HOLIDAY TRAVEL
Pleasure Domes
By ANDREW ROBERTSON
THE rumour that the London Hilton will be con- verted into a kind of super London Clinic when its lease expires in twenty- five years' time is, as far as I know, without founda- tion, but it does tie in with the great Morris Lapidus's comment in his introduction to a massive v 4 ° American work on Resort Hotels, published last year by Reinhold (180s.). Remarking that all hotels ought to be run as resort hotels, because even people using them on business were also looking for relaxation, he added, 'The resort hotel is one of the most com- plex problems an architect ever has to solve, perhaps equalled only by hospitals. In both, the complexities of feeding and housing are in many ways alike.. .
The big difference, it seems to me, is that the hospital occupant brings his complaint with him. But the serious Lapidus comparison reminds us that in planning a hospital the architect has to pay attention to a team of specialists and their needs. In planning a hotel the architect generally has to rely on the opinions of one man. If that man happens to be Conrad Hilton, well and good. If not, anything can happen. And once it has you can only change it by pulling the whole lot down and beginning again.
The solution I prefer, however, is the one adopted by Spain and Portugal, where the governments have set up establishments so attrac- tive and competitively priced (because they are subsidised) that the private-enterprise 'hotels and pensions are spurred on to higher standards. It works particularly well in Portugal with the pousadas, which have been developed in areas where private hOteliers have failed to provide adequate accommodation for tourists. The state builds them, lets them to managers and inspects them regularly and rigorously. Stays during the high season are limited to five days. Prices are incredibly low, 27s. 6d. for full board and bed-
room, 34s. with bath. The Pousada de Loios, opened last year at Evora (it is an old castle which later became a convent), costs from 47s. 6d.
Hotel prices,- for comparison, range from 45s. to. 57s. for the modern Vasco da Gama at Monte Gordo, just over the Spanish border from Heulva, to 65s. to 100s. for the Palacio in Estoril. The pousadas have another unfair advantage. They are beautifully sited, like the Do Infante at Sagres, overlooking the Atlantic and Henry the Navigator's Cape St Vincent. They are probably Europe's cheapest luxury. They are also highly individual. If you like to be close to the country, they are for you. If you like to be cosseted in international semi-luxury, then the growing groups of centrally organised hotels —Hilton, Rank, Panam's Intercontinental—pro- vide extensive circuits to plug into.
All three of those named are busy empire- building. Hilton's sixty-sixth opened in Paris with a fanfare of strumpets and a four-day jamboree last month. 'Pity it wasn't their sixty-ninth,' grumbled a local roue..Was it a coincidence that one of the fake `WANTED' posters at the great Western Bar-B-Q on the Friday night was for a 'Known layabout and hotel jumper'? You can now tour the free world without clearly knowing which city or country you are in. Unfair? 1 wouldn't know. The Athens Hilton has a taverna below stairs that serves up a passable version of Greek cooking, but there's no hope of getting tehina, mulukhia orluf la at the Nile Hilton, sup- posing anyone wanted them.
Intercontinental have a Dublin pleasure dome, awarded four stars out of an exacting five in the new AA Irish handbook, that will help to relieve some of the seasonal pressure on accom- modation, while, Rank have the South County in Dublin, the Silver Springs in Cork and the Trident. designed as a centre for deep-sea fisher- men, at Kinsale. Both groups are ramifying rapidly. Intercontinental are already in the Middle. East and Eastern Europe. The farthest that Rank have reached is the Costa Smeralda in Sardinia and the Canaries.
But these are well-appointed, well-run estab- hshments. They have the setting if not the set of the country in which they stand. One advantage about them for the tourist who neither looks for nor welcomes trouble is that he can be tolerably sure of the service awaiting him wherever one of these international hostelries exists. For others, more adventurously inclined, it is the very uncertainty of the small, remote and individual hotel or pension that attracts. To such wanderers the large de luxe affair is just an eating and sleeping machine that costs too much.
Norway typifies the country where most of the hotels are small, friendly, informal and different (from each other as well as from most others in Scandinavia). Egon Ronay comments in his new Guide to Scandinavia's Best Hotels and Restaurants (Four Square, 21s.) that only Oslo has de luxe hotels. For the most part the rest are clean, unpretentious and honest, like the Nor- wegian people. And this may be the key to their • success. Simply because there is no insuperable gap in the standard of living from the highest to the lowest, and because the Norwegians, as Ronay says, are self-reliant and man-to-man, the hotel guest is treated more like a house guest. He is not expected to help with the washing-up (though in the mood they put me in I could fall for that myself), but he may be expected to clean his own shoes. The food served in Nor- wegian hotels is generally similar to what Nor- wegians would eat at home. They are justly proud of their national kitchen and like to see the foreign visitor take an interest in and enjoy it. The beds can be hard, the decor simple to the point of being bare wood and the staff small and far from servile. The point is that the hotel is there for food and shelter for the mountaineer, walker, skier and fisherman. But it is not an eating and sleeping machine, it's a living unit.
My pet example of this is the little hotel above the lake at Vatnahalsen, just off the famous Flam line, run by the Jakobsen family. It has all the air of a superior youth hostel, costs 24s. a night, and a pretty girl plays the piano of an evening to the somnolent fell-walkers and anglers.
Even higher I would rate the Brakanes at Ulvik, which Mr Ronay seems to have over- looked. At the head of the Hardanger Fjord, this elegant hotel (big by Norwegian standards) sits on green lawns right down by the water. Visitors are expected to borrow the rowing boats. Every room is arranged so that residents can walk straight down to the water in swimming gear. Most rooms have a balcony and a view over the fjord and the mountains. The Brakanes cold table, arranged by a French chef turned Norwegian, is a byword. The best food in Norway gathered on one board. A tour that kaves Ulvik out would be like going to Paris and taking your own food.
Previous page
