Hotel Babylon: Inside the Extravagance and Mayhem of a Luxury Five-Star Hotel

by ImogenEdwards-Jones (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2004

  $22.73

• Used

  Paperback
  2006

  $3.26

  Something strange occurs to people as soon as they check in to a luxury hotel. Otherwise well mannered, decent folk cast their scruples aside as they spin through the revolving doors. Normal rules of behaviour no longer seem to apply. Everything you read in Hotel Babylon is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the guilty. All the anecdotes, the characters, the highs, the lows, the drugs, the scams, the misery and the debauchery are exactly as experienced by Anonymous - someone who has spent his entire career working in some of the most luxurious hotels in London. However, for legal reasons, the stories now take place in the fictional Hotel Babylon. More than a decade is compressed into twenty-four hours. Everything else is as it should be. The rich spend obscene amounts of money, the hotel makes obscene amounts of money and the chambermaids still fight the bellboys over a two-pound coin...

• Used

  Hardcover
  2004

  $3.26

  The hotel business is a licence to print money - not only for the managers, owners and shareholders, but for the people who work there. From chambermaids' tips, to doormen making #2,000 a week, to the concierge taking back handers, to the vegetable supplier's book keeping double entry - everyone in the hotel trade is on the make. The hotel business is a licence for the guests to steal - anything from bathrobes, loo seats (wooden and Victorian from the Savoy), pictures, fridges, ashtrays, teaspoons - even re-filling the vodka bottle in the mini bar with water. The hotel business is a licence for guests to behave badly - from rent boys and girls by the hour, to #800 on telephone porn bills, #24,000 room parties, office sex, drugs, dead sheep, splashing out on #5,000 bottles of wine, guests falling through windows, naked guests, drunken guests and guests who have to be sectioned. The hotel business is also a licence for celebrity to reign supreme - from Michael Jackson's Evian bath to Madonna's odd curtain fetish, Kate Moss and Johnny Depp's parties, Princess Diana's taste for champagne, Pamela Anderson's sexual gymnastics, The Queen Mother's chips and Prince Phillip's Silver Bullet cocktail. HOTEL BABYLON is a trawl through the highs and lows, the extremes, the tragedies, the miseries, the decadence and the debauchery of the ultimate service industry - where money not only talks, but gets you the best room, the best service, and also entitles you to behave in any way you please ...

• New

  paperback
  

  $15.57

  '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.