Faux luxury

Why do we pay through the nose for second rate luxury goods and services? asks a disgruntled Fatemah Farag

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I have a soft spot for the Four Seasons Hotel; I think it is the bathrooms that get me. Well-designed tan marble littered with little l'Occitane bottles of creams and soaps. And my passion even survives the fact that the local outlets of the famed luxury chain continue to add insult to exorbitant bills.

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Drawing by George Bahgory

The straw that broke the proverbial camel's back came a few weeks ago when I joined my husband and a colleague on their business trip to Sharm El-Sheik. While their days promised to be full of hard work, we all looked forward to being enveloped each evening in the pampering care of the Four Seasons Resort.

So imagine the rude shock as we walked into our double room suite which was setting us back LE7,000 for three nights, and were faced with the grimmest imaginable outlook -- for no sun could ever get beyond the terrace, and the second bedroom was sunk in perpetual darkness overlooking a dank cement atrium.

Time being tight, I turned my back on adversity and set myself up on the sunny terrace ordering a cob salad. It arrived after I had all but given up hope of ever eating again, and while delivered with much fanfare (it cost over LE55 not including tax, service and tip) it turned out to be small, missing the promised pine nuts, including unlisted blue cheese which I do not eat for dietary reasons, and adorned with a few slivers of unripe and frankly inedible avocado! When it comes to food, I am adamant: if it is going to be served in small quantities, it should be sophisticated, and if it is a staple salad, it should be served without a hint of stinginess.

At dinner, we paid LE1,200 for three buffet meals, one diet soda and a bottle of water. The buffet featured such low- budget oriental delights such as tehina, homous, green salad, lentil soup, grilled meats, okra stew, and rice pudding, among others. The selection was admittedly vast, but no one was prompted to go back for seconds. Instead, we sat around wistfully reminiscing about meals we had known at five star hotels in the Gulf or New York, and even four star hotels in Beirut, where selection and quality was incomparably superior.

What really galls, is that you are being charged the full global price -- the same you would pay for much better quality of service elsewhere in the world. It is not that the architecture of the resort did not have a sophisticated understated grace as opposed to the flashy marble and brass that seems to dominate the five-star establishment in Egypt, or that there was nothing nice about the food or service -- it is just that when you make me pay so much, you should go out of your way to respect my every last dollar.

It reminded me of the time two years ago that I booked into the Four Seasons in Giza for my wedding night. My room was not ready on time -- and no amends were made, I was simply shown to the restaurant where I could spend extra money while whiling away the time. And eventually we were offered a bottle of apple soda -- "compliments of the Four Seasons" -- whose retail value was no more than LE30 at the time.

There is no excuse for being so cheap when you are claiming to be a luxury five star establishment. After our Sharm sojourn, when our complaints were passed on to two employees of the Four Seasons in Cairo, they both exclaimed: "But no one ever complains!"

Well, at least I tried. The second day of our stay, I marched up to reception and explained that our suite was not to our satisfaction and that we wanted to be moved for our last day. The receptionist scowled, asking what the problem was, and then proceeded to display a total lack of interest in my answer. She promised someone would get back to me about my request. I am still waiting. I guess their complaint-answering reflex has been permanently paused.

Indeed, it might well be out of service simply because we Egyptians are not used to insisting on proper standards of customer care. While we pay top rates at all sorts of big hotels and restaurants, we usually reap unequal service compared to foreigners, many of whom enjoy our luxury services at ridiculously low group rates. I have been informed by friends in the tourism business that hotels prefer foreigners, and consider the day they get Egyptian visitors -- irrespective of how much they pay -- a black one.

And while capitalism has taken root in Egypt, now prospering, now floundering, for several decades, those who can afford the best it has to offer still have a very feudal attitude towards money. In short, they see it as naff to quibble about how much you pay. So while the European on the table next to ours will argue over the wilted leaf of lettuce in his salad, we will swallow ours, then over tip. Which is perhaps why we don't get better service. Instead of taking our hard-earned money -- and what is wrong with that? -- and spending it where it will be respected, we just go back and ask for more ill treatment.

I myself am a classic case of this syndrome. Only last year I went to this same Four Seasons Resort with two girlfriends, and at the end of our -- full price -- weekend stay, we wrote a long list of complaints to the manager. And yes, they never got back to us. Instead, I was the one who went back to stay with them.

It all reminds me of a recent visit to one of Cairo's luxury handmade designer furniture shops. I was standing in front of a hand painted paravent and feeling rather suicidal regarding my husbands' purse. Then the saleswoman walks up and tells me it costs LE15,000. I am obviously taken aback, and so she whips out a calculator and points out that it "only costs $2,000. It is SO cheap!". But if it is so cheap, why should I pay so much money for it? Two thousand dollars by any standard is a sum of money to be respected. So I think I from now on will save my money -- and my hubby's -- and spend it, however scandalously, where it is appreciated.