Hotel's Bollywood brand-bender

On a site unable to cope, a recent 72-hour chicken tikka matrimonial event exhibited the very worst characteristics of the four seasons.

“Spring” is for April fools, and the showering of yet another extortionate love-in on locals idiotic enough to hope for a reasonably quiet and carefree life was a late but cruel joke.

To “summer”-ise, it’s all about the hot, sweaty profits for businesspeople who have only a minor understanding of sophistication and excellence. Consideration for the rights of all citizens is certainly not a feature of this particular hotel’s hospitality handbook. (Neither is it a feature of the adjoining illegally built and operated luxury establishment, which also opts to curry favour with loud and wealthy South Asian sweethearts.)

Autumn is “the fall” from grace of a previously well-regarded Canadian hotel brand whose online rhetoric boasts of an overriding commitment to local communities and the environment. Reality suggests otherwise – a complete disregard for human beings in general, along with a criminal approach towards international and local health and safety laws and regulatory codes.

The “winter” of discontent is what the neighbours experience during these mercenary extravaganzas. It’s like being locked out of the house naked during a ferocious snowstorm. Nothing else to do but to grin and bear it, dreaming of a rapid thaw.

Rocky relationships frequently result in acrimony and divorce. Community rape committed by international five-star hospitality and corporate bullies is worthy of far weightier consequences, and the community in question will continue its fight against such daily abuse on an international platform.

Here we have fast-food mentality (obese profit, underweight quality/integrity) infiltrating high-end hospitality. It’s not the ideal recipe for a long and happy marriage.

John Shepherd

Bangkok