Summit Teams Kick Up Five-star Stink Over Best Hotels

[peter991]

Summit teams kick up five-star stink over best hotels

FORGET the difficulties of negotiating protocol niceties, or the complex logistics of locking down half of Sydney's business district.

The tricky diplomacy of hotel allocation has been the biggest challenge of hosting the massive Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in September, according to Australia's APEC ambassador David Spencer.

Mr Spencer told an American Chamber of Commerce lunch yesterday that allocating hotels and dealing with the various national delegations was a "shit fight".

"Let me be brutally frank," he began, going on to baldly set out the difficulties of dealing with 20 national head-of-state delegations, each jockeying for the best, and each jealously guarding their status.

"We have had a shit fight with some of these delegations about which hotels they want to stay at," Mr Spencer said, adding that APEC organisers had been deluged with complaints from advance teams.

"The reality is the hotel allocation is the biggest challenge of hosting APEC," he said.

For instance, APEC organisers had to be mindful of regional tensions. Mr Spencer said the Chinese and the Taiwanese had to be kept apart, for obvious historical reasons.

Then there were hierarchical considerations. The best hotels had to be allocated to the biggest nations' delegations, he explained.

Then the smaller nations' delegations asked why they had been relegated to smaller hotels.

Mr Spencer cited the anguish of one representative, who demanded an extra layer of glass in the windows of a particular hotel's presidential suite because of traffic noise.

Mr Spencer reassured him there would be no noise, because there would be no traffic.

The northern CBD would be more or less shut down.

"When Bush, Hu, Abe, when any of these prime ministers or presidents travel, they do it in style," he said.

And with very large retinues. In fact, during Leaders Week, the national delegations will consist of more than 6000 people from 21 nations (including Australia): Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, The Philippines, Russia, Taiwan, Thailand, the US and Vietnam.

Mr Spencer told the lunch that during Leaders' Week in September, "the rates in Sydney have gone up 100-fold, because they think we're a captive audience".

Despite their complaints about the impact on the city, the hotels were making the most of the APEC summit.

"All of them want to gouge the hel_l out of the visiting delegations," he said.

The rate hikes had prompted complaints from the delegations, but Mr Spencer then asked them whether they wanted to share their hotels with other guests. Still: "I'm sure you hotels will make a fortune", he said.

[Florin]

Besides the fact that (as you highlighted) Thailand is an APEC member, what is the relevance of this article? Seems to me like printed whining.

[steveromagnino]

Besides the fact that (as you highlighted) Thailand is an APEC member, what is the relevance of this article? Seems to me like printed whining.

I like that Australians are willing to swear to the press - shit fight indeed.

Great bunch of crunts.

[Donnyboy]

Besides the fact that (as you highlighted) Thailand is an APEC member, what is the relevance of this article? Seems to me like printed whining.

I like that Australians are willing to swear to the press - shit fight indeed.

Great bunch of crunts.

like boys in a sandpit, jees what a disgrace. Where does that leave a small nation like Papua New Guinea, in the backpack hostel? Looks like the hookers in Sydney will be busy in sept.

[jayenram]

The relevance to Thailand in tenuous at best.