Perspictvie

Boutique hotels

Having had many experiences, both in my own country and outside about hotel standards, I never had thought that classy, small hotels would emerge in Ethiopia in a very short while.

Some forty years ago in the prime of my youth, I had experienced the comfort, class, and uniqueness of Cairo Hilton and the hotel “George V” in Paris. At the time, I had said to myself, “Could that kind of hotel ever be built in my own country?” For a young man, at the time, who had only the experience of local hotels, particularly in Asmara, Awassa or Dire Dawa, whenever the nature of my work used to take me sometime there, and where I had considered the 3—15 birr bed rooms were quite comfortable, my experiences of Cairo, Paris, and later on of Geneva, London or Washington, were only a distant vision, that would not occur in Ethiopia in a short period to come.

Nonetheless, it was not too late when Addis Hilton was built. Although the style and taste differed according to the environment and cultural setting, the opening of the modern hotel in Addis had to fill up a gap of anxiety and necessity. As one would say that Rome was not built in a day, the gradual impetus of hotel development in Ethiopia in general, and Addis Ababa in particular, has to be seen as promising since that time onwards, the greater share of the applause going obviously to the advent of the new economic order.

What impressed me most in these hotels was not so much the numerical aspect of the expansion but, their interior décor, beauty and characteristic. Today, small to medium sized hotels are emerging in Addis exceeding in fashion and excellence. When one is either sitting in the lounge or in the restaurant, one would feel that he or she was truly inside modernizing Ethiopia. The quality of the hotels is easily felt as one enters in the reception halls where one would simply see surrounded by live plants, smiling and charming receptionists. As one is taken up in some of these hotels in the fast running lifts, it is certain to arrive at the beautifully furnished and comfortable bedrooms.

At a place where steam bathes or sauna or massage facilities were rare, the ease to find these conveniences just in the adjacent rooms was not to be expected normally from medium sized hotels. The emergence of such small-sized class hotels with all amenities of life shows that there is truly qualitative change taking place in Addis Ababa.

My constructive observation does not necessarily end up here, though. The construction and expansion of class hotels should certainly be encouraged to allow better facilities for tourists who wish to visit Ethiopia and spend their time in leisure. Hence, the present experience of building small to medium sized class hotels is an alternative for those with modest income or, for that matter, modest spending taste, and who, at the same time wish to enjoy the relative comfort offered by the big hotels.

I presume thus what Ethiopia needs is a few of the big hotels and many of the small to medium class generation hotels. They can be easily spread out and built up at reasonable amount of money and pace of time.

When we talk about a class hotel in Addis Ababa, some may find the idea as bizarre and a contradiction to the other side of the squalid life in the same city. One may come out and tell us about those who live under deplorable conditions next door. Yes, this is the reality of life in Ethiopia. But, the truth is that we cannot continue to mature in condition of self-pitying. Change will have to occur side by side until the poor life style of the majority of the Ethiopian peoples changes steadily and gradually like in any other developed country of the world. It is true that people are thirsty of water in Addis. In some corners of the city simple, clean drinking water is scarce. But, this does not mean that this current problem continues in perpetuity. By hook or by crook it has to be solved. However, the existence of such apparent state of affairs should not provide the excuse to halt development efforts until other problems are solved on a parallel level.

Notwithstanding, the present attitude of the Ethiopian entrepreneur seems to me to be in the right direction. This is a day when we say small is beautiful. Let us continue to go for small to medium sized class hotels. Let they abound side by side with a few majestic styled hotels, so that people will have variety of choice where to book whenever they feel flying out to Ethiopia.