In a previous Tale I described a three week business trip to
the US where I had been booked in to Holiday Inn Hotels for every night of my
stay. That experience is what put me off chain hotels. There was nothing
fundamentally wrong with the hotels, or the quality of service, or the
cleanliness, but those places are a bit formulaic. Since 1993 I have tended to
book my own accommodation.
I remember thinking ‘corporate is best’ when I was booked
into a New York hotel between a flight from the UK and an onward flight to
Vancouver back in 1992. The room door security was ridiculous and I felt like a
multi-padlock was the only thing missing, other than maybe a doorlock-activated
sub-machine gun! For the most part I have felt safe in the places I have
stayed, but there have just been a few instances in the USA where I have felt
less than comfortable. A second was in Charlotte, North Carolina when the pizza
delivery man refused to bring the pizza into my room as normal. Apparently only
a few days beforehand another pizza delivery man had been badly beaten after
entering a hotel room, all for the sake of a few dollars.
My quest to book into local, family run establishments led
me to some interesting and memorable places. In 1997 I flew with a colleague to
Salzburg en route to Villach in Austria, arriving at about 9:30pm to find the
place pretty well locked up. After poking our heads around various creaking
doors, we were eventually confronted by a formally dressed middle aged man who
organised our keys and then told us that the restaurant had closed for the
night and that we would not find anywhere open nearby where we could grab a
bite to eat. So we ate almost the entire breakfast buffet the following
morning! The beds were comfortable although the rooms were stark, and at the
time it was a little alien to stay in a place without a television, but that’s
something I have become used to, and now prefer.
I stopped in a similar, much friendlier hotel near Kiel in
northern Germany in 1999. Our distributor Thomas Siewert had kindly booked me
into a ‘local family run hotel’ where I was to stay for three nights, again
without a television. In reality, when I have travelled the only times I have
watched TV is to catch up on a few minutes of news. Hotel rooms provide just a
bed for the night, and I generally fall into them after a late night with
clients, and fall out again for breakfast or to get on the road.
Thomas was an incredibly likeable and hardworking fellow,
and became a good friend but he lived, breathed, and dreamed about his work,
and days out with Thomas were a nightmare: at least 14 hours including travel,
multiple meetings, and then a restaurant meal to talk more about work in the
evening. I told his partner Petra that Thomas would drive himself into the
ground if he was not careful, and she agreed but said ‘what can I do?’ So one
night near Frankfurt I decided to challenge him. Barcelona were playing
Manchester United that night in the Champions League, so when the clock struck
exactly 9pm I told Thomas that I had had enough of work for the day and that I
was going to watch the football. He was incredulous: “But we have not finished
our work!” he shrieked. The following morning I explained to Thomas that in
order for me to think clearly about my work I needed to have some time away
from work that didn’t involve sleeping! I also explained that I felt Petra was
becoming concerned for his health, and that perhaps he should have some more
quality time with her.
Back to the local family run hotel near Kiel. On the final
night of my stay Thomas joined me for an evening meal and to discuss our plans
for the German market. At exactly 9pm, he proudly stated “and now, I have had
enough of my work John so I will show you my photographs from my holiday in the
Seychelles.” I have never seen so many photographs of a man holding a fish in all
my life!!
Throughout my travelling years I have stayed in places for
the sake of convenience, either to be close to highways for an onward journey,
or to be within a short drive of my first meeting the following day. So I have
stayed in Campaniles and Toucans and Shoney’s and all kinds of places that
would not normally be my first choice, but which are perfectly adequate if a
bed for the night is all you need. However, when you stop in a hotel for several
nights running, you don’t want shower heads falling off, chair legs collapsing,
damp carpets and the other horrors that can occasionally conspire against you.
And when that happened to a group of us in Hannover one year during a five
night stay, I swore it would never be allowed to happen again!
The net result was that we stayed for seven consecutive
years in a fabulous little artisan hotel in the middle of Hannover and within a
five minute walk of the Hauptbahnhof. And each year Mr. Reed stayed there, his
room was upgraded until in the fifth year he was in the Presidential suite! In
what other hotel would you be greeted by a free shot of schnaps? These hotels
are out there and very often you don’t have to look too hard. They allow you
interact with real people from the city, who can genuinely tell you the best
places to go to eat and drink and be entertained. So live the places you stay,
even if you do only need a bed for the night.
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