THE PEERAGE HEART OF THE EMPIRE London in all her mercurial glory is a sight to behold. Capital of an empire that stretched across the globe, the city is steeped in history and the elegant grandeur of yesteryear. Rich in culture, the city pulsed to a heady beat in the nineteenth century, the aristocracy and landed gentry at one end of the spectrum, the masses of working class poor at the other. Coffee houses, music halls,

galleries, museums and the mainstay of British culture, the public house, teemed with people and London shimmered as the heart of a glittering empire. Vast sweeping avenues, ostentatious stone mansions and majestic architecture reflect the pomp and circumstance of a valiant nation, while the ever-expanding girth of the city was testament to the exponential increase in London’s population.

The Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool was built in 1826. The first hotelier, a London businessman named James Radley achieved great success, advertising the hotel’s capacity to cater to the peerage and royalty, offering sumptuous cuisine and luxurious accommodation. Charles Dickens, it seems, was overly fond of the cuisine. Before boarding a ship for America he stayed at the Adelphi and waxed lyrical about ‘Turtle and Cold Punch, with Hock, Champagne and Claret.’ It was here that the passengers for the fateful Titanic voyage spent their last night on dry land. The accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 coincided with a period in which the country’s international standing reached unprecedented heights. The spirit of the era was embodied by the Great Exhibition of 1851, which took place in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. Attracting over six million visitors, London was engulfed with people seeking accommodation. In response to this demand, the Great Western Royal Hotel was the first hotel in London to be a deliberate architectural statement, described as the largest and most sumptuous in England at its opening in 1854. Built as part of Paddington Station by the Great Western Railway company, the chairman of the board was none other than the great engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

Above: An illustration of the Rocket, the first steam engine, built by George Stephenson in 1829. Left: The Langham Hotel in Portland Place, London, shortly after its opening in 1865.

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CH APTE R 7

The savoy

Show-Business as Usual

he Savoy is the star of its own prestigious show, a magnet for the stars of the silver screen, budding thespians and aristocracy, their celebrity status synonymous with the glittering fame of the hotel itself.

Situated in the heart of London’s theatre district, the Savoy Hotel is the work of a showman – designed to impress, a brilliant spectacle of art and architecture. Designed and built by theatrical impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte, founder of the English Opera and féted for his production of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, the Savoy was created to compliment the famed Savoy Theatre, D’Oyly Carte’s masterpiece. Built on the site of the former Savoy Palace, the Savoy Hotel was opened in 1889 to great acclaim. The hotel had full electric lighting and a ‘startling’ number of baths. After being advised of the baths, 67 in total, the builder, a certain Mr Holloway, was compelled to inquire as to whether the guests were expected to be amphibious. Despite a glittering first season, there were teething problems, and the Savoy’s continued success was due in no small part to D’Oyly Carte employing César Ritz and Auguste Escoffier as Manager and Maître Chef, respectively.

SAVING THE SAVOY Ritz agreed to take over the management, and with the support of Marie Louise and Escoffier the hotel was soon thriving. This was, in part, due to a new deference given to the wishes and tastes of women. While Escoffier introduced a feminine touch to his dishes, Ritz wanted society ladies to enjoy the facilities of a fine hotel without criticism. To help

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make this happen he led a public campaign to reverse the compulsory closure of public dining rooms on Sunday nights. With the backing of progressive politicians, including Lord Randolph Churchill, the laws were successfully changed – chiefly on the basis that domestic staff surely deserved at least one night off a week. Within months, wives, mothers and daughters of the old aristocracy were taking advantage of this new found freedom, in the absence of men and free from scandal. With these same women in mind, Ritz lowered the Savoy’s entrance hall so that finely-dressed ladies could sweep up and down the stairs in dramatic style.

CATALYST FOR CHANGE It was widely accepted that the Savoy spearheaded a new era in hotel management and ‘symptomised the beginning of the victory of the hedonists over the forces of restraint.’ The Savoy became the place to dine out, thanks to Ritz and Escoffier’s determined bid to change licensing laws and encourage after theatre dining for both men and women. It was also the place to be seen. Ritz’s vision included music and dancing too; Johan Strauss conducted his orchestra on his request, and lilting waltz music filled the restaurant, further encouraging diners to linger and socialise.

This led to a swell of parties, galas and balls, each more ostentatious than the last. The ‘champagne millionaire’ and Wall Street financier George Kessler outdid them all. His Gondola Dinner, held in 1905 to celebrate his birthday, was excessive even by today’s standards. The forecourt of the hotel was flooded and the canals of Venice evoked. Guests were seated in a vast replica gondola and served by gondoliers. Venetian lamps and the façade of St Marks completed the picture, alongside gliding swans and white doves. A baby elephant trundled out at one point bearing a five foot birthday cake on its back and a bevy of Gaiety Girls swilling Moét followed suit, while Enrico Caruso performed arias for the crowd. Unfortunately money cannot assure success and show business is unpredictable. The dye used to turn the water blue for the occasion poisoned all the swans, which proceeded to bob unceremoniously past the guests, their feet where their heads should have been.

Above right: Art deco details in the Savoy’s lobby. Opposite: A royal fancy dress ball, 1911.

TH E U NITED KINGD O M: F R O M N O B I L I T Y T O C E L E B R I T Y

Kaspar and the Other Club With his iconic Britishness – imposing stance, bowler perched atop his head and his fingers proudly forming a ‘V’ whilst clutching his customary cigar – Winston Churchill was a distinguished guest of the hotel. He would

Mainstay at club dinners is a wooden cat figurine, carved by Basil Ionides, with the moniker Kaspar, created to assuage superstition. Should there be only 13 diners sitting down to dinner, Kaspar becomes the fourteenth and is duly served

celebrate his birthdays with a luncheon at

with every course.

the Savoy. The menu was simple; marmite

Kaspar, it seems, has gained considerable

soup, roast beef and, perhaps, a soufflé, to be

notoriety, featuring on the national news on a

followed by his favourite, bombe glacée.

number of occasions following a spate of cat-

Churchill founded The Other Club at the Savoy. It comprised 30 members – politicians, authors, scholars and lawyers – and was dubbed the Shadow Cabinet. The principle objective was to dine and party politics would

nappings. With Kaspar at the ready, The Other Club takes every opportunity to meet on Friday 13th and delights in sitting beneath opened umbrellas, walking under ladders and spilling salt with great abandon.

be left at the door. This rarely happened.

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CH APTE R 8

Chapter

NEW YORK

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POWER AND PROMINENCE

othing quite compares with flying into New York City. Manhattan Island â&#x20AC;&#x201C; what a skyline! There may be cities around the world with taller buildings, but no other metropolis can claim to have been the first to rise up and embrace the sky with such enthusiasm. Between 1890 and 1930, midtown Manhattan rose like a beacon to the world. It is difficult to imagine that for most of the eighteenth century, Boston, Charleston and Philadelphia competed with New York for primacy as the key East Coast port. However, New York dominated after the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, which shipped goods and people from as far away as Buffalo on the Niagara River. Considered the greatest technological feat of its day, the canal led to a dramatic increase in farming and trade â&#x20AC;&#x201C; all of it passing through the port of New York.

NEW YO RK: P O W E R & P R O M I N E N C E

Right: Viscount William Waldorf Astor, seen here with Lady Nancy Astor, built the Waldorf Hotel as the result of a bitter feud with his aunt. By the 1830s, New York was ready for a firstclass hotel. Architect Isaiah Rogers had designed Boston’s Tremont for his client John Jacob Astor, a recently retired trader, who ultimately became the first to be called ‘America’s richest man.’ Rogers’ designs for Astor House (1836) took up an entire Broadway block in lower Manhattan between Barclay and Vesey Streets, which was then the centre of the city. It was considered New York’s first luxury hotel: 309 rooms with individual locks to ensure privacy, running water in every bed chamber, 17 basement bathrooms, privies on upper floors, segregated dining and drawing rooms for ladies and gentlemen, as well as many parlours on the ground floor and suites on the floor above. A trend-setting hostelry when it opened in 1836, it featured shops at street level and also originated the free bar lunch. Astor House was immediately popular with the wealthy, famous and powerful, including Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Sam Houston and Charles Dickens. Davy Crockett was one of the hotel’s first guests. The celebrity guest list also gave rise to the historic first-ever reporting, in the New York Herald, of a hotel’s social comings and goings.

ENEMY NUMBER ONE – FIRE Late in the Civil War (1861-5), Confederate rebels conceived an audacious plan to strike at the heart of New York by simultaneously setting alight more than a dozen leading hotels, with the intention of reducing the entire city to ashes. On the night of 27 November 1864, fires were successfully started in upper rooms at Astor House, the St Nicholas, Fifth Avenue Hotel, Metropolitan Hotel, The United States Hotel, and others. Fortunately the police were already aware of the plot and hotel managements were ready and waiting. Though fires were started in all these hotels, they were quickly brought under control. The potential catastrophe was averted. Whether modest or grand, all American hotels of this era faced a singular enemy: fire. Most began as accidents in the guest rooms or in the kitchen, as early hotels used open fires for heating the rooms and gas lighting after dark. Some were deliberately lit.Until building materials changed from timber to stone, steel and concrete and fire safety regulations were introduced, many hotels went up in flames including Palmer House, Chicago; The Palace Hotel, San Francisco; The Congress Hotel on Cape May and the Sherry-Netherland in 1927.

Headlines called it ‘The Best Show of the Season in New York City’. The new Sherry-Netherland Hotel became a blazing beacon for miles as the scaffolding above the 32nd story completely burned. It was the first real skyscraper fire that thousands of New Yorkers had ever witnessed.

BIG CITY MEETS WILD WEST Much went on in the early New York hotels, as they catered to a diverse social mix. The Clarendon Hotel opened in 1846 and was financed by John Jacob Astor’s son, William Backhouse Astor. It was here that Peter Cooper and Cyros Field met in 1854 with other investors to raise money for the trans-Atlantic telegraph cable. The Grand Central Hotel, on Broadway and West 3rd Street, was the scene of unrestrained passion on 6 January 1872 when Edward Stokes shot financier Jim Fisk, his rival for the affections of singer Josie Mansfield. A film was made about this scandalous event called The Toast of New York (1937), starring Cary Grant. The Glenham Hotel opened in 1862 on Broadway and East 22nd Street. It was here on 2 April 1882, that the son of Commodore Vanderbilt, Cornelius Jr, shot himself after a night of excessive drinking and gambling. As the city grew north, Gilsey House (1869) opened on the corner of 29th and Broadway. Guests included American financier and philanthropist Jim Brady, and Mark Twain. Gilsey House was the first hotel in New York with a telephone and was only a stroll to Delmonico’s, one of the most celebrated restaurants of the day. Between 1880 and 1900, Manhattan’s population grew by 500% to 3.5 million. The city boundaries continued to push north, especially after Central Park was completed in 1873, and the grid of streets on either side opened up for development.

THE EXTRAORDINARY ASTORS The story of New York hotels of this era is in many ways that of the Astor family. When patriarch John Jacob Astor died in 1842 he had accumulated US$20 million – in those days the equivalent of one fifteenth of America’s entire wealth. His son, William Backhouse, took charge of the real estate business, doubling the family fortune. Soon after, a family squabble broke out between William Backhouse Astor’s son, William Waldorf Astor and Caroline Webster Schermerhorn Astor – his Aunt Lina. After William Backhouse died, the two enemy combatants found themselves inhabiting adjacent

GREAT, GRAND & FAMOUS HOTELS

brownstones on Fifth Avenue. It particularly irked the status-obsessed William Waldorf, now he was official head of the Astor family, that his wife was not considered the Mrs Astor of New York. That his aunt would not release her grip was a gross breach of protocol so far as her nephew was concerned. He decided, partly in revenge, to raze his father’s home and construct what he intended to be the finest hotel in New York – to be called the Waldorf. If anything were to infuriate Aunt Lina, it would surely be several years of noisy construction, followed by an invasion of low-lifes into this most sacrosanct of New York’s residential enclaves. Caroline Astor upped the ante. She relocated uptown, instructing her own son – John Jacob Astor IV – to build an even bigger hotel on her block. It was to be called the Astoria and Aunt Lina’s motivation was direct competition.

THE GILDED AGE The term Gilded Age, coined in part by Mark Twain, is an ironic take on what could have been a Golden Age but for its pretentious elitism. This period, following the Civil War and the postReconstruction era saw unprecedented expansion paralleled by gauche displays of new wealth. The New York hotels built in this era including the Chelsea and the first Waldorf=Astoria were characterised by an opulence hitherto unimagined. Moving from land purchasing to property development, the Astor family dominated this market for several decades. Other super-rich families including the Vanderbilts, Fricks, Goulds and Stuyvesant-Fish, represented the pinnacle of the elite clientele served by these superb hotels: their financial achievements transformed into high social status and manifested in phenomenal spending power.

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CH APTE R 8

The st. regis Distinguished Clientele

he original Beaux Arts classic landmark, the St. Regis Hotel, was built in 1904 and financed by Colonel John Jacob Astor IV, It was designed with an art nouveau feel by John Townsend Trowbridge and Douglas Livingstone for an Upper East Side site on Fifth Avenue and 55th Street. Against the trend, John Jacob insisted on relatively small public rooms: “a subtle indication that the management did not want the crowds that milled in Peacock Alley at the Waldorf=Astoria or in the vast lobby of the Astor in Times Square.”

Astor wanted to create a hotel where gentlemen and their families could feel at home. He introduced such ‘modern’ conveniences such as telephones in every room, a fire alarm system, central heating and an air-cooling system. Mail chutes were installed on each floor, a newsworthy innovation at that time. One of the hotel’s other novel features was a special design ‘for the disposition of dust and refuse’ – one of the first central vacuum systems. All maids had to do was plug their vacuum cleaner’s hose into sockets situated throughout the hotel. Throughout its 100 year history, the St. Regis Hotel has attracted the most glamorous, creative and intriguing personalities of each era. Some of

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the most famous guests have included Marlene Dietrich, Salvador Dali and his wife Gala, and actress Gertrude Lawrence, who insisted that all her press appointments take place at the hotel. Colonel Serge Obolensky was associated with the St. Regis for many years and in the 1930s as manager, he refurbished the hotel. The Russian Prince who had been a page at the Czar’s court also married Alice Astor (daughter of John Jacob Astor). Today, the St. Regis is considered one of New York’s finest hotels and it remains one of the best preserved in the Beaux Arts style. The hotel, operated by Starwood, is the centrepiece of Starwood’s prestigious St. Regis brand.

Above: Polish- born cosmetics tycoon Helena Rubinstein (1870–1965) arranging flowers in her suite at the St. Regis Hotel, New York, 1945. Right: Colonel Serge Obolensky at the St. Regis Roof restaurant, which he created, New York, 1964.

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RESORT HOTELS

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A TIME OF LEISURE

he Gilded Age in America heralded the birth of ‘conspicuous consumption.’ Social mobility was for the first time achieved through wealth rather than birth. This was no more evident than in New York City where the new breed of wealthy individuals wielded their power and built their dreams. It was a moneyed society driven to create fabulous and sumptuous spaces wherein the participants could compare, and boast of, their material achievements. This newfound wealth also brought with it an unprecedented increase in leisure time. It was the pursuit of filling this leisure time that precipitated the creation of some of America’s and the world’s greatest holiday resorts. The resorts born of the Gilded Age are emulated in style and design to the present day.

RE SO RT H OTEL S: A T I M E O F L E I S U R E

THE AGE OF THE RAILROADS At the end of the Civil War there was no shortage of wealthy and sophisticated businessmen spawned by the industrial age who were ready to develop and exploit the untapped resources of their vast country. This began with the building of an expansive network of railway lines that would span the country. The new railway systems would not only transport resources but workers and travellers hungry for unspoiled horizons. The railroads were largely privately owned, financed by the new breed of America’s wealthy entrepreneurs, and built by a proliferation of migrant workers and cheap labour. Interestingly this was probably where the expression ‘other side of the tracks’ first came into being. The wealthy classes would establish the transport systems and build themselves houses and lavish resorts on prime real estate on one side of the railroad tracks while their workers were accommodated in cheap housing on the other side of the tracks. Americans were experiencing a new mobility. This was a direct outcome of increased leisure time, improved rail transportation, and the newly constructed spate of urban and resort hotels. The upwardly mobile now travelled to amuse themselves, visiting fairs, expositions and resorts. The beautiful railroad resorts built in places like Florida and San Diego and the mountain regions in the 1800s were a reflection of the desires and dreams of an era. The truly wealthy could now afford to head to warmer climes for the winter season and the mountains for the summer, hitching their private railroad cars to a steam train and indulging their new-found leisure time in resorts that often looked as if they came from a fairy-tale. Here they could bask in the warmth of the climate, and each other’s glow, secure in the knowledge that they were truly privileged individuals. The journey of American resort hotels over the years has very much paralleled American tastes and history. Born of the great individual entrepreneurs of the 1800s, they became part of the great American Dream, until the Great Depression and the War. With the desire for all things new in the fifties, and the emergence of motels and hotel chains, many resorts fell by the wayside. By the sixties and seventies, when Americans once again sought identity through history and place, resorts crept back in favour. Now, with the desire for leisure and luxury, resorts are back in vogue.

Right: A travel poster designed to entice visitors to Florida by train.

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Chapter

EXPANDING CITIES W E A LT H A N D S TAT U S

he unfurling of the Great American Frontier in the 1800s inevitably led to the establishment of several key cities. As the dust settled on territorial battles and the race to create wealth and power escalated, frontier towns mushroomed on the plains. They emerged from the swampy shores of great lakes and coastlines, built in haste out of flimsy bits of wood and tin. Small inns, boarding houses and hotels soon appeared in these towns as increasing numbers of itinerants clamoured for their piece of land. Fortunes were made and lost overnight. Those lucky enough to secure their pot of gold began to build grand houses and hotels. Each new house and hotel always had to be bigger and better than the last â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and so the great cities of America grew.

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Misfortune often holds within it the seeds of success and inspiration. This is no more evident than in the stories of how San Francisco and Chicago and even the nation’s capital, Washington DC, came into being.

WASHINGTON DC: THE HUB OF A NATION Washington DC stands alone. Rather than a city established through frontier pioneers seeking their fortunes, it was especially chosen by George Washington in 1790 as neutral ground where the President and Congress could converge. Washington engaged Pierre Charles L’Enfant to map out a design for the future city, which included Pennsylvania Avenue. The plan was for the President and Congress to be separated by a magnificent mile that would eventually be filled by grand homes and foreign embassies. Historically, the location of Washington DC was at the crossroads of a new and unsettled nation. Warring colonies were still sorting out their rightful place in an evolving Empire. Washington DC also suffered a tumultuous fate in 1812 when the English burned it down during the EnglishAmerican War over Canada. The city was rebuilt to become the hub of a nation catering to a constant flow of visitors.

SAN FRANCISCO: DREAMERS AND GAMBLERS

rub shoulders with the likes of Wyatt Earp in the chill and fog of this city of harbour, hills, and golden sunsets. Those hills shook like never before on the morning of 18 April 1906. The financial and newspaper centre of Western America was virtually destroyed by the Great Quake and resulting massive fire. The worst natural disaster in American history thus far had destroyed old San Francisco.

CHICAGO: CROSSROADS CITY Like San Francisco, the city of Chicago grew fast and then suffered a catastrophe – in this case, fire. The name ‘Chicago’ comes from the Indian word for ‘onions’ or ‘skunk’. The town was established on a smelly swamp that proved hazardous for sanitation. In 1855, after a tragic cholera epidemic, the entire city had to be raised. Buildings were jacked up and fill brought in. Two years later Chicago boasted the honour of being the largest city in the Northwest and the home of the soon-to-be-elected Abraham Lincoln. The Illinois and Michigan canal which opened in 1848 allowed shipping to move south from the Great Lakes, through Chicago and down the Mississippi. The location of the city meant that it was also a crossroads for the many new railroads traversing the country. By 1850 the first genuine hotel, the St. Francis, joined numerous inns and taverns catering to visitors and immigrants alike. However, the city

was also full of tenement housing and flimsy wooden cottages – ideal fire fuel. When fire broke out in the city after an unusually dry spell, the resulting blaze burned for two days. In the end, the Chicago Fire of 1871 reduced the city to ashes. Amazingly, by 1875 the city was rebuilt and went on to host the 1893 World Expo, attracting 27 million visitors. It was at this Expo that the first American hamburger was served, Wrigleys invented Juicy Fruit gum, and the Beaux-Arts style became fashionable. Chicago was now on the world radar as a dynamic and colourful destination. The evolution of the luxury hotel in Chicago was rapid and by the twentieth century, with the massive growth of retail and commerce, the city took its place as the Convention capital of America. Three of the major hotel trade journals were published in Chicago so it became the centre of the American hotel industry.

E XPAND ING CITIES: W E A LT H A N D S TAT U S

TUMULTUOUS BEGINNINGS

Opposite: Iron workers building the Palmer House in Chicago enjoy a visit from radio announcer Jack Nelson, 1926. Below: The ruins of San Francisco after the terrible earthquake and fire, 1906.

The story of San Francisco is one of an ‘instant’ city built on gold and dreams. In 1846 it was little more than an old fort, a pier, and the ramshackle beginnings of a town. On 7 July, during the Mexican-American War, an American flag was raised and 400 inhabitants became Americans overnight. Shortly afterwards gold was found nearby and San Francisco became a boomtown. By 1850, the population had swelled to 25,000 – most of them men. Hastily built ‘hotels’ were fashioned from canvas to accommodate them. A wild town grew up, peopled by gypsies, miners, sailors, Chinese immigrants, gamblers and prostitutes hanging around the infamous Barbary Coast. Newly rich miners poured profits into banks, a Stock Exchange and an Opera House. Grand hotels began to appear, in which the millionaires of the new ‘Nob Hill’ could socialise. Until the Suez Canal opened in 1869, San Francisco was a port of call for European tourists, the ‘golden’ gateway to Asia and the Pacific. Grand dukes could

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HOLLYWOOD & LAS VEGAS

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GLAMOUR AND GREED

ollywood and Las Vegas are destinations whose beginnings rest on geographical luck – people were originally attracted to Hollywood because of its fertile soil, and to Las Vegas because of its abundant supply of water. Yet from tiny frontier towns they grew into destinations that promised fame, fortune and fun, while often delivering only heartbreak and ruin. For decades, they have attracted entertainment-hungry hordes with high expectations. Visitors to Vegas expect glitz, gambling and spectacle on an ever-increasing scale, while visitors to Hollywood still expect it to live up to the old MGM motto, ‘more stars than there are in the sky.’

H O L LY WO O D & LAS V EGAS: G L A M O U R A N D G R E E D

CITIES OF DREAMS The iconic hotels of Hollywood and Las Vegas seem familiar to us from their presence in many movies and TV shows, but there are many secrets and surprises in their varied histories. Las Vegas, despite its reputation for neon and sleaze, continues to reinvent itself – as a place of themepark fun for all the family, and as a sophisticated destination for lovers (and lovers of luxury hotels). Beyond the tabloid spectacle of hotel frontages clogged with paparazzi and starlets behaving badly, Hollywood is home to hotels that offer both luxury and privacy. New trends have merged with old traditions in Hollywood – courtesy of innovative hoteliers, architects and designers – while in Las Vegas ambitious entrepreneurs challenge each other to reinvent the world of resort and casino hotels, ensuring that the cycle of demolition, followed by ever-more spectacular construction, continues.

THE INVENTION OF LAS VEGAS Las Vegas began as a desert oasis lush enough to be named ‘the Meadows’ by Spanish traders. Travellers found it a welcome watering hole, while settlers tried their hands at mining and farming. It was proclaimed a city in 1905, the same year that the railroad opened up the town to a new population of maintenance workers and merchants. The railroad pulled out in 1930, but the city soon filled up again, this time with construction

workers from the federally-funded Hoover Dam project. Gambling, legalised in Nevada in 1931, was the recipient of some of those federal funds. Meanwhile, newly liberalised divorce laws gave rise to the first Las Vegas resorts – dude ranches where people stayed for six weeks to establish Nevada residency and obtain a ‘quickie’ divorce. After the Hoover Dam’s completion in 1936, the area continued to benefit from federal dollars, this time courtesy of military bases, firing ranges and the Nevada nuclear test site. However, the end of World War Two brought a new challenge – reinventing Las Vegas for peacetime. Entrepreneurs began to see potential in the proximity of Las Vegas to the booming city of Los Angeles, and the success of one early hotel – the El Rancho Las Vegas – pointed the way.

THE FIRST LAS VEGAS RESORT HOTEL The El Rancho Vegas (built in 1941) was constructed just outside the city limits on Highway 91, the main highway between Las Vegas and LA, that would eventually become the Las Vegas Strip. The El Rancho was the vision of Tommy Hull. Legend has it that while waiting for a mechanic on the side of the highway, Hull began counting the cars that passed, marvelled at their number, and thought the spot would be a good place to build a hotel. And build he did, pioneering the concept of gaming, lodging, dining, entertainment and retail facilities all in one complex – an Old-West themed casino surrounded by motel bungalows and green lawns.

GREAT, GRAND & FAMOUS HOTELS

The writer William Saroyan tells of taking up residence in one of the El Rancho’s bungalows in 1949 to wait out his divorce. Flush with a publisher’s advance, he spent the six weeks drinking, gambling and cursing his faithless wife. Having gambled away half of the advance, he vowed to win back his losses, quit drinking and gambling, get his divorce and go on his way. In the end, he summed the experience up by saying “Every hour I spent in Las Vegas was part of a killing nightmare. It is a wonder all I lost was $50,000.” It is unlikely that Saroyan mourned the resort’s destruction by fire in 1960. One who did shed tears, though, was Betty Grable, who wept as she watched it burn. Starring in the hotel’s theatre at the time, she lost over US$10,000 worth of costumes. The resort’s most recognisable feature, its 50-foot neonlit windmill, provided onlookers with a spectacle as it flamed and fell. While lawmen pried open the vault with a crowbar and handed out scorched boxes of paper money to employees, almost US$500,000 dollars in coin was reduced to molten metal by the fire.

Above left: The El Rancho Hotel as it looked in 1958, two years before it was destroyed by fire. Above right: Actor and singer Rudy Vallee and his wife, Eleanor Norris, relaxing poolside at the El Rancho Vegas resort, where they celebrated their first wedding anniversary, 1950.

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Partying with Young Hollywood

The roosevelt T

his Hollywood landmark hotel, named after President Theodore Roosevelt, was financed by the Hollywood Holding Company whose investors included the movie luminaries Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Louis B. Mayer and Charlie Chaplin. The company was headed by Charles Toberman who also created other famous sites including Graumans Chinese Theatre and the Hollywood Bowl.

The hotel opened on 16 May 1927, in the middle of Hollywood’s first golden age. On the same date two years later, the first Academy Awards were held in the hotel’s Blossom Room, with a (today almost unimaginably brief) 15-minute ceremony – the shortest Awards ceremony in Hollywood history. Later, during the fifties and sixties, the Blossom Room hosted receptions for the surprise guests of the TV show This Is Your Life.

GANGSTERS AND HELLRAISERS The Roosevelt made a cameo appearance in the story of Bugsy Siegel, of Las Vegas Flamingo fame. According to one account which does not appear in newspapers, Mickey Cohen reacted violently to Siegel’s murder. Entering the Roosevelt Hotel where he believed the killers were staying, Cohen fired his two .45 semiautomatics into the lobby ceiling and demanded that the assassins meet him outside in ten minutes. However, no one appeared and Cohen was forced to flee when the cops arrived. The Roosevelt had its heyday, during which stars such as Errol Flynn and David Niven drank and

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raised hell: during Prohibition, Flynn famously concocted gin cocktails behind the barber shop and David Niven lodged in one of the servant’s rooms at the start of his career. However, the hotel began to share the fate of the increasingly shabby Hollywood Boulevard in the 1950s, with one owner demolishing its archways, covering up its decorative ceilings and painting the hotel green. Then the Radisson chain bought it in the 1980s, saving it from demolition and spending over US$35 million on renovations. The Spanish style architecture of the hotel was restored to its former glory using the original blueprints. The mezzanine level, a tribute to the old Hollywood, was furnished with all kinds of memorabilia. An original wrought-iron chandelier now hanging from the ceiling was discovered in pieces in the basement and took at least six months to reassemble. Notable features of the old hotel were revived, including the Cinegrill – where the likes of Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald sat to talk – renamed ‘Teddy’s’, it attracted a new young crowd of scenesters. Since the 1984 restoration took place, ghosts

are said to visit on a regular basis. A ‘cold spot’ in a section of the Blossom Room is supposed to be haunted by a man dressed in black; a mirror is said to display Marilyn Monroe’s reflection from timeto-time; men, women and children have all been spotted, only to vanish; typing has been heard in a locked empty office during the night, along with disembodied voices heard in rooms and hallways. In room 928 (a room Montgomery Clift liked to stay in) many strange happenings have been reported. Some believe that Clift still paces the room rehearsing his lines and even plays the bugle in the corridor. More recently, the party set of young Hollywood began to flock to Teddy’s and the poolside Tropicana bar, briefly notorious for its strict policy of entertaining only the youngest and hippest. However, in 2006 – after a live performance by Prince – the hotel seemed to rethink their new image as party central, temporarily closing Teddy’s and firing the promoters of the exclusive club. However, the Roosevelt still stands as the symbol of the renaissance of traditional Hollywood style.

H O L LY WO O D & V EGAS: G L A M O U R A N D G R E E D

Hotel bel-air A Great Escape

ne hotel that is often said to approach perfection is the Hotel Bel-Air on Stone Canyon Road in the exclusive semi-rural neighbourhood of Bel-Air. Hidden in a series of canyons at the base of the Hollywood Hills, Bel-Air is where celebrities and power brokers build their secret hideaways.

The Hotel Bel-Air, set on 12 acres of grounds, and approached by way of a stone bridge that crosses a swan-filled lake, has the air of a secluded retreat. The 92-room hotel opened in 1946,

founded by real estate magnate Joseph Drown. The main building of the hotel originally housed the offices of Alphonso E Bell – the man who built Bel Air Estates in the 1920s. In close proximity to the studios, many film executives and screen legends alike have stayed there, including Grace Kelly, Jackie Gleason, Cary Grant, Elizabeth Taylor, and Marilyn Monroe. The hotel is not overlooked by neighbours, nor can news helicopters easily hover above it, and this assured privacy has made it an attractive destination for today’s harried celebrities. Grace Kelly lived here while filming. Oprah Winfrey held her 50th-birthday slumber party here. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman reportedly met here in secret to work out their divorce details. At Oscar time, nominees traditionally received an 8-inch chocolate replica of the statuette, with gold frosting. However, in deference to the Academy’s protectiveness of the Oscar image, the pastry chef has begun presenting chocolate film reels instead. When he won the Oscar for Gladiator in 2001, a jubilant Russell Crowe scrawled a sketch

GREAT, GRAND & FAMOUS HOTELS

of the statuette and his autograph. It hangs framed in the Herb Garden Suite. The bungalow-style rooms have a homely feel, with wooden country-French furniture with silk or chenille upholstery in shades of rose and cream, hardwood floors, wood-burning fireplaces and some with private outdoor hot-tubs. Some guests choose to stay on a semi-permanent basis, and who can blame them. The Hotel Bel-Air was recently purchased by the brother of the Sultan of Brunei (who owns the Beverly Hills Hotel).

Opposite: Guests at the 2007 BET Awards after party, held pool-side at the Roosevelt Hotel, party long into the night. Above: Bette Davis (with her poodle, Tinkerbelle), at a press conference in suite at the Hotel Bel Air in the 1960s. Left: A room in one of the bungalows at the Hotel Bel-Air.

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Chapter

CANADA

T H E G R E AT R A I LWAY C H AT E AU X

f the evolution of great and grand hotels in the United States are markers of American civilization (and in the case of Hollywood and Las Vegas, perhaps its decline), then so too are the grand hotels of Canada. In the context of the majestic Canadian landscape they stand distinct, and are appropriately heralded as ‘The Castles of the North’. Whether it is the Chateau Frontenac standing tall on a hill at the gateway to Canada in Montreal, or the Chateau Lake Louise nestled in the midst of scenery befitting a fairytale, these amazing architectural edifices have become an integral part of Canada’s rich heritage.

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Canada is steeped in Indigenous and European history. It is a history both evident and exulted at every turn of the road, and through each majestic mountain pass. Canada possesses a rugged and mountainous beauty dotted with endless plains, jagged peaks, glaciers, and emerald lakes. For hundreds of years, adventurers, settlers, and travellers alike have been attracted to Canada’s vast landscape. In area, it is the world’s second largest country, and one that celebrates outdoor activity and exploration. There is little doubt that after white-settlement, the economic tide of Canada closely followed that of its southern neighbour and oft-times nemesis, the United States. Whalers, fishermen, and furtraders also made their way to Canada plying their trade and establishing farms. Those seeking their fortunes travelled up the West Coast from the US on their way to the gold fields of Alaska. Like the United States, Canada offered a vast untamed frontier ripe for exploitation. French settlers arrived in Canada in the early 1600s establishing Quebec as their centre. The French government did little to support their new colony, and soon the British, who controlled the southern colonies of America, moved in. Although the British eventually gained control of Quebec and Montreal they did not interfere with the already well-established French culture and religion. The battles over Canadian colonies continued well into the nineteenth century with both Britain and America hungry for the commercial potential that the new young country offered. In 1867 most of the Canadian colonies officially became part of the British Empire with the rest to follow. Culturally, Canada sat at the apex of American, French, and British influence and well-heeled adventurers from those regions began to travel overland and across the Atlantic to explore the new territory. Great nineteenth-century writers were paying homage to the delights of the great wilderness, inspiring travellers. The physical attributes of Canada provided the perfect adjunct to these writings.

TOURISM AND THE RAILWAY HOTELS Tourism was important in developing the infrastructure necessary for a burgeoning country. The first step was the construction of an adequate railway system to carry goods, services, and travellers from East to West across the Rockies.

Thus the Canadian Pacific Railway came into being. The Canadian government was keen to integrate British Columbia into the Federation and to establish a Western seaport opening up trade and tourism to the Orient. Construction of the transcontinental railway was completed, after just four years, in 1885. The railway was built far too quickly to allow for a system of tunnels through the Rockies and trains had to climb up and down perilously steep grades. Elegant dining cars were out of the question for such trips, as food, cutlery, fine china, and indeed well heeled clients, could not be sustained during the steep climbs and sudden descents. In 1886 ‘Restaurant Stops’ – elegant dining spaces with limited accommodation – were built along the way. These small architecturally designed Swiss-style chalets, set in the midst of magnificent scenery, soon became a major drawcard. The wealthy clientele, who the Railway feted, began to demand even more luxury accommodation. Before long the famous Railway Hotels of Canada, (inspired by railway hotels built in England), were being built at strategic points along the railway system. Indeed, the “orderly pattern of hotel growth” depended “almost exclusively on the rail travel system.” Many of the great railway hotels were built in the ‘Chateau Style’ which became known as a distinctly Canadian form of architecture. “The use of towers and turrets, and other Scottish baronial and French chateau elements, became a signature style of Canada’s majestic hotels, and was even borrowed by the designers of important public buildings.” Canada’s first real grand hotel was Montreal’s Windsor Hotel (1878), which took up an entire block and was considered a ‘Palace.’ For the first time shops were located in the body of a hotel lending the domain an air of exclusivity. Canada was part of the great British Empire whose wealthy classes hungered for new horizons. Steamships and luxurious trains delivered them to exotic locations. Tourists arriving at Quebec port were met with a vision splendid – the Chateau Frontenac Hotel. They rested their weary heads on the exquisite linen and resumed their trip West across the Rocky Mountains taking in the mountain air, hot springs, and comforts of either the Banff Springs Hotel or the Chateau Lake Louise. From there it was a leisurely train ride to Vancouver and onto Victoria Island to the beautiful Empress Hotel. The traveller then boarded a luxury ‘Empress’ steamship and continued their journey

GREAT, GRAND & FAMOUS HOTELS

CANADA: T H E G R E AT R A I LW AY C H ATA E U X

TAMING A LANDSCAPE

across the ocean to the exotic Orient where yet more jewels of the great British Empire awaited. Cities like Vancouver were established because of the rail system. Vancouver became the Western terminus of the transcontinental railway and the gateway to the Pacific. The growth of Canadian cities from the late 1800s tended to gravitate around hotels as these establishments denoted progress. When Manager of the CPR, Cornelius Van Horne, chose the site for the Hotel Vancouver its location was criticised for being too far from the city’s main retail area. Interestingly, the city expanded towards the hotel and the intersection on which it stood eventually became the commercial centre of town. These hotels were at the heart of their local communities. In the cities, entire floors of the hotels were often set aside so commercial travellers could ply their wares. Any event of great national significance usually occurred within these grand hotels and it is little wonder that so many of them have become National symbols of Canada’s history. Opposite: A view of the historic Prince of Wales Hotel, built in 1926 by the Northern Railroad Company, Alberta, Canada. The surrounding lakes and section of the Rocky Mountains have become the Waterton Lakes National Park. Above: A Canadian Pacific Railway travel poster.

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NORTH AFRICA & THE MIDDLE EAST CASTLES IN THE SAND

he grand hotels of North Africa and the Middle East were inspired by major events in the nineteenth century â&#x20AC;&#x201C; from steam travel to the opening of the Suez Canal. From all over the world, travellers flocked to the region to enjoy its warm climate and magical scenery. These new tourists were demanding: they wanted to stay in only the finest of hotels with all the comfortsof home.

NO RTH AFRICA & TH E MID D L E EAST: C A S T L E S I N T H E S A N D

Egypt, Morocco and Israel are home to some of the world’s grandest castles in the desert. Some of the hotels were converted from royal palaces and lodges; others, such as The Old Cataract in Aswan, began their life as luxury hotels, constructed to provide colonial comfort for wealthy European and North American travellers. Several inventions changed the shape of travel in the Middle East in the nineteenth century. Before 1820, few travellers from as far afield as the United States ventured this far for pleasure. But two decades later, the industrial revolution created a new environment. After 1830, steam travel and the increased use of railroads meant tourists could reach their destination faster, cheaper and far more comfortably. Tourists were inspired to travel for superb scenery, improved health and incomparable wonders, all of which North Africa and the Middle East could offer.

Above: European tourists picnicking in a temple, Egypt, about 1900. Left: Handmade tea glasses and candlesticks, Marrakesh, Morocco.

CONNECTING EAST AND WEST

HOTELS OF THE OCCUPATION

The Suez Canal was to unite the East and the West even further. The canal was the passionate dream of French diplomat, entrepreneur and project mastermind Ferdinand de Lesseps. He may have won the support of Napoleon III and Egypt’s prince Muhammad Said and convinced the French public to invest, but it took a tumultuous 15 years before it was completed. Technical and diplomatic problems posed a constant threat. Nevertheless, its opening in 1869 captured world headlines. The canal had a profound effect on trade and travel to the region. One of Egypt’s best known historic hotels, The Mena House, overlooking the Pyramids near Cairo, was originally a royal hunting lodge. After 1869, it was enlarged to cater for the influx of foreigners. During the 1860s, Thomas Cook took parties to Egypt, establishing independent travel where the adventurous journeyed on their own but were charged for all accommodation, food and travel for a fixed period on a chosen route.

The British occupation of Egypt was behind the construction of many beautiful hotels, with Victorians keen to explore what they regarded as their new realm, an exciting place of deserts, pyramids, ancient temples and tombs and fantastic hunting. In 1886, the Winter Palace Hotel, on the banks of the Nile in Luxor, was built during the English and French occupation of the region. A road was constructed between Cairo and the Pyramids for the visit of the Empress Eugenie. It made future trips to Giza much easier. Hotels began to promote their accommodation. On 11 December 11 1899, the first newspaper advertisement for The Old Cataract hotel appeared in The Egyptian Gazette, pledging: “Every modern comfort. Large and small apartment rooms, library, billiard room, etc ... fireplaces in hall, salons and the main rooms. Electrical lights running all night. Perfect sanitary arrangements approved by the authorities. Can accommodate 60 visitors.” In 1900, the hotel was enlarged, but it had become so popular that within a year tents were erected to accommodate demand.

Newly laid railway tracks made travel even more accessible once foreign visitors had steamed their way to the African continent. The demand for hotels along the Nile soon became imperative, providing competition to the more traditional floating hotels of the period.

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Chapter

AFRICA

ADVENTURE AND MYSTIQUE

or many, Africa has been and always will be the land of adventure and mystique, a continent of soaring heat, red dust, wild game and incredible passion. But tourists demanded their home comforts. As travel began to boom, a series of magnificent colonial-style hotels were built to match their European rivals. No expense was spared. Then the safari was born and there was no stopping the rush by the rich and famous to join in the excitement.

AFRICA: A D V E N T U R E A N D M Y S T I Q U E

No Room at the Inn for Brad and Angelina Africa continues to attract the rich and famous. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt put Namibia on the tourist map when they booked out the coastal resort Burning Shore so Jolie could give birth to their daughter, Shiloh. Earlier, a pregnant Jolie and Pitt arrived by light plane at the exclusive Sossusvlei Mountain Lodge where they reportedly sent their agent to the

TOURISTS EXPLORE AFRICA

IDLERS AND ADVENTURERS

Fuelled by tales of cavalier explorers, tempted by game beyond their wildest dreams and desperate for warmer, drier climes to escape severe northern winters, the African continent became the holiday of choice for wealthy British and Europeans from the mid to late 1800s. As fossickers struck gold in the south, these sophisticated travellers joined fortune-hunters, engineers, businessmen and scientists aboard crowded steamships to seek out the latest promised land. Accustomed to luxury hotels in Europe and America, the tourists placed increasing demands on the colonists to improve the standard of hotels, inns and boarding houses, variously described as “miserable places” that were “far behind the times.” British writer W. Clarke Russell went further, saying the very best hotel would “disgrace the meanest, dirtiest, most insanitary village in England.” So the pressure was on. That was certainly the case in Cape Town, founded by the Dutch as a stopover on the way to the East. It was simply a hive of inns, with many of the earlier guest houses possibly built by its founder, Jan van Riebeeck in the seventeenth century. By 1670, Cape Town was known by sailors as the Tavern of the Seas, giving birth to the legend of Cape hospitality.

As the British took over from the Dutch in the south, a Cape Town newspaper exclaimed that clubs and bars were springing up “like toadstools from the rank soil of luxury, idleness and sensuality.” But the hotels still did not measure up. The Castle steamship company was determined to build a magnificent hotel that would happily accommodate their passengers and outdo their competition. But the rival Union Line trumped them, opening the Grand Hotel in Cape Town in 1894 on the site of the Parkes Family Hotel, a former boarding house. The Grand was regarded as the most luxurious hotel in the southern hemisphere. In 1899, the Castle Line opened its rival, the Mount Nelson. Unlike the Grand, which was demolished in 1972 for a department store, the Nelson’s grandeur remains. The design of these hotels was inspired by the great hotels of Britain and the Continent. They did not embrace local tastes and traditions, but were meant to be a home away from home. And, of course, the owners would not permit themselves “to be outdone by anything superior in London, the capital of the world.” Soon, similar hotels were peppering other parts of Africa, offering travellers the chance to witness lions roaming the plains and hippos wallowing in the rivers – all without leaving the grounds of their luxury

GREAT, GRAND & FAMOUS HOTELS

lodge to request that guests be moved out so the couple could take over all 10 rooms. The hotel declined, saying that some rooms were already occupied while others were booked. The couple then went on their way.

accommodation. These hotels were not just for tourists. They were the base for many adventurers to launch their daring explorations of the dark and often dangerous African interior. Towns also developed around these grand hotels. For example, if it were not for the Norfolk, many believe Nairobi, once known as Mile 39 on the East African Railway, would have remained little more than a sleepy outpost. In Harare, capital of the former Rhodesia, the first European settlers arrived in 1890. By 1915, the Meikles Hotel, built originally in the colonial style, was open for business. The country’s history and the Meikles soon became tightly entwined. The hotel was a stage for much of the country’s early political drama, hosting the first meeting of the parliament of the then colony of Southern Rhodesia in 1924.

Above: Doorman at Meikles Hotel, Zimbabwe.

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Chapter

INDIA

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H I STO RY AN D FANTA SY

n the twenty-first century, hotel standards are inspired by the latest trends in Europe and America; but in India the best hotels have retained their colour and vibrancy, their novelty, and their romance. Urban retreats or palace fantasies, the great and grand hotels of the subcontinent are uniquely Indian â&#x20AC;&#x201C; founded, built, owned and managed by Indian dynasties. Extraordinary history and distinctive architecture created the particular style of Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s luxury hotels. Rulers of legendary extravagance left a heritage of fabulous palaces, and a tradition of meticulous service. In the cities, entrepreneurs built luxury hotels to serve both traders and travellers.

IND IA: H I S T O R Y A N D FA N TA S Y

THE BRITISH EAST INDIA COMPANY More than 400 years ago, Queen Elizabeth I granted the East India Company a trade monopoly, and British traders began to travel to India. Although ‘John Company’ was only interested in profit, the military followed the trail of riches to enforce British control, fighting off European competitors and undermining the declining power of the warring Mughal rulers. Careful manipulation of influence meant that by the 1800s, India was effectively governed by the Company. The nawabs and maharajahs had given the British substantial political and economic concessions in return for peace and an illusion of independence and power. With political stability, they used their huge wealth to build magnificent palaces and had the leisure to enjoy them. In the days of John Company, most travellers to India stayed in basic boarding houses and hotels, but it was more comfortable to stay with friends, and a fortunate few enjoyed the exclusive and comfortable London-style clubs that had been established in the trading hubs of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras. Businessmen, military personnel and administrative staff continued to travel to India once it became a British colony in 1858, closing the door on the Company and its two centuries of influence.

TRAVEL FOR PLEASURE By the middle of the nineteenth century, interest in India had been stimulated by the extensive reporting of the Indian Mutiny, by the glories of Empire showcased at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851, and by the appointment of Queen Victoria as Empress of India. At the same time steamships, the railway and the telegraph had made travel to India more efficient and more comfortable, and the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 bought India within relatively easy reach of London’s East India Dock.

Enough British travellers were making the journey for John Murray to consider it worthwhile to publish the first guidebook to India in 1859, and as early as the 1880s, Thomas Cook was selling travel to India to British tourists.

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY As their numbers increased, travellers sought the quality accommodation in India that they found in Europe and America, and hotels were built to meet the demand. The fabulous Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, owned and built by businessman Jamsetji Tata, opened in Bombay in 1903 and is still one of India’s great and grand hotels. In 1914, Thomas Cook warned that “The number of travellers to India is rapidly increasing and in the touring season the best hotels are frequently completely filled,” but the next four long years of World War One were hard for Indian hoteliers, and even the the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel was used as a hospital. Travel to India recovered after the war ended, only to be interrupted again by the Depression of the early 1930s, World War Two, and then by the trauma of partition into the Republic of India and Pakistan after independence in 1947. By the 1950s, affordable and efficient air travel made India a popular destination for tourists, and services and accommodation developed rapidly to meet a new international market. Through the late 1960s and 1970s, more leisure time, prosperity and the jumbo jets fueled the increase in tourism. More hereditary rulers converted their palaces to hotels as they lost their titles and annual stipends, instead marketing their dream to wealthy travellers. At the other end of the market, young first-world foreigners sought lowcost enlightenment by joining the hippie trail. Businessmen and opportunists joined them in the 1990s as they flocked to exploit the recovering Indian economy, and in the twentyfirst century, adventure tourists seek exotic and luxurious escapes.

GREAT, GRAND & FAMOUS HOTELS

CITY HOTELS The purpose-built grand city hotels of a century ago have been upgraded to meet new markets. Business and government travellers seek comfort and modern services, tourists pass through the cities on their way to the fantasy of the palace hotels, and locals and travellers alike seek elegant spaces to meet and entertain their guests. Both the legendary Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in the commercial centre of Bombay, and the austere Imperial in the political centre of New Delhi, offer guests the best of east and west – gracious buildings, modern infrastructure and exemplary service.

PALACE HOTELS When Prime Minister Indira Ghandi ended the deals between the British and hereditary rulers at Independence that enabled them to retain their titles and be paid an annual stipend, new sources of income had to be found, and new uses for their redundant palaces and forts, hunting lodges and gardens. The ethereal Lake Palace at Udaipur, the romantic Rambagh Palace at Jaipur and the magnificient and massive Umaid Bharwan at Jodhpur were all converted to hotels, attracting tourists to their spectacular, remote provinces, promising visitors a few days of living as the maharajahs once had. The palace hotels now attract sophisticated travellers to India from all over the world, and many of the smaller royal forts and hunting lodges have been converted to intimate, remote retreats for a twenty first century breed of discerning visitors who dream of living as only as the Indian royalty once could – commanding but carefree, surrounded by beauty and in luxury; and totally indulged. Above: The façade of the red sandstone Lalgarh Palace, now a hotel, built in 1902 for a Bikaner dynasty maharaja by Sir Samuel Swinton Jacob.

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CH APTE R 15

A City Palace in Mumbai

The taj mahal palace T

rading in diamonds, hobnobbing with Bollywood stars, or travelling to India for any reason at all, most visitors enter India through Mumbai. Established by Portugese traders, Bombay (as it was then called) became the headquarters for the powerful British East India Company, and more than three hundred years later it is still the economic capital of India.

The Gateway of India at Naramin Point was built at the height of the British Empire, a triumphal western arch dominating an eastern port. On the edge of the Arabian Sea, a milling press of people compete for space in the shadow of its heavy arch to enjoy the refreshing breeze from the water, to sell postcards and snacks, or to beg for their evening meal. Across the street from the Gateway is the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, opened in 1903 to house the travellers of India in luxury. Mumbai is India’s most glamorous city, and after a century of service to heads of state, film stars, rock stars and business tycoons, the Taj remains the city’s grandest hotel.

PURPOSE-BUILT LUXURY Unlike so many great Indian hotels, the Taj was purpose built as a hotel by business magnate, philanthropist and nationalist, Jamsetji Tata. Innovative in construction, design and services, ideas for the hotel were culled by Jamsetji Tata from all over the world. Ten spun iron pillars were ordered after he saw one at the Paris Exhibition in 1900, and they still support the Taj ballroom. No expense was spared in creating the most modern hotel in India, with 30 suites, and 350 rooms. When it opened, the Taj had the first electric light in the city, passenger lifts, a power plant, and an ice-machine. There was a chemist shop,

246

a post office, a resident doctor, steam laundry and a Turkish bath. Thirty years later, the first airconditioned restaurant and ballroom in Bombay opened at the Taj, and the city’s first licenced bar. Seventy years later the Taj Mahal Tower was built next door, on the site of the former Green’s Hotel. The contemporary high rise building expanded the number of guest and reception rooms, and highlights the charm of the original hotel.

A MIXTURE OF STYLES The elaborate and imposing façade of the original Taj Mahal Palace Hotel still dominates Bombay harbour. From one angle Moorish, from another, convincingly Florentine; from every aspect, it is Indian. The hotel was designed by Indian architects Sitaram Khanderao Vaidya and DN Mirza, and completed by English engineer WA Chambers. The foundations were laid in 1898, sunk to forty feet. Two arms of guest rooms, each finished with turret capped by an onion dome, reach out from a central Florentine dome. Indo-Saracenic in style, it incorporates Hindu and Islamic features in an essentially Gothic-revival building. Six stories high, it is constructed in red and white brick and stone. Under the central dome, a grand staircase rises past all the floors, edged with elaborate ironwork banisters, and supported by stepped stone stringers.

The ebb and flow of elegant guests and purposeful staff makes it the heart of the hotel. John Major stayed at the Taj when he was British Prime Minister. One morning as he waited for lift with a team of security personnel, he sighted the fabulous staircase. Exclaiming “What a staircase!’ he started down the stairs, with his entire entourage in pursuit. Other celebrities include Cindy Crawford and Jacques Chirac, who were guests at the same time, whereupon the staff went to great lengths to ensure that neither would be given more attention or prominence than the other. When it was built, the hotel entrance was the other side of the hotel, and the Taj stood her back to the Gateway of India, and the harbour. The modern entrance to the hotel is now from the harbour side, and the swimming pool has replaced the old entrance. Cycles of extensive renovation and renewal have kept the Taj Group flagship hotel at the vanguard of luxury hotels. Recent major renovations were completed in 1987 and again in 2003. The Taj Mahal Palace and Towers lead the hotel market in India into the next century, just as when it was founded a century earlier.

Opposite: The elaborate staircase of the Taj Mahal Palace.

IND IA: H I S T O R Y AIND N D FA IA: N TA H ISSYT O R Y & FA N TA S Y

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GREAT, GRAND & FAMOUS HOTELS

CHAPTE APTERR 15 15 CH

Udaipur’s Jewel

Lake palace hotel

himmering as if it is a mirage, the white marble Lake Palace floats on its own reflection in the still blue waters of Lake Pichola, framed by the distant Aravalli Mountains. It appears ethereal and unattainable, distant and beautiful.

A VISION IN WHITE MARBLE Two small islands were created when Lake Pichola was made in fourteenth century. One of the islands was occupied by Muslim exile Sultan Khurram in 1626, escaping the intrigue surrounding the accession to the Mughal throne. He survived the intrigue to win the throne as Shah Jahan, and built the Taj Mahal. Maharana Jagat Singh II, ruler of the House of Merwer and leader of a number of Rajput clans, finished building a series of white marble pavilions in beautiful gardens on a nearby island, Jag Niwas, in 1746. The gardens were opened with great ceremony, and were then used by the Royal family for short visits, entertainment, and elaborate picnics. Over the centuries the marble pavilions on the island were expanded, and the gardens enhanced with lily ponds and courtyards. Marble balconies and walls were decorated with paintings and reliefs of historical triumphs, and coloured glass inlay. The rooms were furnished with elaborate local furniture.

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IND IA: H I S T O R Y A N D FA N TA S Y

Udaipur did not manage its affairs or its alliances as carefully as some of its neighbouring states, and did not share their prosperity. By the mid nineteenth century the buildings were in decline, and although additions were made to the complex, a century later it was mouldering, and mostly deserted. Maharana Bhagwat Singh became head of the ruling family in 1955, and realised that without any industry, he needed to create business for the district. He bravely converted Jag Niwas Palace into a luxury hotel, hoping to attract tourists to his remote city. The Palace is still owned by the Maharana’s second son, Arvind Singh Mewar. The Lake Palace Hotel opened in 1963, and despite its isolation it made Udaipur the popular tourist destination it is today. The Taj Group took over management of the hotel in 1971. Now the Taj Lake Palace, it was extensively restored in 2000.

CUPOLAS AND COLONNADES Remote, mysterious and enchanting, the low white marble and mosaic structure of the Palace is built to shoreline of a four acre island. Occasional cupolas and colonnades break its low bulk, and hints of hidden green gardens creep to the water’s edge.

A wing of modern guest rooms was added when the Palace was converted to a hotel, and during later renovations many of the once-open areas were enclosed. The reality of the old Palace lived up to its mysterious aura. A design consultant for the initial renovation commented that the original palace was riddled with peepholes, secret passages and hidden rooms, including one room that could only be entered from a trap door at the top. Although some of the renovations have been criticised as compromising the integrity of the original structure, its development has ensured the survival of the Lake Palace, and it remains as alluring to modern visitors as it was to the rulers of the House of Merwar who relaxed there 300 years ago. One selling point is the claim that the Royal Butlers – descendents of the original palace retainers – look after all contemporary comforts and ensure that all guests are treated like royalty.l The reflected romantic beauty of the Lake Palace floating in the still, shallow waters of Lake Pichola has attracted rock stars and royalty, as well as film-makers and photographers seeking out the Palace that, of all the Indian Palaces, epitomises the fantasy of living as the maharajahs once did.

GREAT, GRAND & FAMOUS HOTELS

Opposite and left: Two of the many terraces at the Lake Palace Hotel making the most of the lake setting. Above: The Chandraprakash Suite.

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Chapter

CH APTE R 16

258

SOUTH-EAST ASIA COLONIAL INDULGENCE

ince the beginning of the nineteenth century, the lure of the exotic Orient was irresistible to European and American travellers. The East was seductive, mysterious and culturally unknown. More and more travellers began to take the long journey east, and their accommodation needs paved the way for the creation of some of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most fabled hotels. Often architecturally Victorian, they offered colonial indulgences: sipping gin on tropical verandahs, billiards and cigars as afterdinner recreation, and elegant soirees. The great, grand and famous hotels not only provided creature comforts, but became an integral part of the history and social life of these South-east Asian outposts.

SOU TH -EAST ASIA: C O LO N I A L I N D U LG E N C E

EXPLORING THE MYSTERIES OF THE FAR EAST The golden age of travel began in earnest around 1880 and was born largely out of curiosity about the exotic Far East. Spices, rubber plantations, gemstones, different ethnicities and tales of instant fortunes all evoked images of mysterious and seductive worlds. International trading ports with foreign-sounding names sprung up between East and West and soon become not only familiar to the Europeans, but desirable. It was only a matter of time before the lure of travel to these far away places would become compelling. Moreover, because many of these destinations were under British rule, travellers had a sense of security when they journeyed East. The opening

of the Suez Canal in 1869 and the introduction of the steamship provided the vehicle for these adventurous spirits and the distance became significantly reduced. The Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887 also added to the optimism of the British at that time and even the more conservative were visiting the Far East, especially Singapore. Singapore became a key stop-off point for ships plying the direct route between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. The business of international travel was flourishing, but Asia had very little to offer in terms of accommodation compared to the grand and luxurious establishments of Europe. The visionary Sarkies Brothers were probably the first to understand this need and identify the potential business opportunities.

GREAT, GRAND & FAMOUS HOTELS

Above: European travellers enjoy the view from the Shwedagon Pagoda in Burma (now Myanmar) 1900.

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Chapter

CHINA & JAPAN

272

CENTURIES OF TRADITION

or centuries the Silk Road was the fabled link between East and West. Marco Polo, Kublai Khan and great adventurers such as Sven Hedlin and Peter Fleming all added to the mystique of the remote link between China and the ancient kingdoms of the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Xiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;an was the original starting point of the Silk Road and undisputed as the most powerful and cosmopolitan city in China. At that time trade was the focus of all human endeavour. Camel caravans carried rich and exotic wares through treacherous mountain passes and endless deserts. The Silk Road became a mecca for traders, conquerors, missionaries, adventurers and many of civilisationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first tourists, all with different cultures, beliefs and skills.

CH INA & JAPAN: C E N T U R I E S O F T R A D I T I O N China has the longest history of continuous development of any other civilisation in the world. The Chinese invented paper, gunpowder, the compass, irrigation procedures, and other early feats of engineering genius. Modern Chinese history has been mixed, but China is now the world’s most populous nation and an emerging economic powerhouse. It rambles over 10 million square kilometres. Tourism is a significant contributor to this contemporary growth and hotels are now springing up all over the country. Millions of visitors now come to China every year to see the ancient and modern wonders of the major cities of Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai and to soak up the atmosphere of their heritage hotels.

Above: The Lijiang Sanhe Hotel in Lijiang Old Town, chosen as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997, is a well-preserved representative of China’s older-style traditional hotels. Left: Crowds on Nanjing Road, China’s premier shopping street, in 2007, are testament to China’s economic growth. China’s per capita GDP is projected to quadruple by 2020.

GREAT, GRAND & FAMOUS HOTELS

273

Index of Hotels Adlon Hotel, Berlin www.hotel-adlon.de

Chateau Lake Louise, Alberta www.fairmont.com/lakelouise

208

Grand Hotel Europe, St Petersburg www.grandhoteleurope.com

Alfonso XIII Hotel, Seville www.hotel-alfonsoxiii.com

Chateau Marmont, Los Angeles www.chateaumarmont.com

200

Grand Hotel Mackinac, Michigan www.grandhotel.com

Algonquin Hotel, New York www.algonquinhotel.com

140

Chelsea Hotel, New York www.hotelchelsea.com

134

Grand Hotel National, Lucerne www.national-luzern.ch

Grand Hotel Oslo www.grand.no

Amstel Hotel, Amsterdam www.amsterdam.intercontinental.com

Cipriani Hotel, Venice www.hotelcipriani.com

165

Astor Hotel, Tianjin 279 www.sinohotel.com/hotel/hotel.html?hid=502

Claridge’s Hotel, London www.claridges.co.uk

114

Grand Hotel Pupp, Karlovy-Vary www.pupp.cz

Badrutt’s Palace Hotel, St Moritz www.badruttspalace.com

Copacabana Palace, Rio de Janeiro www.copacabanapalace.com.br

103

Grand Hotel Rome www.stregis.com/grandrome

56 78

Banff Springs Hotel, Alberta www.fairmont.com/BanffSprings

298

68 206

Crillon, Paris www.crillon.com

Grand Hôtel Stockholm www.grandhotel.se

Greenbrier, White Sulphur Springs www.greenbrier.com

Baur au lac, Zurich www.bauraulac.ch

Danieli, Venice www.danieli.hotelinvenice.com

Bauer-Grünwald, Venice www.bauervenezia.com

Del Coronado, San Diego www.hoteldel.com

Bayerischer Hof, Munich www.bayerischerhof.de

Dolder Grand, Zurich www.doldergrand.ch

Beijing Hotel, Beijing www.beijing.raffles.com

274

Bellagio Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas www.bellagio.com

166

Gritti Palace, Venice www.gritti.hotelinvenice.com

168 43

Halekulani Hotel, Oahu www.halekulani.com

170

Dorchester Hotel, London www.dorchesterhotel.com

120

Hassler Hotel, Rome www.hotelhasslerroma.com

191

Drake Hotel, Chicago www.thedrakehotel.com

175

Hotel Bel-Air, Los Angeles www.hotelbelair.com

199

Beverly Hills Hotel, Los Angeles www.thebeverlyhillshotel.com

194

E&O (Eastern & Oriental), Penang www.e-o-hotel.com

260

Hotel de Paris, Monte Carlo en.hoteldeparismontecarlo.com

Beverly Wilshire Hotel, Los Angeles www.fourseasons.com/beverlywilshire

196

Excelsior Hotel, Venice www.starwoodhotels.com

Hotel d’Angleterre, Copenhagen www.dangleterre.com

Breakers Resort, Palm Beach www.thebreakers.com

162

Fairmont Empress, Victoria www.fairmont.com/empress

210

Hotel du Louvre, Paris www.hoteldulouvre.com

Brown’s Hotel, London www.brownshotel.com

122

Fairmont Hotel, San Francisco www.fairmont.com/sanfrancisco

180

IceHotel, Jukkasjärvi www.icehotel.com

Burj Al Arab, Dubai www.burj-al-arab.com

228

Galle Face Hotel, Columbo www.gallefacehotel.com

265

Imperial Hotel, New Delhi www.theimperialindia.com

248

Carlton Hotel, Cannes www.ichotelsgroup.com

288

George V, Paris www.fourseasons.com/paris

Imperial Hotel, Tokyo www.imperialhotel.co.jp

291

Caesars Palace, Las Vegas www.harrahs.com

190

Gleneagles Hotel, Perthshire www.gleneagles.com

Chateau Frontenac, Québec www.fairmont.com./frontenac

212

Goldener Hirsch, Salzburg www.goldenerhirsch.com

28 129 85

Imperial Hotel, Vienna www.imperial.viennahotels.it

Kämp Hotel, Helsinki www.hotelkamp.fi

IND EX O F H OTEL S

La Mamounia, Marrakesh www.mamounia.com

224

Palmer House, Chicago www.chicagohilton.com

174

Langham Hotel, London london.langhamhotels.co.uk

108

Paris Las Vegas Hotel & Casino www.parislasvegas.com

189

Peace Hotel, Shanghai www.shanghaipeacehotel.com

282

Sherry-Netherland Hotel, New York www.sherrynetherland.com

151

Luxor Resort Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas 189 www.luxor.com

Peninsula Hotel, Hong Kong www.hongkong.peninsula.com

286

St. Francis Hotel, San Francisco www.westinstfrancis.com

178

Mandarin Oriental, Tokyo www.mandarinoriental.com

Pera Palas Hotel, Istanbul www.perapalas.com

100

St. Regis Hotel, New York www.stregis.com/newyork

142

Pierre Hotel, New York www.tajhotels.com/pierre

151

Strand Hotel, Yangon www.ghmluxuryhotels.com/Strand.htm

260

Taj Lake Palace, Udaipur www.tajhotels.com

250 246

Les Trois Rois, Basel www.lestroisrois.com

Martinez Hotel, Cannes www.hotel-martinez.com

294 34

Scribe Hotel, Paris hotel-scribe-paris.h-rez.com Shelbourne Hotel, Dublin www.marriott.co.uk

15 128

Mena House, Cairo www.oberoimenahouse.com

222

Plaza Athénée, Paris www.plaza-athenee-paris.com

Metropole Hotel, Hanoi www.sofitel.com

270

Plaza, New York www.theplazaresidences.com

144

Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, Mumbai www.tajhotels.com

Raffles Hotel, Singapore singapore-raffles.raffles.com

262

Treetops Hotel, Aberdare National Park 236 www.aberdaresafarihotels.com

254

Umaid Bhawan Palace, Jodhpur www.tajhotels.com

Meurice Hotel, Paris www.meuricehotel.com

252

MGM Grand, Las Vegas www.mgmgrand.com

189

Rambagh Palace, Jaipur www.jaipurhotels.net

Moana Surfrider, Oahu www.moana-surfrider.com

170

Reid’s Palace Hotel, Madeira www.reidspalace.com

Venetian Resort Hotel Casino, Las Vegas 189 www.venetian.com

Ritz Barcelona www.ritz-barcelona.com

Victoria Falls Hotel, Victoria Falls www.victoriafallshotel.com

242

Victoria-Jungfrau Hotel, Interlaken www.victoria-jungfrau.ch

Villa d’ Este, Lake Como www.villadeste.it

Montreux Palace, Montreux www.fairmont.com/montreux

Mount Kenya Safari Club, Mount Kenya 234 www.fairmont.com/KenyaSafariClub Mount Nelson Hotel, Cape Town www.mountnelson.co.za Negresco Hotel, Nice www.hotel-negresco-nice.com

238 36

Ritz Carlton, Tokyo 294 www.ritzcarlton.com/en/Properties/Tokyo Ritz London www.theritzlondon.com

118

Ritz Madrid www.ritzmadrid.com

Waldorf=Astoria, New York www.waldorfastoria.com

136, 148

Wildflower Hall, Shimla www.oberoiwildflowerhall.com

257

New York New York, Las Vegas www.nynyhotelcasino.com

189

Ritz Paris www.ritzparis.com

Norfolk Hotel, Nairobi www.fairmont.com/norfolkhotel

232

Roosevelt Hotel, Hollywood www.hollywoodroosevelt.com

198

Willard Hotel, Washington www.washington.intercontinental.com

182

Oriental Hotel, Bangkok www.mandarinoriental.com/bangkok

266

Royal Hawaiian Hotel, Oahu www.royal-hawaiian.com

170

Winter Palace, Luxor www.sofitel.com

220

Palace Hotel, San Francisco www.sfpalace.com

176

Sacher Hotel, Vienna www.sacher.com

Palace of the Lost City, Sun City 240 www.sun-city-south-africa.com/palace.asp

Savoy Hotel, London www.fairmont.com/Savoy

89 110

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