opinion
illustration by Rose Barton
the big rant
columnist boyd farrow on… silly suite talk
Booking a hotel for a business trip used to be straightforward. You would phone your favoured hostelry and make a reservation. Now the process is more delicate than declaring war on the country you’re visiting. First, you must agonise over whether a person in your position deserves the Wi-Fi-enabled trouser press or shaving mirror slash fax machine that enhances the Sub-Junior Suitelet. Then, company plastic in shaking hand, you have to deliberate whether you’re worth a few more euros for the Full Junior Suitelet, which boasts a plasma showerhead.
But wait a moment, you gasp, these expense account-baiting extras are simply a marketing ruse from the hospitality trade’s most fiendish minds. Your company accountant would surely appreciate that the best value is the Executive Suite which entitles its giddy occupants to 24-hour access to the business lounge with its canapé mountain and espresso machine slash shoeshine.
And if Hans in accounts isn’t as impressed as he should be, it will wow the guys in the elevator whose swipecard will only propel them as far as floor seven. Those losers might as well be moles. They can only dream of crashing the velvet-roped Executive Business Club, where complimentary emails ping merrily and secretaries pour Martinis wearing only paperclips. Hotels have finally cottoned on to what credit card hawkers have long known – people (OK, men) are obsessed with status.
Consider the Hilton chain. This business travellers’ haven once offered a simple choice: a room or no room. Now, it offers: an Executive Room, a King Executive Room Plus, a Twin Executive Room, a King Executive Suite, a King Junior Suite, a King Governor Suite, a King Presidential Suite and, finally, a King Penthouse Suite. In the Hilton world order, a playboy trumps a president but maybe it’s because more presidential suites now exist than countries. And what do these pricey quarters offer? Hotlines to the Nuclear Security Administration? One misdialled extra blanket request and it’s goodnight Tehran? Of course, these suites are for mere company presidents. Or at least senior vice presidents or junior vice presidents. Soon there will be zones for marketing directors; elevators for finance and sales directors; and floors for project managers and systems analysts.
Maybe it’s the fear of recession but a decade after the dotcom era, when everyone wore jeans and called each other ‘dude’, self-aggrandising job titles are back with a vengeance. The receptionist ignoring your calls is a front-of-house controller; the courier with a bolt through his nose is a communications transport operative; and the stripper enlivening the accounts department’s Friday lunchtime is a burlesque artiste. No wonder we go along with hoteliers’ ego-stroking tactics – executive this, executive that. Frankly, these days, their check-in desks are the only places we get some goddam respect.
But the weird thing is that ‘executive’ is the only title we’ve never understood – a workplace echelon that embraces just about everyone who doesn’t need overalls to carry out their job. Salespeople are particularl y touchy about this term, having decided that ‘salesperson’ is as offensive as Eskimo, whereas ‘sales executive’ confers Gandalf-like status on its holder. Ironically, the exceptions are those working in the planet’s two biggest industries – arms and drugs. These elite are called ‘dealers’ and have access to more presidential suites than we’ll ever see.
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