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Alan’s View

December 2008

ASD Picks: 3 Guys Who Made Hospitality Cool and Universal

One of the features in each Night+Day guide I most enjoy is the Urbie Award. It is our chance to honor the extraordinary people whose creativity and talents help make cities the vibrant meccas they are—and exciting places to visit. Please check out the Urbie Award winners’ stories (Urbie Awards).

From my vantage point, there are three innovators who deserve special mention for initiating the huge change in travel and entertainment that started just more than 20 years ago and has created the need and audience for Night + Day.

Hotels—Ian Schrager, of Club 54 fame, opened Morgans Hotel in New York in 1984. This was the first boutique hotel that had a see-and-be-seen lobby, cool restaurant, and hot bar—a destination for cool that transformed the hotel industry. Not only do we see boutique hotels today, but also chains of boutique hotels—think W—that open up trendy to the masses.

Restaurants—Terence Conran opened Bibendum in London in 1987—the first huge restaurant that was as much about a social scene as it was about food. Every major city now boasts these mega-cool restaurants that generate unimaginable crowds and revenues. If you want to experience a prime example, just step into Buddakan (in Night+Day New York Ins and Outs) next time you’re in New York.

Lounges/Bars—Rande Gerber, Cindy Crawford’s husband, opened the Whiskey at Schrager’s (all things are connected!) Paramount Hotel in New York in 1990, beginning a trend that allowed (some) ordinary folks into Studio 54-type bars and nightclubs that were previously reserved only for A-listers. Gerber’s lounges, many in W Hotels, and others like them, have democratized the trendy social experience in major cities throughout the world.

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On the Road: Southern Africa Safari

First the bad news: “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” has misled us all these years. Lions do not sleep at night (they sleep during the day); lions are not in the jungle (they are on the savannah); and lions do not say, “Wimoweh, wimoweh!” Now the good news: I can pretty much guarantee that if you can afford the expense of an African safari, you will have one of the most memorable, bucket-list–worthy experiences of your life.

First the bad news: “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” has misled us all these years. Lions do not sleep at night (they sleep during the day); lions are not in the jungle (they are on the savannah); and lions do not say, “Wimoweh, wimoweh!”

Now the good news: I can pretty much guarantee that if you can afford the expense of an African safari, you will have one of the most memorable, bucket-list–worthy experiences of your life.

Despite the enormous amount of time invested in planning, the logistics turned out to be fairly straightforward. We ended up booking our customized trip through Rhino Africa—ubiquitous in Web searches for Africa travel—which turned out to be more of a problem than a help, due to their sloppy communication and, at times, misinformation.

My advice: Plan the trip on your own:
1) Ask your friends, and use the Web to get recommendations for safari camps.
2) Identify your priorities among the key variables: price and comfort (keeping in mind there is a pretty strong correlation between price and comfort); predominant animals (some have lots of elephants, others cheetah, but most have something for everyone); number of jeeps allowed at a sighting (generally ranges from three to 10); and climate (I’d vote for late October as the perfect time to go to southern Africa).
3) Book directly with safari camps, whose staff will also help with all your inter-camp travel needs.

Our trip started at Victoria Falls on the Zimbabwe side (better for viewing the falls than the Zambia side). You’re probably traveling long distances, so a two-night stay at Victoria Falls Safari Lodge (vfsl.com) is good for getting oriented. (do not stay at Victoria Falls Hotel—the beautiful grounds do not compensate for outdated furnishings, mediocre food, and the occasional service meltdown.)

The routine at safari camps is: Arrive around noon for lunch, settle in until tea time at 3pm (all times plus or minus 30 minutes), go for an afternoon game drive at 4pm, return at 8pm, dinner at 9pm. Your next day starts with a wakeup call at 5am for 5:30 coffee, then 6am game drive, return at 9am for breakfast, hang out (could be a massage) until lunch, and then repeat. In general, two nights and four game drives at a lodge are sufficient, unless you want down time (skipping a game drive). I can’t recommend highly enough taking at least one down day in order to visit one of the neighboring villages—each lodge has an organized way for you to spend a few hours seeing housing, clinics, and/or schools.

Our camps, all of which I highly recommend, included Chobe Chilwero (Chobe National Park, Botswana, sanctuarylodges.com/chobechilwero); Chief’s Camp (Moremi Game Reserve, Botswana, botswanalodges.net/Moremi); Madikwe Hills Game Lodge (Madikwe Game Reserve, South Africa, madikwehills.com); and both Ulusaba Private Game Reserve (ulusaba.com) and Londolozi Private Game Reserve (londolozi.com) in Sabi Sands Private Game Reserve (sabi.krugerpark.co.za), abutting Kruger National Park (krugerpark.co.za), South Africa.

	Each of these lodges was wonderfully comfortable and provided excellent meals, but Madikwe Hills was the most luxurious, and had the added benefit of being in a malaria-free area (not that mosquitoes are much of an issue in late October or early November). Ulusaba, Richard Branson’s place, was a close second for luxury. But our favorite spot
probably goes to Londolozi, if only because, as good as all the guides and trackers were at other lodges, Londo’s Alfie and Bennett were spectacular.

We learned more about nature in two days with these guys than during a lifetime of visits to natural history museums. Returning from a drive one pitch-black night, Bennett was sitting on the front of the Land Rover with torch in hand and spotted not only lions, but also a 6-inch long scorpion resting on a tree trunk!

Having seen a few slide shows from friends who had been on safaris, I was determined to be different and take only photos that had people in them. This plan broke down during the first couple of hours in Victoria Falls, when baboons came knocking on our window. By the end of the trip, my wife and I had the requisite 2,000 photos, which we forced into a slide show that was no longer than the accompanying music—“The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” of course. www.youtube.com/the lion sleeps tonight

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Last Word: Whom Can You Trust?

This has been a year filled with some of the most extraordinary questions and challenges, but one of my primary concerns is the damage done to our collective sense of trust.

Will we be able to restore our trust in government? The president is about to spend a few billion dollars to bail out the auto companies, whose marketing prowess and environmental concerns might get us a hybrid Hummer some day! Can we find a way to save the jobs without saving the companies or their executives?  Probably not, but as my good friend Mitch Rofsky (betterworldclub.com) pointed out, for those of us who can remember the Sixties (yeah, I know, if you can remember the Sixties, you weren’t there), here is the supreme irony: Without federal help, it is entirely possible Ralph Nader will be able to buy what remains of General Motors!  

Can we trust baseball players? We’re witnessing a trillion dollars going to bail out financial institutions, intended to trickle down to ordinary people. Taxpayers gave a multi-billion-dollar loan to Citibank, which in turn gave the Mets $400 million for stadium-naming rights (will Citi Field now be called Citi and Taxpayer Field?), to ensure baseball teams such as the Mets can continue to pay baseball players $25 million per year. We may love baseball, but players are not my idea of ordinary people.

And then we’re hit with Bernie Madoff’s $50 billion Ponzi scheme! Unfathomable. It raises one of the scariest questions of all: If you can’t trust your golf partner at the Palm Beach Country Club, whom can you trust? I don’t say this lightly—my father was a member of the club up until his death in 2001. OK, the SEC was asleep at the switch.  Nonetheless, a group of very smart people got scammed big time—and it could happen to any of us.

All this news drove home the importance of one of the fundamental tenets of Night+Day: Provide trustworthy travel advice. To fully understand the challenge of doing so, I highly recommend Chuck Thompson’s book, Smile When You’re Lying (chuckthompsonbooks.com). (Chuck is a friend, the editor of the two books I wrote, and a great and entertaining writer.) I try to remain vigilant with my writers and editors: Write from first-hand experience, avoid hype, and for God’s sake, stop the excessive and inappropriate use of the word “insider.” It is extremely difficult to earn readers’ trust, but I believe, in our business, it’s the whole ballgame.

On Nov. 4, 2008, Americans stated loudly that they trust Barack Obama to lead us out of the morass in which we find ourselves. And the world cheered. I trust Obama to find the silver lining in the devastating news with which we all (except baseball players) are dealing. I can imagine an economic recovery plan that shores up what is decent about America while creating insurmountable barriers to greed. I can even look forward to that great spirit of fun and adventure returning to America’s people. I can’t wait for 2009 and President Obama to begin. In the meantime, have a very happy holiday season and an extraordinary new year.

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