A chance to spice up your current affairs
There is something particularly gratifying in the news this week that one of the hotels widely expected to be pulled down after the 11 September attacks is not only still standing, but could be accepting guests again by the end of the year. The Millenium Hilton seems like a bricks-and-mortar symbol of the vigour of the US way of coping with the attack. Like the people of New York, the hotel has picked itself up, dusted itself down and is defiantly determined to get on with business.
Walk around the hotel now, however, and there is a touch of the Mary Celeste about the place. Police have still not allowed guests to collect the belongings they left as they fled, and beds slept in on the night of 10 September remain unmade.
New York's commercial tenacity was further underlined last week by the new Ritz-Carlton hotel. Initially due to open in October, Ritz-Carlton's return to New York after a four-year absence was delayed by just four months, even though the building in which the hotel is housed is right on the edge of the site of the destruction.
Next week it is five months to the day since the twin towers were struck and demolished, but to most of us it seems much longer. The story has dominated headlines for so long that the five months has stretched in the mind like elastic: already we have a horrified reverence for the event that makes it seem more like history than current affairs.
Nevertheless, it is the short time since the atrocity that makes the speedy recovery all the more remarkable. Even outside the USA, where business activity temporarily went into spasm, things now seem remarkably normal. It would have been unlikely even four months ago that a hotel group like Six Continents would have considered spending more than £1b on buying another hotel group; but now insiders say that a deal for it to buy NH Hoteles is under serious consideration.
The effect on the way people view their personal lives has also had commercial consequences. It is not just in New York that there has been a fresh emphasis on spending time with your family and staying close to home. For restaurants, this has meant an increasing trend towards operating close to where people live as well as in city centres. In both London and New York, 2002 is shaping up to be the year of the neighbourhood restaurant. The family and loved ones have always mattered, but just now it seems that more people want to stay physically closer to home.
Messages from the heart
This might make next week's Valentine's Day more poignant than usual, and Caterer will, for the first time, be running a column of Valentine messages. It's free, and we hope that it will be the precursor to a regular personal column, so please take advantage of it. Any greetings, declarations or pleas can be sent on e-mail to kissmecaterer@rbi.co.uk. Alternatively, please write or ring, but messages will need to be with us by Monday 11 February at the latest.
