Feb 28, 2008
The New York Times has done it again, breathlessly announcing the opening of a $1,000-a-room-per-night hotel
"Nightly rates start at $1,000". Those were the words that ended a leading, page two announcement in the February 24 travel section of the Sunday New York Times, about the re-opening of New York's Plaza Hotel. That nightly room rate makes the Times' article totally irrelevant to 99.8% of the Times' readers. Is a monstrously expensive, unaffordable hotel newsworthy? In what way? For what purpose?
It grieves me to take issue with a newspaper that I so greatly admire in other respects. But its Sunday travel section has lost its way. It is an endless, boring paean to great wealth. It is written to service a readership that exists only in the dreams of the adolescents who apparently choose and write its travel stories. It is less realistic than Condé Nast Traveler, than Travel + Leisure -- and that's saying a lot.
If a Comfort Inn were to open in Manhattan with rooms priced at an affordable level, and with many more such rooms than the under-300 units of the Plaza, the Times would never cover that story. And yet the true newsworthiness of such a property is infinitely greater than that of a $1,000-a-night-per-room hotel. When will grown-ups return to edit the travel section of The New York Times?
Write and read comments about this post.
It grieves me to take issue with a newspaper that I so greatly admire in other respects. But its Sunday travel section has lost its way. It is an endless, boring paean to great wealth. It is written to service a readership that exists only in the dreams of the adolescents who apparently choose and write its travel stories. It is less realistic than Condé Nast Traveler, than Travel + Leisure -- and that's saying a lot.
If a Comfort Inn were to open in Manhattan with rooms priced at an affordable level, and with many more such rooms than the under-300 units of the Plaza, the Times would never cover that story. And yet the true newsworthiness of such a property is infinitely greater than that of a $1,000-a-night-per-room hotel. When will grown-ups return to edit the travel section of The New York Times?
Write and read comments about this post.
Labels: fat cats
Fifty years ago, 
Arthur Frommer is generally acknowledged to be the nation's foremost travel authority. He is the founder of the
