Journals of a Hotel Manager

It has been a week since I came to this tiny island in the Indian Ocean. At the beginning I was reluctant to take this transfer. I had been looking at a city transfer after spending almost three years on an island. I had had enough with the beach, the sun and the coconut trees. Given the current economic climate, one cannot be too demanding. The previous GM has been put on an unpaid leave for the past six months. I should really count myself lucky that I got a transfer at all.

What really attracted me to come here is not the idyllic picture of this island painted by the website and the brochures. I came here to do a full renovation and re-opening of an existing property, and to help the current GM to open a brand new one on another island.

So far I am stationed on the island locally known as Tiny Island and for the sake of anonymity I shall refer to it as TI from now on. The property was built in the early nineties when terracotta floors, driftwood furnishings and lack of air-conditioning set the trend. Now twenty years later the guests became more sophisticated and the property had been in sore need of a facelift ever since the 2004 tsunami added further damage.

The owners held off the construction since last October. The rumor within the company was that they wanted to see if Obama got elected. When I arrived last week, guest bungalows on the east shore of the island had been sitting in a rubble for the past five months while the west shore still had villa intact.

It will be the first time that instead of patching up hotel rooms I would be directing a bulldozer to tear them down.

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