FINEST HOTELS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1019, 7 January 1911, Page 3

FINEST HOTELS.

EXPERT'S TRIBUTE TO LONDON. More than 100 of the chief Austrian hotel proprietors arrived in London towards the end of November to study the great hotels' of London. Welcoming them at Victoria. Station was Mr. H. Ostcn, Imperial Austrian Councillor, honorary secretary of the Association or Austrian Hoteliers and an authority of world-wide repute upon the art of hotel-keeping. "Why should the-so experts cotno to London to learn things?" . He answered the question with emphasis. "Because the finest hotels m the whole world are in London. In their beautiful furnishing, their' quiet- comfort, their perfect management they are unsurpassed.

"In Austria heielkeepers are' hampered by heavy. taxes and impositions. For everything'that is lost in their establishments'they are, for instance, responsible.' This fact provided a notorious swindler recently with a fiue opportunity. Arriving at an hotel in the evening, clad in a long fur overcoat, which concealed ■ tho fact that he had nothing oil but a suit of underclothes beneath it, he engaged a room and went to bed. In tho morning, calling 'the hotel proprietor, lie displayed himself with no sllit- of clothes, declaring in a jjreat fury that his garments had been stolen during the night. 'You must buy me things:at once,' ho declared, .'otherwise I cannot leave your .hotel.' Almost every night for a whole year ho victimised one'hotelkeeper after another in this fashion, selling his new suit of clothes ;each day after he had been presented, with it." ' _■' Nearly all 'tho visitors, Mr. Osten said, predict that more and more people will as time goes on turn their backs upon tho troubles of managing a houso of their own, will cease to b'aitlo with tho servant problem, and will live permanently in hotels.