Hotel Babylon
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4.2 • 5 Ratings
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
'Something strange occurs to guests as soon as they check in. Even if in real life they are perfectly well-mannered, decent people with proper balanced relationships, as soon as they spin through the revolving hotel doors the normal rules of behaviour no longer seem to apply.'
All of the following is true.Only the names have been changed to protect the guilty. All the anecdotes, the stories, the characters, the situations, the highs, the lows, the scams, the drugs, the misery, the love, the death and the insanity are exactly as was told by Anonymous - someone who has spent his whole career working in hotels at the heart of London's luxury hotel industry. However, for legal reasons, the stories now take place in a fictitious hotel known as Hotel Babylon. More than a decade is compressed into a day. Everything else is as it should be. The rich spend money, the hotel makes money and the chambermaids still fight the bellboys over a two-pound coin.It's just another twenty-four hours in an expensive London hotel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The anonymous author, who now manages an unnamed five-star hotel, has spent the past 15 years working in London's top lodgings. With British journalist Edwards-Jones, the author compresses these years into a 24-hour period (divided into one chapter for every hour) and places the events at a fictitious Hotel Babylon (to protect the guilty who may include the author). The result is an irreverent expos of the often unimaginable debauchery and dishonesty of the luxury hotel industry. The insider's perspective affords honest assessments of the guests, workers and the hotel itself, revealing that "the scams are endless.... The suppliers do the hotel, the staff do the hotel and the hotel tries to do everyone." The man who can afford a 250 -per-night room but refuses to pay his 850-quid worth of calls to porn lines is despicable, but so is the hotel when it appends corkage fees for bottles never opened to unknowing wedding parties. In addition to including details of the rich and famous , the book shares odd "day-in-the-life of a front-desk receptionist" anecdotes (e.g., a naked lady singing in the lobby, a false fire alarm and the natural death of an old woman who lived at the hotel).
