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Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Covington: Hotel
By Gary Covington
Looking On
"The Grand Regal Hotel runs to P6,000 a night while a suite at the Marco Polo will set you back P14,500. Nothing approaching a million there."
HAS anyone done the maths yet? That a hotel suite--you know the one--or any hotel suite could possibly cost $20,000 daily. That's P1,000,000. One million pesos for a night's zizz.
I used to work away from home a lot. Accommodation varied from the ridiculous--once a rusty twenty-foot shipping container with the door and window openings blow-torched out, another time a mango warehouse reeking of old mangoes--to the usual. I did time too in a variety of hotel rooms.
Most were basic no-frills rooms kitted out with the essentials. Bathroom and bed, table and chairs and a television set. Now and again bureaucracy threw a wobbly and I'd find myself living in the lap of luxury; a hotel with carpeted elevators and someone who snuck into my room every evening to turn down the bed sheets and leave a mint chocolate on the pillow.
Idiocy I've always thought. If a hotel is determined to leave a prezzy on the pillow why not organize something really useful like a good novel or a ledge dancer but...back to the million smacker suite.
Out of curiosity I telephoned around Davao's higher end hostelries. Pearl Farm will let you wiggle your toes in its sands overnight for a paltry P4,000.
The Grand Regal Hotel runs to P6,000 a night while a suite at the Marco Polo will set you back P14,500. Nothing approaching a million there.
Out of more curiosity I keyed up the Las Vegas MGM Grand Hotel website.
It's a corker. There's gaming pages, promotions ('book the ultimate escape package'), entertainment--April 28 to May 11, Tom Jones--dining, a list of restaurants as long as your arm, and even on-line postcards.
Isn't technology wonderful? I can pretend to be somewhere I've never visited and e-mail a postcard to prove it.
I gave most of the website a miss although I did visit the spa-"a place of profound rest and deeply felt rejuvenation"--and cyber-strolled around the pool complex, "the most elegant swimming and sunbathing in the world." Don't mince words these MGM people do they?
But what did I care about sunbathing. I was hunting the fabulous $20,000 suite and so I clicked on Accommodation.
The cheapest of the hotel's over 5,000 rooms and suites costs just $80 (P4,000) a night. The smallest suites, the Bungalow Suiites which have a conversation area, two queen-size beds and--wow--a double sink vanity, come at only $120 (P6,000).
Celebrity suites have a bar, Hollywood Suites a separate bedroom but the most luxurious and the most expensive are the Terrace Suites.
Each has an outside terrace overlooking Las Vegas, is of two storeys and has a greater floor area than Casa Covington. And all for $850 a night. Around P43,000.
Still a long, long way from that magic million suite which I suspect is a figment of someone's imagination.
Someone's malicious and mud-slinging imagination.
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (April 12, 2005 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here. |
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