Monday, 4 October 2010

Even Fawlty Would be Jealous

It is probably important for me to establish one simple fact from the off: the InterContinental Hotel in Lusaka is unquestionably, stunningly, terrible. As I sift through the hastily-retreating memories of my three long nights in Zambia’s “preferred destination for businesspeople” I am finding it hard to recall anything remotely positive about the experience, aside from leaving – alive, at that. I will, however, make one glowing remark: this overpriced, oddly-staffed, brothel-cum-diplomatic meeting point excels at consistency. In fact, across all services offered by this “leisurely escape”, I can confidently say that the InterCon may be the most consistent hotel I have ever visited.

To start with, I know revolving restaurants that rotate faster than the InterCon’s swivelling front door, and from the very moment I shuffled through it with two unfortunate colleagues who had pleaded with me to consider staying elsewhere, I knew we were in for an interesting time. Our bags, naturally, were snatched from our grasp as we emerged from the taxi by an unsmiling doorman who gave nothing more than the obvious impression that this was his role and that, if he had to, he would beat a tip out of us once his duties were fulfilled.

We bundled into the hotel reception at 10pm each longing for three things: a cold beer, followed by two even colder ones. What we got instead was a display of such splendour and brilliance that, halfway through, I was tempted to spoon my eyes out with my corporate credit card and pour the stub-filled sand from the nearby cigarette ashtray-pillars into the sockets, just so I no longer had to witness it. Including floor staff, door staff and receptionists there must have been five or six hotel representatives present at the time we checked in. Between them, they managed to drag out our check-in to almost an hour. We endured this process without so much as an apology, a smile, a drink, a chair, or even complimentary access to one of the numerous bar-dwelling hookers. Not only had the reservation team failed to record our agreed rate in their system – we later discovered that the lady I agreed this rate with while booking over email was destined for big trouble for even suggesting that this five-star shebeen would discount its rates to USD185 – but they also had failed to take note of two key words in the reservation paperwork, copies of which I was brandishing like my own personal constitution: DOUBLE and DELUXE. Indeed, double turned out to actually mean single, in the military camp bed sense. “Double” also failed to be clearly understood in the bar later that night, but that is altogether another equally distressing issue. “Deluxe” usually means a normal room in Africa but, at least for two of us, translated into smoke-filled dungeons with tornados for toilets and built-in audio links to all adjacent plumbing. The third of our party was upgraded to a room on The Club Floor, also known simply as floor number seven, for it was nothing more than a replica of the lower floors with the words Club Floor stencilled on the wall facing the rickety lift.

We asked for the manager several times during check-in, and we may just as well have been asking for the Pope to present himself to us donning budgie-smugglers, whilst grasping a tall and frosty Singapore Sling in one hand and Isabella Rossellini in the other. “The Manager” is not a term that the reception staff at Lusaka’s InterCon are entirely familiar with, and this begs the question: are they managed at all? As a result of their zombie-like display of total ignorance and unconcern, one can only assume that The Protea and Taj Pamodzi Hotels (Lusaka’s other, vastly superior business hotels) have jointly embarked on the world’s greatest guerrilla marketing initiative, whereby they have paid imbeciles to apply for jobs at the InterCon in the knowledge that said imbeciles would drive travellers and businesspeople to insanity, leaving them no option other than to desert a household brand in favour of hotels less known. Genius!

Speaking of genius, whose idea was it to publish an extensive and exotic dinner menu for the InterCon’s restaurant, only to remove 99 percent of the items listed citing exhaustion of supplies? It would be like McDonald’s presenting a chicken jalfrezi option with garlic naan and side order of aloo gobi, but going on to inform the customer twenty minutes after ordering that the cook isn’t entirely sure what a chicken jalfrezi is and that, if he did know, there wouldn’t be any available anyway. We ordered two “succulent” lamb kebabs and, if memory serves me correctly, an Italian dish of the pizza variety. The waiter scuttled off with enthusiasm. We sat. We drank. We were visited a lifetime later by the same waiter who informed us that the lamb was out of stock, but that he would unquestionably recommend the amazing burgers. At this juncture, the three of us had precisely the same thought; we slugged down the rest of our lukewarm Mosis and marched off, amid mutters and grumbles of offensive complaint directed at anyone listening, towards the house bar. I can tell you that over three nights at this hell-away-from-home we did not eat a single thing produced by the InterCon kitchen. Actually, I lie. I did rise every morning to indulge, along with the sparrows and various other local birdlife, in the reasonably adequate breakfast buffet. Were it not for the teapots that had a habit of dispersing tea liberally across the stain-dappled tablecloths like a garden sprinkler, I would list the breakfast buffet as a very lonely plus point for the InterCon.

I could go on, but am exhausted. Simply recalling the memories of my three nights in this despicable establishment saps the very life from my bones. For the record, the Mosis (Mosi being the local brew) were the wrong temperature, expensive, and stale. In other words, they were perfectly matched to the nearby prostitutes like bad cheese to cheap wine. Strangely, both the Mosis and ladies were very much favoured by an eternally drunk and vocal Australian we bumped into in the bar, who latched onto us the moment he saw our branded shirts. Shaking him was as enduring a process as staying three nights at Lusaka’s InterContinental Hotel. There are no highlights of these three nights. There is no happy ending. Our respective bills could very well have been lobbed at us like rolled up newspapers from the back of a passing bicycle. In fact, if he had an iota of nouse, the doorman could very well have taken these rolled up bills and bashed us senseless in search of a tip, as we ran the gauntlet from reception to awaiting, and hugely welcome airport taxi.