Hotels Worth Checking

For a banquet it really wasn’t much.

It was something I believe the menu called medaillons de boeuf bechamel en crout and the rest of the world would probably call “creamed chipped beef on toast.”

Then, too, the “delicate bouquet” of the beef seemed to be mixing it up with somebody’s perfume. Ever eat beef that tasted like perfume?

“It’s not what you’d expect from a great hotel, is it?” asked the woman on my left. I answered that the meal was just about what I expected and shared my opinion on most hotel cooking, which I feel is generally better than most hospitals’, but not as good as the Army’s.

She laughed, which made me feel better. “Maybe,” she said, “you haven’t stayed at enough truly great hotels.”

I admitted I probably hadn’t stayed at any , and maybe it was really an oversight, but I was not about to pump two or three grand into a place like the Paris Ritz for a week’s stay just for the experience. She suggested that an interview with a “truly great hotelier” might serve just as well.

“Do you have any one in mind?” my wife, Joyce, asked.

“Why, yes,” the woman said. “I used to work for him. He owns the Beverly Hills Hotel--the Sultan of Brunei.”

Joyce just about strangled on her sorbet. Neither of us could see me hanging around the richest man in the world asking dumb questions about some of his belongings when he probably has at least two of everything there is to own and doesn’t even know some of them are hotels.

The suggestion died, but not the idea. Since then I’ve talked with a lot of hotel operators. I’m presenting some of their thoughts here because I think travelers ought to know what and how some of the better hotel people think.

I talked to an innkeeper in Washington, D.C, William Edwards, who’s general manager of the Washington Hilton, which keeps 1,150 rooms occupied most of the time.

Sweet Arrival

After checking into the Hilton we found a quarter of a pound box of chocolates, along with a nice welcoming card from Edwards, in our room. Naturally, as we were both on diets, we immediately ate the chocolates.

I found Edwards at the front desk and thanked him. He looked so youthful that I asked him if he were really the manager. He was obviously pleased. “Oh, I’ve been around the block a time or two. I’ve been with Hilton 17 years, but I must have worked five years before they ever let me into a suit.”

“Doing what?” I asked.

“Bus boy, housekeeping, maintenance, everything.”

Though he had been university-educated in hotel management, he’d had to go through Hilton’s extensive training program, which demanded hands-on experience in all aspects of hotel work.

In answer to my question about what hotels owe their guests, he had a ready reply: “The most enjoyable visit possible. Little things like candy and a card make a person feel welcome, but the real secret of good innkeeping is staff. You have to hire, train and keep the best in the business, from bus boys to management.

“Then, if you’ve got good facilities, the rest is almost automatic. Of course everything else has to be good, too. We used almost a million clean sheets last year, served 898,000 good meals, had 425,000 guests and used 40,000 bars of soap.”

“Not much soap for half a million guests.”

He smiled. “Well, those are good-size bars.”

When I asked Edwards what he thought the guests owed the hotel, he gave me a broad smile. “Conrad Hilton said it best: ‘Please, always put the shower curtain inside the tub.’ ”

Zoo Neighbors

Paul Edward Barron is deputy manager of Edinburgh’s Post House. The Post House is a 208-bed hotel that backs up against the Edinburgh Zoo. Another feature is that this hotel is nearly always full, which struck me as a little incongruous.

“Don’t the animals present a few problems?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, “I’m not too thrilled when the elephants hold their trumpet recitals, but it’s not as bad as it used to be.” He told me about a time when one of the zoo’s noisier females came in season, arousing the amorous interests of her even noisier male counterparts.

“One of our guests,” Barron said, “wanted me to go up the hill and shut them up. Can you imagine that? We bring them all the way from Africa, keep them in cages, take away their privacy and then when the first interesting thing for them comes up, we don’t even want them to talk about it.

“Oh, we don’t short the guests,” he said. “We solved the problem. Every sleeping room in the Post House is now double-glazed.

“Besides, I think the animals probably ought to get some kind of award for putting up with us .”

He went on to explain that a 208-bed hotel sleeps 416 people, but it also has to figure on feeding three meals a day to each of those people. That’s 8,736 meals a week. Buses as well as taxis are constantly arriving and leaving.

“A great deal of daytime activity goes on around here,” Barron said.

“What’s that got to do with the animals?”

“Well,” he said with a broad smile, “a lot of those animals are day-sleepers.”

“What do you think a good innkeeper owes his guests?”

“A better night’s sleep than they can get at home, complete courtesy and equality. And the last two you also owe to your staff. Treat everybody the same, with great courtesy.”

“And what do you think the guests owe the hotel?” I asked.

“Patience,” he said.

And in Canada

Desmond Bascom is general manager of the 40-room Relax Plaza Hotel near Toronto’s airport. The Relax Plaza bills itself as part of Canada’s newest chain of economy hotels.

Bascom and his assistant manager, Peter King, almost answered in unison when I asked what a hotel owes its guests. “Everything,” they said. Then King amended the statement: “Everything reasonable.”

Added Bascom: “It’s not reasonable to expect a 40-room hotel to have bellhops. And though we do provide room service, it’s not reasonable to expect it from most small hotels.

“Every guest has the absolute right to courtesy and a good, clean, comfortable room. Every hotel man’s nightmare of not being able to handle that basic requirement happened to me once.

“All hotels overbook,” King said. “About 7% to 10% of the people who make reservations will not show. You have to overbook.”

Earlier in Desmond Bascom’s career, all of the people who booked rooms showed up and he had 20 tired and irate people in his lobby with no place to sleep. He solved the situation by hiring space on a cruise ship and taking the overbooking victims on a cruise.

“They had a right. If a hotel accepts your reservation, it must provide you accommodations that are as good or better than you asked for.”

“And what do the guests owe the hotel?”

“If we’ve done our job right, we think we’ve earned their continued patronage. How’s that sound?”

“Phony.”

“OK, then how about ‘Pay the bill, leave the towels, don’t strip the mini-bar and if we’ve treated you right, come back.’ ”

“And please,” King said, “remember that courtesy goes both ways.”

Paul Carlin, besides being instantly likable, is the manager of Borrowdale Gates Hotel near Keswick, England. Keswick is on Durant Water, one of the northernmost lakes of England’s lake country. The hotel has 27 rooms, yet it has a chef who’s so good that people come from all over the district to eat in the hotel dining room.

Beautiful Places

If you’re choosing the world’s 10 most beautiful places, one of them would certainly have to be England’s Lake District. And the hotel, looking more like a very well-kept country house among ancient trees by a river, was a winner.

Our room looked out on a well-manicured yard, with a background of fields and mountains. The immediate foreground was just as rustic. Right outside our window a ram, so old that he was graying around the muzzle, was limping from flower bed to flower bed, eating the garden.

Joyce offered it an oatcake. The ram looked at her as if she were crazy, and went back to decimating the flora. I ate the oatcake.

When we met Paul Carlin and Shiela MacDonald, his assistant, we mentioned the ram. “Damn,” he said. “I suppose I’m going to have to run him off one of these days.”

“Sure you will,” MacDonald said.

“It’s just that he’s so old,” Carlin said, “and he’s got a bit of a game leg and, well, they’re only flowers.”

At that moment Borrowdale Gates Hotel, eight miles outside of Keswick, became Joyce’s favorite hotel.

I never did ask Paul Carlin any of my questions. He always stopped to chat, and he answered the questions before I could ask. The guests had a right to expect the innkeeper to love his job, which would automatically make him a good host.

Management had a right to know that the guests were enjoying their stay and able to appreciate the beauty and tranquillity of the area.

Summer and Winter

“There’s only a short time when that isn’t entirely true,” Carlin said. “In the summer, when all 12 of the staff are here, there’s no problem.

“But in the winter there are just five of us, when half the trees are bare and the snow is falling and you can’t hear a sound except the crackling of the log fire in the fireplace. Then, when guests come, there’s just a fleeting feeling of intrusion. Just the briefest time. Then they blend, and it just feels as if the family got a little larger.”

The reference to inn guests as family also came up with Michael O’Brien, owner-operator of Ariel House, a 16-room hotel on Lansdowne Road in Dublin.

“Treat guests like family?” he asked. “Not on your life. Think of your guests as friends. Treat them like you treat your family and they’ll probably never come back.”