The Best Hotel in the World
Recently I wrote and published an article on this platform titled The Worst Hotel in the World. For some reason it received a substantial number of hits. My guess is that the title itself attracted interest thanks to SEO (Search Engine Optimization). A lot of people, for some strange reason, must be looking for a really crappy hotel in which to stay. Or it may be that “bad trips” stories are a fine source of entertainment for some readers. Why, there is an entire travel genre based on the topic of “not so funny when it happened.” I correctly stand accused myself.
I have to wonder if the opposite is also as entertaining, if anyone is actually looking for the “best” hotel, and if so, why. Certainly, few readers would be able to stay in the high-end, top-rated hotels where over the years I have been “comped,” but there are still entertaining stories to be told, as you may see in this story, and you can always look at the photos for free.
Since you and I have never met, it may be time for an introduction. For want of a better term, my profession is “travel writer.” I used to be an investigative journalist but that was then and this is now. Opinion polls have shown that the top three most envied professions in the world (or elsewhere) are astronaut, rock star and travel writer. As I always say, pigs will fly before I get into a small sardine can and fly to the moon, and if you heard me sing you would call the police. Thankfully, I come in at a respectable third place, which is better than last place (depending on the circumstances).
For instance, you could decide for reasons best known to yourself to become a politician. Such creatures, to quote Mark Twain, are like small babies. They need to be changed frequently and for the same reason. I shit thee not. On the other hand, travel writers like me are often forced to sleep in 5-star hotels whether they like it or not, just for a story. Thankfully, to quote humorist P.J. O’Rourke, “the first rule of journalism is never pay for your own drinks,” a strict principle to which many fine hotels adhere for the benefit of the fine and wonderful journalists they invite, and the fine and wonderful reviews these critics may write if properly bribed, and who am I to argue with that logic?
Should you have read the bestselling expose Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?” by (former) Lonely Planet reporter Thomas Kohnstamm (“A guidebook writer reveals the truth about his trade, in detail that will shock and awe.” — Outside Magazine) you may have already received a somewhat biased and negative opinion of the revered travel writing profession. Kohnstamm, like some fellow travel writers I know who sadly have written for Lonely Planet, reveals that LP writers get a flat fee for a book, they often sleep in a van, dash from café to restaurant to take photos of the menus and pretend they ate there, bounce on a few beds, and are out of town in a hurry. Hey, with a lousy $10,000 for writing an entire book, and no royalties, would you splurge on champagne? There’s nothing wrong with tap water, except in those countries where drinking tap water will threaten your existence.
But Lonely Planet style travel was never my preference. In my experience, people choose to travel on a style based on their personal opinion of themselves. Why else would an elderly person choose to sleep in a cheap hostel where frisky teenagers come back from the bar at 2 a.m. and make jolly in the bunk above you? Why stay in a flophouse when you know there are far better ways to travel? Well, some people don’t know any better, do they? Or else you could travel the world as I have, first class all the way, except when I have had to pay for my own wild and personal adventures, but that is an entirely different story to be told at a different time.
What is the best hotel in which I have ever stayed? This depends on the definition of “best.” Dictionaries usually share the same description: “That which is the most excellent, outstanding, or desirable.” Aha, the definition of “desirable” may be the most accurate explanation. Beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder. One person’s idea of heaven is another person’s description of hell. To each their own. Frankly, over time, the number of threads in the bed sheets in any hotel in which I have stayed doesn’t matter a whit to me. I have interests other than comfort and luxury.
The “Most Expensive Hotel Room in the World,” at the time I visited there (and the story I published), was the Royal Suite at the Atlantis Hotel in Dubai. It cost $57,000 US a night but I expect the room rate has risen since then. Inflation, you know. I happened to be in the United Arab Emirates on a Press Trip, which I should explain is on the other end of the luxury scale from a Lonely Planet backpacker lifestyle. Fine hotels and luxury resorts would prefer fine reviews in the Western “press” (i.e. the media, or “newspapers,” if you remember them) so as to attract those affluent customers who could afford to pay the rates.
The room where the esteemed travel writer stays may be priced at several thousand dollars per night, but buying a full page in a newspaper would cost the hotel ten times as much, and being viewed as an advertisement it would not carry the same weight as a review from a fine and distinguished critic (such as myself). Bring on the champagne! No, I didn’t actually stay overnight at the Royal Suite. I visited, took photos and bounced on the same bed as Kim Kardashian did the night before just to see if it still worked. Fait accompli, as they say in Paris.
I have enjoyed multiple trips to Taiwan courtesy of the Taiwan Tourism Bureau. They seemed to like me, maybe because I published many favourable reviews. Taiwan is one of my favourite countries. I stayed there one time in a 2,000-square foot villa in a bamboo forest hidden in the “largest private garden in the world.” It took me two hours to fill up the bathtub just to have a quick swim before dinner. I woke at dawn to wander around the vast misty grounds in a state of awe.
But my favorite luxury destination may be Switzerland, where the Tourism Board asked me in advance to describe my prospective story line, so they could adequately prepare for my majestic arrival. I stated in my proposal that tourism as we now know it started during the Industrial Revolution around 1850 as Thomas Cook in Britain started organizing trips to the Alps for the rich folks who owned the factories in Blighty, creating what eventually became known as the “Grand Tour.”
Well, why not re-create the Grand Tour today? I asked. The Swiss Tourism Board thought this was a wonderful idea, and set out to book me into the finest hotels in the world. Modestly, I accepted. Sometime writers need to gird their loins to endure the unexpected. How else would I know that I would somehow need to endure sleeping in my own 2,000-square foot villa under the trees in a vineyard and enjoy dinner with a beautiful PR lady where just the prawn appetizer on the menu was $92 US? OK, the rest of the dinner was pretty good as well. No, I didn’t ask the price. I seldom did on any press trips, especially when I was upgraded to the presidential suite just because it happened to be empty when I arrived.
Never mind luxurious food, what other qualities should attract visitors to a great hotel? Well, there’s the ambience and the view just for starters. The Post Ranch Inn, located high atop a cliff in the Big Sur region of California, has been rated as the “top boutique hotel in the United States.” The fog far below (better known as a marine layer) made the view seem like flying first class in a private jet plane. You could sit in the dining room for hours and not see a thing below, aside from a sheet of white fog while imagining you had been transported to heaven. The bedsheets were pretty good too.
Speaking of heaven, I am partial to hotels located in remote wilderness destinations, which might not be everyone’s cup of tea. Ecuador (yes, the one in South America) is home to more bird species than the rest of the world combined. Staying at Mashpi Lodge, deep in the perpetual mist of the vast cloud forest high in the Andes mountains, was like lounging in the Garden of Eden.
Better yet was King Pacific Lodge, a floating paradise on the edge of the Great Bear Forest in northern British Columbia, with its resident eagles high atop the majestic Douglas Firs looming right outside the door, and dozens of humpback whales in the bay, some of them feeding off the edge of the dock, the waters of the Inside Passage teeming with salmon and halibut, and all-white “spirit bears” living in the forest. A shame the accountant made off with all the money and the lodge became just another fishing destination for overweight fishermen from Oklahoma. That may have been the “best” place I ever stayed, but its no longer there so you can’t book a room. Sorry.
The list of excellent hotels I have visited is endless. As a travel writer with stories appearing in major daily newspapers all across Canada on a weekly basis for many years I was treated to excellent service as well as fine accommodations. That service often meant my own personal driver, guide and translator. In retrospect, however, it was never the luxury that attracted me. Quite frankly, you actually get used to luxury rather quickly and can form a delusional opinion of yourself, as if you were really somebody rich and famous, as many of the other lodge or hotel guests may turn out to be.
No, after awhile I learned that if I asked nicely I could request the Tourism Bureaus allow me to continue my trip, but at my own expense of course, as long as I moved sideways to a nearby village or barrio to meet the local people and also meet my own meagre travel budget. No matter the luxury and fantasy of 5-star life, I found its meeting ordinary people that are always more interesting than indulging in great luxury.
“Travel broadens the mind,” goes the old expression. On your next fancy hotel trip or vacation, grab that complimentary basket of fruit you may find placed in your hotel suite and take it with you to the local barrio, where you can hand out the bananas to the children you meet there. Those are the kind of memories that last forever. OK, I’ll get around later to discussing the free 90-minute body massages and complimentary helicopter flights that the “best” resorts in the world offer to travel writers and affluent folks, but of course that’s yet another story altogether.