Oasis of good service

Press, 18 March 1989, Page 24

Oasis of good service

From

XAN SMILEY

in Moscow for the “Daily Telegraph”

YOU might expect the best hotel in the Soviet Union to be in Moscow or, at a pinch, Leningrad. In fact, it stands on the snowy slopes of the Caucasus Mountains, a terrifying two hours’ drive from the Soviet Georgian capital Tbilisi — alas, the older spelling of Tiflis, more melodious for writers of limericks, seems to have faded out of circulation.

There is, of course, a catch. As you step across the threshold into Sporthotel Gudauri you leave the Soviet Union — with its stirrings of nationalism and calls for Georgian independence — and enter a little bubble of Austria. The hotel was simply plonked in the mountains less than two years ago by Austrian builders, courtesy of hard cash lent by an Austrian bank. Some 450 huge lorry-loads of foreign supplies were driven up the hill to provide the basic materials — from every fitting, every bit of glass, down to lightbulbs, lavatory-paper, cleaning chemicals, cutlery. Spare parts and • mounds of food are flown in by charter from Vienna. Even more important, an experienced, eagle-eyed Austrian hotelier and a couple of compatriots act as managerial “consultants.” To cap it all, the hotel’s top Soviet figure, the shrewd

managing director Simon Skirtladze is an amusing and punchy Georgian, quite unlike most of the grim Russians who pretend to run hotels elsewhere in the Soviet Union. In Moscow terms, Gudauri is an expatriate enterprise. The facilities — indoor tennis courts, sauna, massage, whirlpool, delightful swimming pool looking on to Lermontov’s majestic peaks, billiard room, ski-hire, and, outside, good ski-ing serviced with Austrian-built ski-lifts and some charming Austrian and Georgian instructors — are excellent. For the very rich, helicopter ski-ing is superb. The actual hotel, by Western standards, is functional, well-run, but nothing remarkable. But for a visitor from Moscow, it is out-of-this-world, luxurious, efficient, utterly unSoviet. Anyone who has travelleed in the Soviet Union knows at a glance that the Gudauri Hotel bathrooms simply could not be Soviet — the old joke about having to bring a squash-ball as a bathplug in Soviet hotels still frequently holds true. Here they do not smell, everything fits and works, the finish is neat and shiny, the tiles are straight. Hungarians, who play a strange middle-management role in the Gudauri as part of the

joint Austro-Hungarian-Soviet, venture, provide the more simple equipment: lavatory brush, ashtray, soap, honey, disposable sanitary bags. The only Russian items are the tin rubbish-bins — but then their Cellophane liners are Austrian. Another oddity, for a Muscovite, is that the waiters and hotel staff — mostly Georgian, with a sprinkling of Russians and Ukrainians — are all jovial, helpful, keen to oblige. There is another catch, however. In a staff of nearly 100, the Austrians have strategically placed some 14 Hungarians, already evidently now considered semi-Western, in key positions — as head-waiter, head housekeepers on each floor, four cooks under an Austrian head chef. Their job is to chivvy, set an example and train the Soviet staff. “We are trying to change the mentality, to teach them that the hotel is for the guests and not for them,” says the Austrian watchdog. Patronising as that may sound, it is a novel concept for a Soviet hotel. Mr Gorbachev himself more or less admitted that 70 years of coercive socialism have made the Soviet people forget the meaning both of initiative and service; especially that with a smile.