Abstract
The opening chapter discusses the concept of the ‘war hotel’ and how these hotels play myriad roles in the context of warfare. The author focuses on hotels as ‘strategic assets, prestige targets and temporary sanctuaries’, providing an overview of the utility of hotels in times of conflict. The author draws on case studies from Lebanon, Northern Ireland, the UK, Cyprus, Croatia, and Rwanda, and assesses how hotels in these conflict zones have played a key role in them, albeit for different reasons.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
- 1.
Hotels have long been the setting for the work of novelists and playwrights; Graham Greene’s The Comedians, Ernest Hemingway’s The Fifth Column, Stansiław Lem’s The Futurological Congress, J.G. Farrell’s Troubles and Stephen King’s The Shining being perhaps the best-known novels or plays to be framed within the specific context of the hotel.
- 2.
For an overview of the specific dynamics of life within hotels, see Caroline Field Levander & Matthew Pratt Guterl, Hotel Life: The Story of a Place Where Anything Can Happen, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.
- 3.
During the Second World War, hotels became places of refuge for a myriad of politicians and royal families in exile. Behind the superficial glamour, hotels such as the Ritz, Claridges, and the Dorchester and the Ritz Hotel on the Paris Vendôme (which was, according to Tilar J. Mazzeo, ‘the centre of political action’ in Europe even before the outbreak of the Second World War) were places of political intrigue and betrayal with a colourful array of guests, the latter hosting an array of guests from Winston Churchill to Coco Chanel. See, for example, Matthew Sweet, The West End Front: The Wartime Secrets of London’s Grand Hotels, London: Faber & Faber, 2011, and Tilar J. Mazzeo, The Hotel on Place Vendôme, New York: HarperCollins, 2014.
- 4.
During the 1992–95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, for example, numerous hotels were either commandeered by paramilitary groups. The Hotel Višegrad, next to the old bridge made famous by Ivo Andrić’s Nobel Prize-winning novel Na Drini ćuprija (The Bridge on the Drina) and the nearby the Vilina vlas and the Bikavac hotels were commandeered by the murderous Serb paramilitary group known as <Emphasis Type="Italic">Osvetnici (Avengers) during their murderous campaign against the town’s Muslim population. The hitherto unremarkable Hotel Prijedor was used as a base for Serb paramilitaries before the ethnic cleansing of the Prijedor region (during which Muslim males were incarcerated in camps in Omarska and Trnopolje), the Hotel Fontana in Bratunac was the location where General Ratko Mladić and his deputy Radoslav Krstić ‘negotiated’ the fate of the Muslims of Srebrenica with Colonel Thom Karremans, the commander of DUTCHBAT III (the Dutch United Nations peacekeeping contingent tasked with protecting the ‘safe area’ of Srebrenica), before the fall of the enclave in July 1995. Serbian paramilitary groups also used the Hotel Drina and the Hotel Jezero before and during their attack on the city in April 1992. See United Nations Security Council, ‘Final Report of the United Nations Commission of Experts Established Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 820: Annex IV – The Policy of Ethnic Cleansing’, S/1994/674/Add.2 (Vol.1), 28 December 1994.
- 5.
Sara Fregonese, ‘Between a refuge and a battleground: Beirut’s discrepant cosmopolitanisms’, The Geographical Review, 102(3), pp. 316–336.
- 6.
The Times, London, 23 November 2001, p. 4.
- 7.
The Times, London, 16 February 2015, http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/europe/article4354944.ece?shareToken=7f4199705e7f8aa4dd5e4f82422ad264 (last accessed 17 June 2015).
- 8.
Paul Harris, More Thrills than Skills: Adventures in Journalism, War and Terrorism, Glasgow: Kennedy & Boyd, 2009, p. 160.
- 9.
The Independent, London, 2 June 1993, p. 19.
- 10.
Fregonese, Sara., & Ramadan, Adam. Hotel Geopolitics: a research agenda. Geopolitics, 20(4), 2015, pp. 793–813.
- 11.
Helena Cobban, The Making of Modern Lebanon, Hutchinson, London and New York, p. 130.
- 12.
For a succinct account of this first phase, see Cobban, The Making of Modern Lebanon, pp. 125–149.
- 13.
Dounia Salamé, ‘On Memory and Commemoration in Beirut: The Holiday Inn in Bloom’, CUJAH, Concordia University, Vol. IV, Essay 16, p. 1.
- 14.
Samir Kassir, Beirut, pp. 356–366.
- 15.
For an analysis of the worsening cycle of violence that led to the ‘Battle of the Hotels’, see Samir Khalaf, Civil and Uncivil Violence in Lebanon: A History of the Internationalization of Communal Conflict, pp. 227–238.
- 16.
For a beautifully illustrated history of the Hotel Phoenicia, see Mehanna T. Hadjithomas, Le Phoenicia, un hôotel dans l’Histoire, Tamyras, Beirut, 2012.
- 17.
Before the civil war (and the subsequent destruction of the hotel), the St George Hotel was reputed to be a key meeting place for intelligence agents, diplomats, journalists, wealthy businessmen, and politicians. For a detailed analysis of life in the hotel and the plots hatched there, see Said Aburish, Beirut Spy: International Intrigue at the St. George Hotel Bar, Bloomsbury Press, London, 1989.
- 18.
Edgar O’ Balance, The Civil War in Lebanon, 1975–1992, London: MacMillan Press, 1998, p. 27.
- 19.
‘Black Saturday’ (6 December 1975) marked a significant escalation in Lebanon’s civil war, which had been raging since April 1975. On the morning of 6 December 1975, the bodies of four senior members of the (predominantly Maronite Christian) Kataeb Party were discovered in an abandoned car in the mainly Christian East Beirut. The shocking discovery unleashed a wave of violence and murder carried out by Phalangist militiamen, who blamed the Muslim/Leftist militias for the killings. They established roadblocks in the parts of Beirut they controlled and stopped cars to identify Muslims. It remains unknown exactly how many Palestinians or Lebanese Muslims (mainly civilians) were killed by the Phalangists, but some estimates claim the number could be as high as 300. See Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon (Fourth Edition), Nation Books, New York, 2002, pp. 78–79.
- 20.
According to David Hirst, the one-time Middle East correspondent of the Guardian, ‘They [the Muslim/Leftists] chose those targets mainly for strategic reasons: the hotels constituted the head of a Phalangist salient that projected into Muslim West Beirut.’ See David Hirst, Beware of Small States: Lebanon, Battleground of the Middle East, Nation Books, New York, 2010, p. 111.
- 21.
The Guardian, London, 15 December 1975, p. 2.
- 22.
The Guardian, London, 12 December 1975, p. 2. According to Antoine J. Abraham, ‘[The Holiday Inn was] as symbol of Lebanon’s pro-Western posture, economic prosperity and capitalism, which the leftists rejected. To them, it was a manifestation, or symbol, of American imperialism.’ See Antoine J. Abraham, The Lebanon War, Westport: Praeger Publishers, 1996, p. 1.
- 23.
Beirut Domestic Service, 29 October 1975, Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), FBIS-MEA-75-210, p. 2.
- 24.
Cairo NEMA News Service, 2 November 1975, (FBIS), FBIS-MEA-75-212.
- 25.
Edgar O’ Balance, The Civil War in Lebanon, 1975–1992, p. 28.
- 26.
The Guardian, London, 2 November 1975, p. 3.
- 27.
Edgar O’ Balance, The Civil War in Lebanon, 1975–1992, p. 37.
- 28.
The Guardian, London, 15 December 1975, p. 2.
- 29.
James Potter, World of Difference: 50 Years of Intercontinental Hotels and Its People, London: Weidenfeld Nicholson, 1996, p. 159.
- 30.
The Guardian, London, 15 December 1975, p. 2.
- 31.
Edgar O’ Balance, The Civil War in Lebanon, 1975–1992, p. 38.
- 32.
The Holiday Inn may well be reconstructed in the future, as the Phoenicia was in 2000 (only to be badly damaged again in 2005, when a large car bomb, which killed Rafiq Hariri, the Lebanese Prime Minister, was detonated outside the hotel). The St George’s was also very badly damaged in the same explosion.
- 33.
Tabitha Morgan, A Sweet and Bitter Island: A History of the British in Cyprus, London: IB Tauris, 2010, p. 222.
- 34.
A key component in Belfast’s commercial development, the Europa was targeted because it represented both a crucial asset of the city’s business community and a symbol of the British government’s attempts to weaken the sentiment for conflict by promoting economic development and prosperity in Belfast.
- 35.
The Independent, London, 30 November 2011, p. 30.
- 36.
Grand Metropolitan Hotels was founded by the London-born entrepreneur Maxwell Joseph who having owned his own estate agent’s company and spent a stint in the Royal Engineers during the Second World War, bought the Mandeville Hotel in London before going on to acquire a number of other hotels under the umbrella of the Grand Metropolitan Hotels PLC.
- 37.
The roots of the Europa Hotel can be traced back to 1966 when the Grand Metropolitan Hotels group purchased, through the Northern Ireland (Stormont) government, six hotels which had been the property of the Ulster Transport Authority (UTA)—the Midland in Belfast, the City in Derry, the Slieve Donard in Newcastle, the Northern Counties in Portrush, the Laharna in Larne, and the Rostrevor Hotel—were sold for £600,000, on the basis that the Grand Metropolitan Group would build a major hotel in Belfast. The transaction caused some controversy, with opposition MPs in the Stormont parliament arguing that the six hotels had been ‘given away’. The same six hotels were sold to the Hastings Hotel Group (who would purchase in Europa in 1994) in May 1971 prior to the opening of the Hotel Europa, which cost an estimated £2.5 million to build. See The Irish Times, Dublin, 8 May 1971, p. 9.
- 38.
Clive Scoular, In the Headlines: The Story of the Belfast Europa Hotel, Appletree Press, Belfast, 2003, p. 23.
- 39.
Ibid, p. 25.
- 40.
Briefing note by Lynn Stewart (Public Relations Officer for the Hotel Europa) entitled ‘Above All Else: The Belfast Europa’, May 1971, Hotel Europa archives.
- 41.
The Irish Times, Dublin, 1 July 1981, p. 9.
- 42.
For an objective and readable account of the history of the IRA, see Peter Taylor, The Provos: The IRA and Sinn Fein, Bloomsbury Books, London, 1997.
- 43.
According to Steve Bruce, Gusty Spence came from ‘a staunch Orange Order family, well known and well connected on the Shankill Road. His brother, William Spence, was a major figure in the local Unionist Party and was election agent for James Kilfedder, who won the West Belfast Westminster seat in 1964.’ See Steve Bruce, The Red Hand: Protestant Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992, p. 15.
- 44.
For a detailed history of the UV and UVF between 1910 and 1922, see Timothy Bowman, Carson’s Army: The Ulster Volunteer Force, 1910–1922, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2007. For the UVF role in the First World War, see Richard S. Grayson, Belfast Boys: How Unionists and Nationalists Fought and Died Together in the First World War, Continuum, London, 2009.
- 45.
Steve Bruce, The Red Hand: Protestant Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, p. 9.
- 46.
The Irish Times, Dublin, 21 December 1976, p. 5. See also Martin Dillon ‘The Europa Hotel: A Symbol’, The European Magazine, London, May 2003, p. 66.
- 47.
The Times, London, 23 July 1972, p. 2.
- 48.
The Guardian, London, 3 July 1971, p. 18.
- 49.
Briefing note by Lynn Stewart (Public Relations Officer for the Hotel Europa) entitled ‘Above All Else: The Belfast Europa’, May 1971, Hotel Europa archives.
- 50.
The Guardian, London, 14 July 1993 (Supplement), p. A2. The Graham Greene character the article refers to is almost certainly a reference to Harper Brown’s namesake, known simply as ‘Brown’ in Greene’s ‘The Comedians’. Set in Papa Doc Duvalier’s Haiti, Brown is the novel’s main protagonist and narrator. He is the owner of the Hotel Trianon in Port-au-Prince (which was, allegedly, inspired by the Hotel Oloffson in the city), which is the venue for a numerous political intrigues. Brown eventually finds himself out of favour with the government and has to develop his own, often cunning strategies to survive, though he, unlike Harper Brown, is eventually forced to leave the hotel. See Graham Greene, The Comedians, The Bodley Head, London, 1966.
- 51.
The Guardian, London, 23 October 1971, p. 1.
- 52.
The Times, London, 23 October 1971, p. 1.
- 53.
Major Styles was awarded the George Cross in January 1972 for his bravery. See The Times, London, 12 January 1972, p. 1. For a profile of Major Styles, see The Guardian, London, 31 October 1971, p. 2.
- 54.
The People, Dublin, 19 August 1974, p. 4.
- 55.
Interview with Chris Ryder (Sunday Times) in BBC Northern Ireland documentary ‘Bombs, Bullets and Business as Usual’, Director: Richard Weller, Waddell Media Productions, 2011.
- 56.
The Irish Times, Dublin, 4 July 1974, p. 5.
- 57.
Text from Hotel Europa guest information pack from 1974, Hotel Europa archive.
- 58.
Ibid, Text from Hotel Europa guest information pack from 1974, Hotel Europa archive.
- 59.
Scoular, In the Headlines: The Story of the Belfast Europa Hotel, pp. 25–26.
- 60.
RUC Police Report in respect of Malicious Damage to Property: Grand Metropolitan Hotels: Belfast Europa Hotel—Great Victoria Street, Belfast, 23 January 1975, PRONI File No: NIO/24/1/22 A.
- 61.
Memorandum from A T Bateman Esq (Loss Adjusters) to Northern Ireland Office, ‘Subject: Grand Metropolitan Hotels Ltd.: Belfast Europa Hotel’, 29 December 1975, PRONI File No: NIO/24/1/22 A.
- 62.
The Irish Times, Dublin, 21 December 1976, p. 5.
- 63.
Martin Dillon ‘The Europa Hotel: A Symbol’, p. 68.
- 64.
In an interview with the Irish magazine, The People (their correspondent claiming that Brown ‘runs the Europa more like a command post than a hotel’) in the wake of the July attacks, Brown defiantly stated that ‘We haven’t lost a guest yet…we’re proud of that’, The People, Dublin, 19 August 1974, p. 4.
- 65.
It was not, however, the first time that the British political elite had been targeted by Irish nationalist groups. In June 1974, the IRA detonated a bomb near the Houses of Parliament, and on 30 March 1979 one of Margaret Thatcher’s closest confidants (and a man who was predicted by many to be the next Northern Ireland Secretary in the event of a Conservative Party victory in the forthcoming general election), Airey Neave, was killed by a bomb placed under the rear of his car by the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA). The bomb exploded as he exited the Palace of Westminster car park and he died soon after being freed from the wreckage of the car.
- 66.
Patrick Magee was born in Belfast in 1951 but left the city at the age of four when his parents moved to Norwich in England. He returned to Belfast in 1969, joined the IRA, and was interned between 1973 and 1975 for his activities. Following his release, he developed an expertise in bomb making, making him a perfect candidate for IRA operations in the UK. He was originally based in Blackpool in the north-west of England, where he had been tasked with attacking a British Army barracks, but he soon realised he was under surveillance by British Intelligence (MI5), so did not execute the operation. He subsequently played a key role in planning and executing the Brighton bombing.
- 67.
Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, HarperCollins, London, p. 380.
- 68.
Ibid, p. 382.
- 69.
Andy McSmith, No Such Thing as Society: A History of Britain in the 1980s, London: Constable Press, 2010. Magee was eventually released from prison in 1999 as part of the ‘Good Friday Agreement’. While in prison he married the American novelist Barbara Byer (the two had initially struck up a relationship by means of written correspondence) and completed a PhD thesis on fictional representations of ‘The Troubles’. He expressed regret that ‘people got hurt and killed because of actions taken in a war time situation’ but maintained that he was acting as any soldier would during wartime. He was later ‘forgiven’ for the Brighton bombing by the Conservative MP and committed Christian, Harvey Thomas, who was in the Grand Hotel during the bombing. See BBC News, ‘Brighton bomb victim: Why I forgive’, BBC News website, 8 August 2011, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1480081.stm (last accessed 21 June 2014).
- 70.
The Guardian, London, 6 December 1991, p. 6. See also The Irish Times, Dublin, 10 December 1991, p. 15.
- 71.
J. Bowyer Bell, The Secret Army: The IRA, Transaction Publishers, New Jersey, 1997, p. 642.
- 72.
The Guardian, London, 21 May 1993, p. 22. The Europa was not the only hotel to be bombed that week. On 22 May, the Drumkeen Hotel in south Belfast was attacked. In the early morning of the 22nd, the hotel’s night porter, Tommy Black, had received a warning from the IRA informing him that a car bomb would detonate outside the hotel in 30 min. The hotel was then evacuated and the guests, including a couple who had been married, were led to safety. See The Guardian, London, 24 May 1993, p. 4.
- 73.
The Belfast Telegraph, Belfast, 25 August 2011, p. 16.
- 74.
Hotel Europa Marketing Strategy, June 1994–March 1995 (prepared by P. Wilson, M. Williamson, J. Toner), June 1994, Hotel Europa archives, p. 1.
- 75.
The Irish Times, Dublin, 14 December 1994, p. 7.
- 76.
The Irish Times, Dublin, 4 December 1995, p. 4.
- 77.
The Guardian, London, 18 April 1964, p. 9.
- 78.
The Observer, London, 21 July 1974, p. 2.
- 79.
Olga Demetriou, ‘The Militarization of Opulence: Engendering a Conflict Heritage Site’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Vol. 1, No. 14, 2012, p. 63.
- 80.
The Observer, London, 15 September 1974, p. 36.
- 81.
On one such occasion in October 1993, the British Prime Minister John Major spoke at the Ledra Palace Hotel about the need to find a solution to the ‘Cyprus Question’. The British delegation was led by Queen Elizabeth, who had her car windscreen smashed by a Greek Cypriot protestor. She was still reviled among some within the community for failing to commute the sentences of nine EOKA fighters who were hanged by the British during the anti-colonial struggles of the 1950s. See The Times, London, 21 October 1993, p. 5.
- 82.
The attack on the Canal Hotel resulted in the deaths of 22 people, the vast majority of which were UNAMI staff. Those killed included the UN Special Representative in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, an esteemed Brazilian UN diplomat who had served in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Bosnia and East Timor, among others. Another attack on a UNAMI base three days later hastened the UN’s withdrawal from Iraq.
- 83.
The Times, London, 29 June 2011, p. 5.
- 84.
Stratfor, ‘Special Security Report: The Militant Threat to Hotels’, 8 September 2009, p. 5.
- 85.
BBC News, ‘Libya hotel attack: five foreigners among nine killed’, 28 January 2015, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-31001094 [last accessed on 16 February 2015]. For the subsequent securitisation of hotels, see Debbie Lisle, Debbie, ‘Frontline leisure: Securitizing tourism in the War on Terror’, Security Dialogue, 2013, Vol. 44 No. 2, pp. 134–136.
- 86.
Sara Fregonese & Adam Ramadan, ‘Hotel Geopolitics’, p. 795.
- 87.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto), ‘Abandoned Greek hotel a reminder of migrants’ economic struggle’, www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/abandoned-greek-hotel-a-reminder-of-migrants-economic-struggle/article26246390/ [last accessed 8 September 2015].
- 88.
The Libertas, which was heavily bombed on 6 December 1991, was almost completely destroyed (only one solid metal sculpture—which remains in the main lobby of the hotel to this day—survived the firestorm that engulfed the hotel), and six people were killed in the onslaught. For an excellent analysis of the course of events that led to the Montenegrin/JNA attack on Dubrovnik, see Srdja Pavlović, ‘Reckoning: The Siege of Dubrovnik and the Consequences of the ‘War for Peace,’ Spaces of Identity 5, 2005: 1–47. See also United Nations Security Council, ‘Final Report of the United Nations Commission of Experts Established Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 780: Annex XI.A: The Battle of Dubrovnik and the Law of Armed Conflict’, S/1994/674/Add. 2 (Vol. V), December 28, 1994. For the role of the Montenegrin political elite and media in forging war see Živko Andrijašević, Nacrt za ideologiju jedne vlasti, Bar: Conteco, 1999.
- 89.
AIM Press, Paris, ‘Refugees: Hotels as Alternative Shelter’, 27 February 2001.
- 90.
Paul Rusesabagina, An Ordinary Man: The True Story Behind Hotel Rwanda, London: Bloomsbury Press, 2006, p. 145.
- 91.
Ibid, p. 141.
References
Abraham, A. J. (1996). The Lebanon War. Westport: Praeger Publishers.
Aburish, S. (1989). Beirut Spy: International Intrigue at the St. George Hotel Bar. London: Bloomsbury Press.
Bowman, T. (2007). Carson’s Army: The Ulster Volunteer Force, 1910–1922. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Bowyer Bell, J. (1997). The Secret Army: The IRA. New Jersey: Transaction Publishers.
Bruce, S. (1992). The Red Hand: Protestant Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Demetriou, O. (2012). The militarization of opulence: Engendering a conflict heritage site. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 1(14), 56–77.
Dillon, M. (2003). The Europa hotel: A symbol. The European Magazine, London, 66–70.
Fisk, R. (2002). Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon (4th ed.). New York: Nation Books.
Grayson, R. S. (2009). Belfast boys: How Unionists and Nationalists Fought and Died Together in the First World War. London: Continuum.
Greene, G. (1966). The Comedians. London: The Bodley Head.
Harris, P. (2009). More Thrills than Skills: Adventures in Journalism, War and Terrorism. Glasgow: Kennedy & Boyd.
Hirst, D. (2010). Beware of Small States: Lebanon, Battleground of the Middle East. New York: Nation Books.
Levander, C. F., & Guterl, M. P. (2015). Hotel Life: The Story of a Place Where Anything Can Happen. Chappel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Lisle, D. (2013). Frontline leisure: Securitizing tourism in the war on Terror. Security Dialogue, 44(2), 127–146.
Mazzeo, T. J. (2014). The Hotel on Place Vendome: Life, Death and Betrayal at the Hotel Ritz in Paris. New York: HarperCollins.
McSmith, A. (2010). No Such Thing as Society: A History of Britain in the 1980s. London: Constable Press.
Morgan, T. (2010). A Sweet and Bitter Island: A History of the British in Cyprus. London: IB Tauris.
O’Ballance, E. (1998). The Civil War in Lebanon, 1975–1992. London: MacMillan Press.
Potter, J. (1996). World of Difference: 50 Years of Intercontinental Hotels and Its People. London: Weidenfeld Nicholson.
Rusesabagina, P. (2006). An Ordinary Man: The True Story Behind Hotel Rwanda. London: Bloomsbury Press.
Scoular, C. (2003). In the Headlines: The Story of the Belfast Europa Hotel. Belfast: Appletree Press.
Stratfor Global Intelligence. (2009). Special security report: The militant threat to hotels.
Sweet, M. (2011). The West End Front: The Wartime Secrets of London’s Grand Hotels. London: Faber & Faber.
Taylor, P. (1997). The Provos: The IRA and Sinn Fein. London: Bloomsbury Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Morrison, K. (2016). Hotels as Strategic Assets, Prestige Targets, and Sanctuaries. In: Sarajevo’s Holiday Inn on the Frontline of Politics and War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57718-4_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57718-4_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-57717-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-57718-4
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)