Hotels

If you want to run a profitable pub you can do worse than make sure it’s located next to a newspaper office. There are probably plenty of publicans who retired early due to the enthusiastic drinking habits of journalists. I know of one, however, whose business went under courtesy of a crazed bouncer whose violent actions towards a member of the press saw his much-loved media watering hole subject to an instant and highly effective boycott.

Some years ago I was drinking at this pub in Sydney’s Surry Hills with a bunch of colleagues. It was a quiet night, the right side of midnight, nobody was blithering, and another group of friends had arranged to meet us there for a quiet one before pulling up stumps. They had been down at Circular Quay for a Movember party, celebrating the end of the month where men grow facial hair to raise money for prostate cancer and depression. One of them had grown a luxuriant Eastern European handlebar number and was dressed as Borat in a dreadful beige suit, holding a vinyl 1970s travel bag and a Kazakhstan flag.

There was a newish bouncer at the pub that night who immediately took a set against our Borat chum, seeking him out on his arrival to say that he was too drunk to be served and if he tried to order a beer we would all be turfed out.

Continue reading "Gorillas and the pissed" »

So much for modern hotels being soulless. Below are some edited highlights from a survey of guest habits from Novotel released today.

A guy’s girlfriend liked farms. So he asked for their room to be filled with hay.

A guest in Australia’s great shiraz-producing Barossa Valley heard about the hotel’s signature red-wine spa treatment. He asked for a bath full of red wine in his room.

Continue reading "It’s room service! Did you order the 33 rubber ducks?" »