Arthur Hailey - Hotel

In the O'Keefe empire, dining was standard and simplified, with the choice of fare limited to a few popular pedestrian items. Behind this policy was Curtis O'Keefe's conviction - buttressed by experience - that public taste and preferences about eating were equal, and largely unimaginative. In any O'Keefe establishment, though food was precisely prepared and served with antiseptic cleanliness. There was seldom provision for gourmets, who were regarded as an unprofitable minority.

The hotel magnate observed, "There aren't many hotels nowadays offering that kind of cuisine. Most that did have had to change their ways."

"Most but not all. Why should everyone be as docile?"

"Because our entire business has changed, Warren, since you and I were young in it - whether we like the fact or not. The days of 'mine host' and personal service are over. Maybe people cared once about such things. They don't any more."

There was a directness in both men's voices, implying that with the meal's ending the time for mere politeness had gone. As each spoke, Dodo's baby blue eyes shifted curiously between them as if following some action, though barely understood, upon a stage. Aloysius Royce, his back turned, was busy at a sideboard.

Warren Trent said sharply, "There are some who'd disagree."

O'Keefe regarded his glowing cigar tip. "To any who do, the answer's in my balance sheets compared with others. For example, yours."

The other flushed, his lips tightening. "What's happening here is temporary: a phase. I've seen them before. This one will pass, the same as others."

"No. If you think that, you're fashioning a hangman's noose. And you deserve better, Warren - after all these years."

There was an obstinate pause before the growled reply. "I haven't spent my life building an institution to see it become a cheap-run joint."

"If you're referring to my houses, none of them are that." It was O'Keefe's turn to redden angrily. "Nor am I so sure about this one being an institution."

In the cold, ensuing silence Dodo asked, "Will it be a real fight or just a words one?"

Both men laughed, though Warren Trent less heartily. It was Curtis O'Keefe who raised his hands placatingly.

"She's right, Warren. It's pointless for us to quarrel. If we're to continue our separate ways, at least we should remain friends."

More tractably, Warren Trent nodded. In part, his acerbity of a moment earlier had been prompted by a twinge of sciatica which for the time being had passed. Though even allowing for this, he thought bitterly, it was hard not to be resentful of this smooth successful man whose financial conquests so greatly contrasted with his own.

"You can sum up in three words," Curtis O'Keefe declared, "what the public expects nowadays from a hotel: an 'efficient, economic package.'

But we can only provide it if we have effective cost accounting of every move - our guests' and our own; an efficient plant; and above all a minimum wage bill, which means automation, eliminating people and old-style hospitality wherever possible."

"And that's all? You'd discount everything else that used to make a fine hotel? You'd deny that a good innkeeper can stamp his personal imprint on any house?" The St. Gregory's proprietor snorted. "A visitor to your kind of hotel doesn't have a sense of belonging, of being someone significant to whom a little more is given - in feeling and hospitality - than is charged for on his bill."

"It's a delusion he doesn't need," O'Keefe said incisively. "If a hotel's hospitable it's because it's paid to be, so in the end it doesn't count.

People see through falseness in a way they didn't used to. But they respect fairness - a fair profit for the hotel; a fair price to the guest, which is what my houses give. Oh, I grant you there'll always be a few Tuscanys for those who want special treatment and are willing to pay. But they're small places and for the few. The big houses like yours - if they want to survive my kind of competition - have to think as I do."

Warren Trent growled, "You'll not object if I continue to think for myself for a while."

O'Keefe shook his head impatiently. "There was nothing personal. I was speaking of trends, not particulars."

"The devil with trends! I've an instinct tells me plenty of people still like to travel first class. They're the ones who expect something more than boxes with beds."

"You're misquoting me, but I won't complain." Curtis O'Keefe smiled coolly. "I'll challenge your simile, though. Except for the very few, first class is finished, dead."

"Why?"

"Because jet airplanes killed first-class travel, and an entire state of mind along with it. Before then, first class had an aura of distinction.

But jet travel showed everyone how silly and wasteful the old ways were.

Air journeys became swift and short, to the point where first class simply wasn't worth it. So people squeezed into their tourist seats and stopped worrying about status - the price was too high. Pretty soon there was a reverse kind of status in traveling tourist. The best people did it. First class, they told each other over their box lunches, was for fools and profligates. And what people realize they get from jets - the efficient, economic package - they require from the hotel business too. Unsuccessfully Dodo attempted to conceal a yawn behind her hand, then butted her Turkish cigarette. Instantly Aloysius Royce was beside her, proffering a fresh one and deftly lighting it. She smiled warmly, and the young Negro returned the smile, managing to convey a discreet but friendly sympathy. Unobtrusively he replaced used ash trays on the table with fresh, and refilled Dodo's coffee cup, then the others. As Royce slipped out quietly, O'Keefe observed, "A good man you have there, Warren."

Warren Trent responded absently, "He's been with me a long time."

Watching Royce himself, he had been wondering how Aloysius's father might have reacted to the news that control of the hotel might soon pass on to other hands. Probably with a shrug. Possessions and money had meant little to the old man. Warren Trent could almost hear him now, asserting in his cracked, sprightly voice, "Yo' had yo' own way so long, could be a passel o' bad times'll be fo' yo' own goodness. God bends our backs an' humbles us, reminding us we ain't nothin' but His wayward children, 'spite our fancy notions other ways." But then, with calculated contrariness the old man might have added, "All th' same, 'f yo' believe in something, yo' fight fo' it shore. After yo' dead yo' won't shoot nobody, cos yo' cain't hardly take aim."

Taking aim - he suspected, waveringly - Warren Trent insisted, "Your way, you make everything to do with a hotel sound so damned antiseptic. Your kind of hotel lacks warmth or humanity. It's for automatons, with punch-card minds, and lubricant instead of blood."

O'Keefe shrugged. "It's the kind that pays dividends."

"Financial maybe, not human."

Ignoring the last remark, O'Keefe said, "I've talked about our business the way it is now. Let's carry things a shade further. In my organization I've had a blueprint developed for the future. Some might call it a vision, I suppose, though it's more an informed projection of what hotels - certainly O'Keefe hotels - are going to be like a few years ahead.

"The first thing we'll have simplified is Reception, where checking in will take a few seconds at the most. The majority of our people will arrive directly from air terminals by helicopter, so a main reception point will be a private roof heliport. Secondarily there'll be lower-floor receiving points where cars and limousines can drive directly in, eliminating transfer to a lobby, the way we do it now. At all these places there'll be a kind of instant sorting office, masterminded by an IBM brain that, incidentally, is ready now.