BIG HOTELS.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume IX, Issue 678, 5 March 1903, Page 22

BIG HOTELS.

A marked change has come over the character of London hotels in recent ipjfcrs. The somewhat multy establish-

hS! .iriliij '-g ■ . - /L monte of fifty years ago have given place to huge and palatial mansions. The Grand was the first, but the Savoy and the Metropole followed rapidly, arid Jabez Balfour’s huge building was transformed into the Hotel Cecil. Other great hostelries have been erected even during the past year or two, while many of . the older houses have been extended and improved. Claridge’s, for instance, was once an almost private hotel. Now it is a caravanserai with all modem improvements. “ The impulse of this enterprise,” says Mr H. W. Lucy, “ was of itself novel. Our fathers built hotels with the idea of accommodating the public, and, incidentally, making a fair revenue out of their capital. Their sons build hotels in order, primarily, to secure an order for furnishing them from roof to basement.” Some idea, of the profits of successful hotels was disclosed in a prospectus recently issued by the directors of the Carlton Hotel. When in the summer of 1889 the hotel and restaurant were opened, the modest estimate was made that its net profits would amount to £40,000 a year. In 1901 they were £55,000. Last year they ran up to something over £63,000. Encouraged by this success, the directors are seeking fresh fields arid hotels new. They have acquired the Piccadilly sites on which the WaL singham House Hotel and the Bath Hotel have long stood. These will be pulled down and a huge palace of culinary delight built in their stead. “In no department of social life more strikingly than in hotels,” says Mr Lucy again, “ do the changes in fashion more swiftly and on the face of it more unaccountably display themselves. For a season, or through a succestion of seasons, a particular hotel dining or supper-room is the rage with society. Suddenly, like a flock of pigeons, which in other respects they resemble, they fly off to another place. At one time it was “the thing” to lunch or dine.on the balcony of the Savoy, overlooking the river. To-day it is the Carlton Hotel, with its French cafe-like arrangement of small tables, chairs, flowers, and a cover-ed-ini courtyard, that makes all the running.” The big hotel movement is spreading all over the world. We see it even in our colonial cities. It has reached Khartoum. Arrangements have been made to build huge establishments in South African centres. Probably we owe. this fashion, like the fashion in so many other feig things, to the Americans.