BSI Hive #2 May 2008 - The Tin

40
the hive
twilight zone
by Bob Papworth
Is there anybody there?
In Japan in 717AD, the great Buddhist teacher Taicho Daishi, guided by the guardian deity
of the sacred Mount Hakusan, discovered an underground spring of hot water bestowed
with wondrous curative powers.
Recognising that word of the healing waters
would spread PDQ, and that hordes of pilgrims
would inundate the nearby village of Awazu,
Taicho ordered his disciple, Garyo Hoshi, to
build an inn, or ryokan, to accommodate the
anticipated influx.
At 1,291 years old, the Hoshi Ryokan at Awazu,
just outside Komatsu, to the west of Tokyo on
the northwest coast of Honshu, is today the
world’s oldest continuously-operating hotel.
So when the question crops up at your next
pub quiz, you’ll be able to render your
team-mates speechless with awe and wonder
at your grasp early Japanese hospitality industry
practices.
That, however, is not the point.
Grateful though one is for the opportunity to
bolster your frankly-questionable intellectual
reputation among the denizens of your local
hostelry, the point is that Taicho Daishi
recognised a clearly defined market – physicallydisadvantaged
Buddhists with problems
unresolved by 8th Century quackery – and set
about meeting their accommodation needs.
to meet the requirements of an ever more
closely-defined client base (albeit that
paraplegic pilgrims are no longer a prime focus).
And then they go and screw it all up by
charging extra for doing so.
Business travellers need to conduct business
while travelling. That involves them having WiFi
access to the internet. Having aimed their
business brand of business hotels at business
travellers, business hoteliers should be offering
WiFi as part of the business package, not as
some sort of optional extra.
Take this iniquitous trend to its logical extreme,
and there will soon be coin-operated water
meters in every hotel bathroom, bedlinen will be
available for hire by the hour, and there will be
an admission charge to use the lifts.
Such unconscionable avarice will undoubtedly
lead to an increase in “room rage” assaults on
hotel staff who, inadequately tended by a
crumbling NHS, will be forced to seek
restorative treatment elsewhere.
Awazu’s healing waters spring to mind…
Fast-forward to 2008, and you can hardly move
for hospitality behemoths spawning “brands” all
over the shop. Like nightmarishly-vast amoeba,
hotel groups divide and divide again into a
multiplicity of sub-sets, each specifically tailored
Summer 2008