Customer Reviews

Hotel Babylon

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was given this book from a friend who promised me, that as a frequent traveler, I may never feel the same way about my journeys after reading it. Boy was she right!

The novel moves very quickly and spans a 24 hour period in a five star hotel. Throughout the novel we are offered disturbing glimpses of what actually happens when people use a place as their home away from home. Believe me some of these glimpses are very distrubing!

The novel also demonstrates how hotels make money, how they deal with needy and demanding clients, what happens when they overbook and how they deal with some of the more "delicate situations" which arise.

Very fun and informative!

Terrific plane reading. Facile but entertaining tale of the underbelly of a 5-Star luxury hotel in London. Funny and sometimes outrageous.

I really enjoyed this book. As someone who spends a lot of time travelling abroad and staying in five star hotels this is was a real eye-opener. The book is packed with great stories, anecdotes and loads of celebrity gossip and I found it hilarious, entertaining and the prefect thing to take on a long haul flight. I read it one sitting. I couldn't put it down. I liked the 24 hour format and I would recommend to anyone who is at all curious and who has a sense of humour.

I am a business traveller, and I spend most of time in Hotels around the world. More than once I have wondered what really happens behind those beautiful facades that you find in many of the best Hotels. This book talks about the real people in the Hotel industry, the games they play, the screw ups and the simple day to day.

Imogen writes the stories in a way that sometimes is difficult to know what is better, to laugh or to cry...but one way or the other you will feel the emotion and never look at a Hotel room the same way again...

Nah I couldn't. And if you've ever had any ideas, I suggest you read this book first - you might well & truly change your mind. Imogen Edward-Jones writes alongside an annoymous ex (or current) hotel worker, and manages to condense the goings on into 24 hours. Each chapter is a different hour (6-7, 7-8 etc), and you're literally whisked along, into the world of hotels.

This was so popular here in the UK, that it was made into a TV series starring the lovely Max Beesley. I didn't see it, but there's another series airing in January.

What I love about this book, is that you can read it in no time. It's quick, easy and simple. And you'll learn some amazing things about hotels whilst reading it. How they manage to charge the prices they do for rooms, what really goes on behind the scenes, what the staff really say behind your back, amongst other things. Hotel Babylon is a real eye opener. Quickly following it is Air Babylon & Fashion Babylon.

I think Imogen Edward-Jones is onto a sure thing here, although I was slightly disappointed by Air Babylon. Hotel Babylon is definitely one to read first, you won't be disappointed!

I guess that's what to expect when a reporter and an anonymous hotelier with years of experience band together to bring you this story of one man's 24 hours inside a hotel. The narrator is a hotel employee who finds himself pulling double shifts. We get a glimpse not only of the wacky and sometimes badly behaved guests, but also of the hotel staff's struggles to please them. Some of the chapters did freak me out a bit, considering I read this right before I went away to a large hotel, but nothing TOO shocking here.

BBC had a popular TV drama series of the same name, which was based on this bk. The bk is divided into 24 chapters, one for each hour of the day, and discloses what happens inside a typical 5-star hotel. Quite interesting to know from the insiders' view.

I am far from a socialist, but this never-ending tale of how the mega-rich burn money left me heading in that direction. In that sense, it was so over-the-top that I became somewhat "jaded" by the end. The more interesting parts involved the awkwardness of "walking" guests to another property for overbooking, how to handle death, injury, etc. The grubbing for handouts, along with the details of all the schemes for (tax free) "deals" of the concierge, restaurant manager and other management staff, was rather a downer.

One curious note for me: it was not made clear enough to me that the narrator/protagonist was male; enough so that the mention of an "ex-girlfriend" left me wondering if the person was a lesbian until I made a conscious search back for clues in the book. It shouldn't have been that ambigious.

This is a wonderful book ! Not only is the subject - behind the scenes in a posh London hotel - fascinating in its own right, but it is brilliantly told. We follow the activities in the hotel hour by hour, from one dawn to the next, and in the course of the day and night we meet an amazing variety of people, the wealthy who patronise the hotel, and the shrewd who exist to indulge their every whim. But instead of being a dull plod, plod round the clock, we see it all through the eyes of a receptionist who knows everyone and sees everything, and who recounts it to us with a wealth of astonishing details and hair-raising (and often very funny !) anecdotes. I rarely read a book cover to cover at a single sitting, but this one I did - I haven't enjoyed a book so much in a long while. Imogen Edwards-Jones invites us to slip in through the back door to peek at an amazing private world that you'd never guess just by looking through the establishment's palatial front entrance. Give yourself a treat - buy this marvellous book !

The anonymous author, who now manages an unnamed five-star hotel, has spent the past 15 years working in London's top lodgings. The author compresses these years into a 24-hour period (divided into one chapter for every hour) and places the events at a fictitious Hotel Babylon (to protect the guilty who may include the author).

This book is nonstop fun as the narrator divulges all the dirty little details of the hospitality business. I would recommend to anyone- anyone not too squeamish or prudish that is! Also has a new book about the airline industry called Air Babylon.