Scandal of the Bristols

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"The disgrace and disintegration of three aristocratic families" is the sub-title of a new book, Spleandour & Squalor by Marcus Scriven, and it is no surprise to see that the Bristols are one of the three. The fortune of the family that gave its name to the hotel trade was most spectacularly dissipated by John Hervey, the 6th Earl, who is said to have spent £7million on drugs, for which he was at one stage jailed. You can read about him in "LL Cool J and the Man who Shot Andy Warhol", chapter 7 in High Times at the Hotel Bristol. He did, however, not stand much of a chance, being the son of the Victor, the 6th Earl, who had also put in time for robbery and was, according to Scriven, the inspiration for Evelyn Waugh's Basil Seal Rides Again: Or, the The Rake's Regress. Victor's story is told in Paris Hilton & Lady Victoria Hervey, which can be read on-line.

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Coming and going

GOODBYE SHEFFIELD The 111-room Hotel Bristol in Sheffield, which was given its name by the Bristol businessmen who founded it, has just been bought by the fast-expanding Swedish Rezidor Group, and from November 7 it will be renamed the Park Inn.

HELLO RABAT Meanwhile a new Bristol is to be built in Rabat, Morocco, the first overseas enterprise by the Brazilian Bristol hotel chain, which operates 21 hotel and apartment blocks with the Bristol name in the Brazilian states of Minas Gerais, Espitito Santo and Goiás. The north African venture will have 3–4-stars with 96 one- and two- bedroom apartments, and will take around 18 months to build.

GOING UP IN KARACHI Pakistan's first six-star hotel is being built in Islamabad . The Avari Islamabad will be an all-suite hotel, and the first 200 are to be ready by early next year. Making the annoncemen, the Avari hotel group chairman Byram D Avari, said that the Avari family had been known in the hospitality industry since 1944 when his father purchased the Bristol hotel in Karachi.

LEAVING LEBANON "Many clients have left,” says Chantale Zammar, sales manager of the famous Le Bristol hotel in Beirut. “And now we have foreign journalists who always come in times of trouble, like last year during the war between Israel and Hezbollah.”

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