In the 1995 sci-fi movie Johnny Mnemonic, celebrated as an early classic of the ‘cyberpunk’ movement (novels and films focused on high tech and low life), Keanu Reaves plays a highly paid data courier with a cybernetic brain implant that allows him to upload information and smuggle it to faceless corporations across the world.
Needless to say, he runs into baddies on one of his trips and ends up being saved from assassination by the outcast Lo-Teks, an anti-establishment group whose HQ built on the underside of the abandoned Brooklyn bridge is known as Heaven. Classic stuff!
I won’t spoil the rest of the plot but suffice to say the film’s most memorable quote is from the scene when Johnny, on his first night experiencing the grimy world of the Lo-Teks, has a tantrum. “You listen to me,” he cries. “You see that city over there?
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That’s where I’m supposed to be. Not down here with the dogs, and the garbage, and...last month’s newspapers blowing back and forth. I’ve had it with them, I’ve had it with you, I’ve had it with all — I want room service! I want the club sandwich, I want the cold Mexican beer…! I want my shirts laundered... like they do... at the Imperial Hotel... in Tokyo.”
Ah, I hear you say, finally something about hotels! Yes, my point this month is that Johnny is right: hotels do represent comfort, and pampering, and indeed security. And of course, they have people running around to do everything for you. Those are their key selling propositions. Home may be where the heart is, but a hotel should compensate for us being away from our loved ones in myriad ways.
CIVILISED CALM
For a start, hotels should be oases of calm, embassies of civilization for bemused tourists and stressed-out executives in foreign climes. Just a taxi ride away from the teeming airport or a revolving door away from the bustling main street, the lobby of the hotel is suddenly orderly, quiet, controlled, carpeted, genteel.
Perhaps a string quartet is softly playing near the aspidistra in the corner, or muzak is telling you your personal soundtrack is now in chill-out mode. Elegantly dressed people in no hurry at all are taking tea and reading newspapers in the plush lobby lounge. You take a deep breath. Ah, yes, here is where the world is suddenly better.
Solicitous flunkies in sharp uniforms usher you to the front desk, where with ingratiating smiles and flattering banter, your deposit is painlessly extracted. You glide to the elevator, float up to your room, elegantly tip the bellboy as if to the manor born — what a nice person he is and what a nice person you are!
Once inside you can peek through the chintz curtains at your matchless view over Central Park or tiptoe through the French windows to gape at the beauty of the ocean sunset. You flop blissfully into an armchair — or a bed or a bath — that enfolds you like the arms of your own beloved better half. You couldn’t imagine yourself in a better place at that moment.
My measure of a good hotel is that it should be nicer than my house — probably a lot nicer! Not to say that my house is very luxurious, but it’s very cozy and full of my stuff, so I like it. By contrast, a hotel room should have just the right number of comfortable furnishings, not too many as to feel cluttered, not too few as to feel empty, the absence of ‘stuff’ being a key virtue for those of us who live in a mess at home.
When I was at boarding school, my parents used to take me out to tea sometimes at a local hotel. At that age — I was a young teenager — I used to hate everything I’ve just described.
The stuffiness of an English country hotel was unbearable to me then, especially as it was so boring and such a poor alternative to being taken home for a full weekend. Strange that as an adult I now find the slow pace, pomp and circumstance of hotels and their various time-honoured ceremonies a great comfort in an increasingly frazzled world.
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