Imagine then, my perplexity when I found myself trudging from hotel to hotel, baggage in tow, and my friend refusing to check in anywhere. The rooms looked fine to me, the hotels reasonably secure. What could be the matter? At the third hotel, my friend finally explained: she refused to stay at any hotel that didn’t have white sheets.
White bed linen. White towels. White robes. Code for luxury.
All five-star hotels have them, and most four-star and three-starred hotels
too, since they model themselves on the five-starred ones. But oh! The quiet
boredom of five-star décor! Over the years, I have also written a few stories
for travel magazines, which involved staying at five-star hotels with the
implicit understanding between the editors and the hotels (who were also advertisers
for the magazines) that the article should subtly nudge the reader towards the
joys that were on offer. For a writer like me, this is a hard ask. Part of the
problem is that I don’t like to do as I’m told, but even when I am willing, there’s
the additional problem of not having much to write about. Every fancy hotel is
more or less like another fancy hotel. They celebrate this monotony by putting
out advertising jargon that describes the experience of staying at such hotels
as ‘home’.
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