John Crace
It goes without saying that your choice of holiday destination is a statement of your aesthetics. After all, there’s precious little point in going to Ibiza if it’s peace and quiet and a few old masters you’re after. And an eco-tour to the Amazonian rain forest immediately identifies you as the caring, thoughtful type – even though there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that these holidays do significant damage to the environment they are designed to protect.
But where you choose to stay may well reveal a great deal more about you than the size of your bank balance. Generally, a hotel would indicate a desire to be pampered – ideal for those who spend the rest of the year being ordered around.
You’re unlikely to get the fawning obsequiousness you require at a place with less than four stars, but that may prove to be a blessing in disguise. Scratch the surface of excessive servility and there’s usually outright contempt.
But some people seem to get a kick out of staying at very expensive hotels that offer appalling value for money. For instance, R3 500 will scarcely buy you a box-room for the night at the Htel du Cap in Antibes and, according to someone who’s stayed there, inclusive in the price is any number of gratuitous insults from the staff. Yet the hotel seldom has a vacancy.
At least the Htel du Cap is set in a beautiful location. The Sandy Lane Hotel, the most exclusive in Barbados, doesn’t even have that going for it, but it’s stuffed full of appallingly overdressed celebs. Which, according to psychologist Oliver James, author of Britain on the Couch, is precisely why many nouveaux riches striving to belong to the upper classes go there.
The sad thing about this is that the Sandy Lane Hotel isn’t full of the monied classes anymore. As soon as the nobs discovered their bolt-hole was being invaded by the lower orders, they decamped elsewhere.
So where have they gone? “Ah,” says James, “they tend to keep that sort of information to themselves. One rather aristocratic person I know did once tell me about some very small but smart hotel in southern Italy, but the name meant nothing to me and I promptly forgot it.”
Renting a holiday home is another matter altogether, because while it may merely suggest that you’re too poor to stay in a hotel, it’s more likely to indicate that you consider yourself more sophisticated than the riff-raff. You value your privacy and feel that you absorb more of the local atmosphere. You are even prepared to go into ordinary shops and buy stunning cheeses you just can’t get back home. By the end of two weeks you might even be able to convince yourself that you’ve become part of the community – because, unlike in a hotel where you get constant reminders of how much you’re paying, a holiday home gives you the delusion of ownership.
There’s often a price to be paid for this. Most holiday homes are a great deal more basic and less comfortable than one’s own home. But some aren’t. Which is the only reason I can come up with for my having rented the same Devon house for our last three summer holidays.
The house has a lovely view, but is equidistant from both coasts and hence there’s almost nothing to interest the children. And it’s not cheap, either. But it is stylishly decorated and the sort of place I imagine I would live in if I had the money or the taste. For two weeks every year, I get to indulge my snobbish aspirations.
James is quick to burst the bubble. “People with real class and connections wouldn’t dream of renting anywhere,” he says. “They would either have a place of their own or have friends who would invite them to stay.” Ah well. That’s me put in my place. How about you?
October
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