Not realizing, perhaps, that high-speed trains are often the fastest way to travel between city centers beating short-haul flights for journeys of up to about 350 miles (560 kilometers) in Europe. At speeds of up to 350 kph (220 mph) the train certainly takes the strain; and compared to airports (what I have called the slowest common denominator of air travel) high-speed trains are stress-free citadels of peace.

Trains score well on that shifting equation of comfort, convenience and cost. (On short-haul flights, flying time can be as little as 20 percent of total journey time.) What counts most with rail travel is the quality of uninterrupted time from the moment you board (10-minute check-in times for business travelers, includes going through security) to the time you arrive. Take the Blackberry and laptop along (power-points are provided) and do a pile of work in peace.

Guillaume Pepy, chairman of Eurostar and chief executive of SNCF (French Railways), has a research-based rule of thumb that business travelers are willing to travel up to four hours on a high-speed train because of ‘increased productivity,’ compared with airline travel, while the limit for leisure travelers is trips of up to six hours.

‘No contest’ then for travel between scores of city-pairs across Europe. The simultaneous opening of Eurostar’s new London terminal at St. Pancras International and the 67-mile ‘High Speed 1’ rail link in Britain, shaved 20 minutes from timetables, cutting the non-stop journey time between London and Paris to two hours and 15 minutes, and Brussels, one hour, 51 minutes. London and Lille, in Northern France, are just one hour, 10 minutes apart. Journey times between London and Cologne (via Brussels) were cut from 4 hours 38 minutes to 3 hours 36 minutes; to Amsterdam from 4 hours 46 minutes to 3 hours 36 minutes; and from London (via Paris) to Strasbourg, from 6 hours 32 minutes to 4 hours and 33 minutes. Who wants to fly? Unless you’re ‘interlining’ to somewhere else.

Since the first TGV Sud Est entered service between Paris and Lyon in 1981, cutting the journey time by half to just over 2 hours, high-speed trains have been getting even faster. with constant improvements in locomotives and dedicated track.

SNCF’s TGV Est European service which started in June 2007, links Paris with more than 20 destinations in France, such as Reims, Strasbourg, Nancy, Metz; and 10 destinations in Germany, Switzerland and Luxembourg, such as Frankfurt, Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, Mannheim and Zurich.

Trains travel at 199 mph (320 kph), which have cut previous high-speed journey times by one third to one half.

The double-decker train is a version of the modified V150 TGV train (named for traveling at 150 meters per second) which broke the world speed record on April 3, 2007 by traveling at 357 mph (575 kph) on a special section of track between Paris and Strasbourg – faster than some light airplanes.

(This is the record for ‘wheel-on-steel’ trains: Japan’s ‘maglev’ (magnetic levitation) train set a world record for ‘non-contact’ trains in 2003 at 361 mph.) China expects to have 12,000 kilometers of high-speed network by 2012, plus intercity lines like Beijing-Tianjin and Guangzhou-Zhuhai, with speeds of 350 kph (220 mph).

Journey times are Paris-Reims, 45 min; Paris-Nancy, 1hr. 30min; Paris-Luxembourg, 2hr, 5min; Paris-Zurich, 4hr, 32min; Paris-Frankfurt, 3hr, 50min.

While high-speed trains challenge airlines on short routes, there are synergies between the two modes of transport. Air-rail links through high-speed train stations at major airports, such as Paris Charles-de-Gaulle, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Brussels, Lyon, that enable travelers to connect between a long-haul flight and a train, assuming the role of a regional airline.

Some airlines are even thinking about direct involvement in high-speed rail – an open-rail policy in Europe allows rail companies to compete with each other on certain routes. Thus Deutsche Bahn and Virgin Atlantic would be free to compete with Eurostar on services between London and Brussels and Paris

Paul Charles, former director of communications at Virgin, and a former chief spokesman for Eurostar, said: ‘Short-haul travel will definitely gravitate around trains in Europe.’

Useful sites: www.railteam.eu; www.eurostar.com; www.tgv-europe.com; www.sncf.com; www.raileurope.co.uk.    

There seems to be plenty of interest from armchair astronauts. More than 40 percent of Americans yearn for an “out of this world” vacation, according to the 1997 Yesawich, Pepperdine & Brown/Yankelovitch Partners National Leisure Travel Monitor, based on in-depth interviews with 1,500 U.S. households.

Forty-two percent of those surveyed say they are interested in a space cruise that would offer amenities similar to an ocean-going cruise ship while 34 percent specifically say they would be interested in a two-week vacation aboard the Space Shuttle and be willing to spend (on average) $10,800 for the trip. Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine recently reported similar surveys in Japan, Canada, Germany and the United States that found “an enormous unsatisfied desire among the general public to travel in space.”

“Space travel is about 10 to 15 years away if NASA and the private sector develop the necessary research and technology,” says George Diller, NASA spokesman at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. “I think you’ll see commercial initiatives, but it’ll be pricey. Ten thousand dollars won’t get you to the launch pad. You’d probably be looking at something closer to $50,000 for a trip lasting an hour, allowing the passenger to experience weightlessness for about 15 minutes.”

For space flights alone, Bob Citron, a former aerospace executive and director of the Foundation for the Future in Bellevue, Washington (an organization dedicated to scholarly research on life during the next millennium), speculates that $3 billion to $5 billion would be needed to buy 24 to 45 space tourist vehicles, four or five launch sites and staffing for 1,000 to 2,000 flights a year with ticket prices of up to $50,000. “A Space Shuttle vacation is certainly real in terms of consumer interest,” says Dennis Marzella, senior vice president at Yesawich, Pepperdine & Brown. “The technology is there, but it needs to be adapted to accommodate tourists — comfortable seats and big windows.”

Patrick Collins of the University of Tokyo and the Japanese Rocket Society, speaking at the International Symposium on Space Tourism in Bremen, Germany, last March, estimates the development of a reusable, vertical takeoff and landing rocket for passengers would cost $10 billion and take six to seven years. “We need a lot of windows and we need bars, and the Japanese need a karaoke bar,” Collins says. “A gym with padded walls for zero-gravity sports would be a really fun place.”

The space plane designs may draw on the experience of “Hotol,” a pilot project of British Aerospace and Rolls-Royce a decade ago. Hotol was to have been a 50-to-60-passenger plane that would take off from conventional airports. After accelerating through Mach 5 to 80,000 feet, the plane would leave the atmosphere, continue to accelerate and become a satellite itself after reaching 250,000 feet — about four times the cruising altitude of Concorde — and an orbital velocity of Mach 25 to 30. Maximum flying time, ground to ground, to anywhere in the world would be about 70 minutes. Unlike the Space Shuttle, such a space plane would need no external fuel tanks and would re-enter the atmosphere and land under its own power. A space plane would be ideal for picking up and delivering tourists to a space resort en route.

Space Islands Project has an intriguing scenario for a space resort hotel based on a “20-year-old Rockwell idea” for joining up a dozen or so of the Space Shuttle’s empty external fuel tanks into a wheel-shaped space station. Each external tank measuring 28 feet in diameter and 154 feet long (a tad shorter than a 747 fuselage and walls four times thicker than those of the Mir space station) would be divided into three decks. The space station could accommodate 300 people in “cruise-ship conditions.”

‘The external tanks would be joined up end to end in the form of a ring with two more tanks joined up passing through the center like an axle through a wheel, like the orbiting Hilton in the 1969 movie, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” says Gene Meyers, director of Space Islands Project, “a loosely knit group of engineers, educators and architects,” in West Covina, California. “The station would take about an hour and a half to make a complete orbit of the Earth, but the ring itself would be spinning like a roulette wheel at about one revolution a minute thus developing artificial gravity. People would live in the outer ring where they would experience about half of normal gravity — they’d just be half their normal weight — so they could use bathroom facilities and suchlike at pretty well normal conditions. The central column section would be zero gravity. This could be the entertainment and recreation center, which guests could visit for an hour or so at a time. You’d have windows in the central column to view the Earth.

“There are lots of entertainment possibilities at zero gravity. Astronauts have found that blood that is normally drawn down to your legs is sort of released and drifts upwards. Astronauts’ legs become thinner, their chests expand by two to three inches, their faces fill out and wrinkles disappear. Shots of men in their forties before launch and an hour after launch look like father and son. Shannon Lucid, a 53-year-old American astronaut in the Russian space station last year, said she looked 20 years younger in space.”

Meyers and his group are looking to corporate sponsorship to meet the $10 billion to $15 billion cost of building the first space station. “You’d need about 16 of these external tanks. If we can get companies like Coca-Cola and General Motors to sponsor them for $500 million each, you’d cover big chunks of your costs for the first station; the second station would cost roughly half as much, and the third and fourth stations would be about 10 to 15 percent less.

“Space Islands Project is privately funded right now. We’ve budgeted $20 million for this first push to bring in some of the larger sponsors. The payback for them will be enormous. Coca-Cola, for example, spends $8 billion a year on marketing. So we’ve suggested that if they were to pay the cost of a shuttle launch — $400 million to $500 million — they could have the external tank painted white with their logo splashed all over it. This would give them two to three years of broad international exposure. We’re talking to Carnival Cruises, Hilton Hotels, Universal Studios, Radisson Hotels and Disney to support the project.”

‘The Frequent Traveler’ International Herald Tribune: Published: FRIDAY, JULY 18, 1997

An interview with Bea Tollman – iconic founder and president of Red Carnation Hotels.

RC: Could we please talk about what I like to call the ‘boutique experience’ and what it means to you?

BT: Well, the boutique experience to me is the fact that people feel they are almost walking into a home where the welcome is warm and genuine and where they are recognized for whom they are… but they’re a guest and every guest should feel special; and that’s what we really aim to do. When guests arrive at the hotel they do feel they are warmly welcomed; and made to feel special and comfortable.       

RC: Yes, everybody wants recognition…

BT: Yes…

RC: …but want recognition in different ways…

BT: I think they want it as a genuine feeling; because having traveled a lot, and been to many great hotels around the world, and when you go into some of the larger hotels, the staff have been taught certain things they have to say; it doesn’t come from the heart; and everybody you pass along a corridor or anywhere in the hotel they all say the same things. You just feel they’ve been taught to say that…   I believe my staff genuinely feel pleased to see a guest – hopefully know their name – and feel that they mean what they say.

RC: This comes through in talking to guests; it’s a real feeling. But how do you instill this in your staff?

BT: It’s through training; and also from leadership example… how you genuinely feel about people, and I do feel it comes from the top, and takes a certain amount of training… to know what is expected… how a top manager, when they are around the hotel, behaves to the guests; and that’s the example to follow. In my case, I think they’ve seen this through all the years. I am genuinely pleased and happy to see guests – and care so much about them. For me they’re important; I worry that they’re looked after in the right way. And I think they see this from our use of departments and the training that we give them; to make them passionate – and I do feel that our whole team at Red Carnation feels the same way about feeling passionate about our guests and the hotels and its standards. 

RC: Well I feel that is manifest….

BT: I think basically it’s been shown especially in this last year; we have won so many awards…

RC: You’ve been what you might call, punching above your weight… which is extraordinary.

BT: Yes, that is well put, punching above your weight…

RC: And why is this? Is it because of the training, this service, this recognition? I don’t want to put words into your mouth…

BT: No, well I said it’s the training really, the training, and example, the heads of departments, from the top down; from me, the managers, heads of departments; it’s a genuine feeling that permeates down. And the staff sees that they realize that that is very important and they feel it themselves.

RC: You have constant contact with the general managers… and all the staff really…

BT: Well yes, they also see it in another way, because I see every arrivals list for every hotel every day and who they are, what room they’re going into, what the rate is, how many times they’ve been to stay. And I write personal notes to many of these.  Somebody might be coming and having a 50^th wedding anniversary. I might not who they are, or they haven’t been there before, but I make sure they get something special, and I’ll write a note to welcome them and congratulate them.

If somebody has been there fifteen times I like to do something personal there too; that I appreciate their custom and that we care and that we know what they’re doing and what they like – you know we have the guest preference, and it’s always looked at before a guest checks in if we have it on our computer.

And so we watch all of those details. And the staff knows it: I will phone up and say, ‘What about Mr So and So? What are you going to send him because he’s been there on thirty visits; and are you going to send him something extra tonight – snacks in his room, or whatever else there might be?’  And I do special things for different occasions. So the staff knows that I do that and I take a great interest in our guests; and I think this helps to permeate… the idea about how one should worry about the guests and their comfort.

RC: Is there an optimum size for a boutique hotel?

BT: Well I think it should be under a hundred odd rooms; because other than that, to make it a real boutique hotel, because how do have that contact with that amount of guests? We still keep high standards, but I think that’s the optimum amount really.  Although we do at the Rubens where we have 180 rooms; our management is so aware and they watch for all of these things as well. And they’re well aware of companies and people who again and again, to really look after them. So a hotel that size is really difficult to run as a boutique hotel, but we have a jolly good try at doing that.

RC: You now have thirteen hotels in several countries – Durban, Cape Town, London, Palm Beach, Dorset, Guernsey, Geneva… how do you select hotels that you want to acquire or get involved with? What are the criteria that you look for?

BT: It’s a hotel that has potential in the right location. And often the hotels that we’ve looked at and purchased over the years have not been in a good state but you could see that they have had tremendous potential with some loving care, money, and style. And then to create from that base, just an ordinary-looking hotel, into something that you can turn into a beautiful hotel. And location is so important. If you don’t have a good location, you really are finding it very difficult to run a very good hotel…   

RC: Location…

BT: That’s where it’s at, you know. Every one of our hotels has a wonderful location. If you think about it, The Montague’s next to the British Museum; The Rubens, opposite Buckingham Palace; The Egerton is in Kensington, Harrods and all of those shops on probably the most expensive real estate street in London… so it’s a very appealing concept to a lot of European travelers who want to be in an exclusive small hotel, where they really know who you are, and be very private… You couldn’t have a better location than the Milestone; 41 is in the same location as the Rubens… and the hotels in South Africa are the same, in a unique location. And the Angleterre in Geneva, you can’t have a better location than that… 

RC: Yes, the Angleterre has a marvelous location on the lake, with a view of the Jet d’Eau… and a very good restaurant that we used when I worked in Geneva years ago; … How do you see hotel restaurants… as a profit center, or…

BT: Well it’s not a great profit center but you have to have a good restaurant for your guests. And the Egerton is the only hotel we have that doesn’t have a restaurant, but we have wonderful room service and snack and bar menu, and there are so many restaurants around… and a guest always loves to go out. The first thing they when they arrive is, where should we go for dinner? They often don’t look at your own hotel restaurant as a place to go to.  It’s only if they know it, they’ve heard about it and they look at the menu, there are things here that I would like to have. Basically, most guests when they get to a hotel they want to see where they want to go to dinner – out. So it’s hard to attract them, to keep in the hotel, to at least have one meal. So you want to entice them to eat there and give them an experience that they will remember and want to come back. Some people like very exotic and unusual food, fussy food; and then we always try and provide what a lot of guests want – comfort food. So we have a section of our menus which are my recipes.

RC: I love your cook book, by the way. You’ve got all that sort of food in there; it’s what I call real food, not messed about food…

BT: I agree. So many people are going back to that sort of food. You can go to a restaurant and everything might look good, piled up one thing on top of the other. How can you keep food like that hot?  How can you mix so many flavors together?  Are you eating food or are you eating a creative… picture.

RC: Exactly. And sometimes the poetry of the menu is unrecognizable when the dishes arrive…

BT: But it’s got to be edible. And you know I always tell our chefs all the time, just taste everything that goes out of the kitchen; the executive chef’s got to taste every departments food before it goes out. But just say, is this delicious?   The only way to test if it’s right: Is this delicious? And if it’s not, improve it, or change the recipe or something.

RC: In some cities in the Far East, in Hong Kong, for example, the hotel restaurant is the best restaurant in town; locals go out to dine there…

BT: Exactly, exactly… We have a lot of people who come to dine in our restaurants from other places, not necessarily just guests in the hotel. You have to build up a reputation; you have to really entice them.

You have these big name restaurants of famous chefs, they get the whole restaurant, it’s under their name, and it works well in many instances. But they’ve also got to look after the guests staying in the hotel; and usually their interests and care isn’t really in the guests in the hotel. So it’s not just the restaurant in itself at meal times but at all other times of the day and the night.

And we just don’t believe in that. I’m not saying they’re not successful. But we don’t believe in that; we like to have control over what we serve and what people like because we’re guided by them; we get an analysis every month of what are the most popular dishes; what they like, what they don’t like. And it’s very interesting, and it guides us as to what the tastes of the public really are. So it’s helpful for us doing that.

RC: I’ve had some experience of family businesses in other domains, such as health care… One of the great advantages is what you might call ‘patient capital;’ as compared to the public company’s utter dependence on quarterly ‘return on investment’ figures, and the market, and outside shareholders. You don’t have this problem – it’s a great advantage.

BT: Exactly, no we don’t. We have patience, and we know that certain things take a long time to build up, they really do; it is patience that you have to take and you have to be able to support it and afford it. You know, the moment that things aren’t so good, whether it be the economy, or you’re not doing very well, it’s cut, cut, cut. And then all the work that’s gone in to create the standards falls away and then where are you? It’s a shortsighted sot of policy…

RC: Yes, that’s the key, because you can beyond what a public company can do…

BT: Right. With shareholders you have to report the right things, and they say right, cut that… but then it’s hard to keep your standards up as a five star hotel, or even a four star.  When you’re proud of what you do, you’re proud of your standards. And people aren’t stupid; they immediately see, oh, they’re cutting this out now, they’re cutting that out now… and I believe in generosity, and I like people to feel that there’s a generous feeling towards our guests – it might just be giving away small things, just that feeling of welcoming and generosity that counts when guests come to your hotel and to your restaurant.

RC: Well, you are certainly focused on attention to detail.  I remember when you showed me round the Milestone when we first met several years ago and I was struck because we were in a bathroom or a bedroom or something, and you were looking around and you said, ‘Oh, we need another hook here. You can’t have too many hooks.’

BT: Yes, it’s anticipating guests’ needs; putting your self in the place of the guest: have I got this? I didn’t find that in my room etc. and also if you travel you pick up ideas, and you see that is a good idea. I introduced the whole thing with the ‘business ready’ rooms in our hotels, where you’ve got paper, a ruler, staples, paper clips, and all of those things; it’s so important if you’re on business; that’s a very personal thing we do but it’s very useful and people like that. We just try to think of ways to make the guests’ stay more pleasurable, more individual I suppose…

RC: How have you seen the guests’ needs, desires and so on changing over the years? 

BT: Well they certainly have changed, you see that all the time; the whole thing with the Internet, the web sites, all of those things. So you see now what they need, and you obviously try to keep up with the times and what’s going on in the hotel industry.  Everybody boasts, well not everybody, but I know that free Internet service is very important. So you’ll lose guests if you don’t… it’s a way of making money; and everyone has their telephone. The hotels used to make a lot of money through their telephones and they don’t do that any more… those little things make so much difference. 

RC: Yes, because in the old days was relatively minimal, a comfortable bed, armchair, nice bathroom… Nowadays now they assume they’ve got to have web access…

BT: Yes, and they’ve got to charge their phones… you’ve got to have everything that’s easy to find, easy to use, and user-friendly and all the things that you need in a modern life all the time.  And then the guests’ standards have risen.  They expect so much more today because there’s such competition; everybody is battling to get more business and be better than their competitors. It’s a very competitive field today…

RC: There was a time when a comfortable bed was a comfortable bed. Now people are asking about ‘thread counts’ and whatever…

BT: They’re astute today, you know. Pillows… we have all of that. We send a guest preference form asking, what kind of pillows do you like; what kind of…? everything that a guest might want, so that it’s all ready and waiting for them in their rooms.  I don’t how much more one can do.

RC: So where’s it all going? With all the competition out there…

BT:  Well, what it all amounts to really is the service. That’s where it’s going to go because everybody’s got everything today; you read up what your competitors are doing and you do it… So what really counts, I’ve always said the same thing, it’s your staff and how you genuinely care about your guests. 

RC: And the training…

BT: Well, the training is everything: And the motivation; to motivate passion into your staff, and to be proud of working in that hotel or that company. That’s the thing that makes their working life more interesting and they know there’s a chance to do better in a company where someone’s watching over them, and encouraging them to grow. 

RC: Yes, I’ve been very impressed doing interviews with Liz McGivern [director of human resources and training] and you’ve just won a big prize.

BT: We’ve won prizes – against giants; every major hotel company.

RC: And I’ve always been very impressed at your annual staff appreciation party… especially whenever someone from a staff table of colleagues is called up for a prize, there’s a palpably genuine cheering… this is very special.

BT: There is a spirit among the staff…

RC: Are you still looking for acquisitions? Have your eyes open for opportunities?

BT: Well, one has… but one wants to be able to grow not too much that you can’t do today to keep up the standards with the input that we have to give from the higher level of management into the different hotels. You can spread yourself that thin, because you just get busier and busier, standards get higher in the hotels; the things that we do takes an awful lot of time and effort… How can you keep that spirit up when you’ve got too many hotels? We’ve got fifteen operations now; and to look after all of those and to watch what’s going on, to know what’s happening, and to encourage them and do the right thing… it takes a tremendous amount of work.

RC: I’ve always believed that you have to plan to have an optimum size business, which may be a small business. Do you feel that you have ‘institutionalized’ as it were the Red Carnation family, so that if you were to retire, or whatever, so that if you are not there, things still work in the spirit that you have engendered?

BT: You hope that it would do; and you hope that the people I’ve been working with all these years will always keep up that attitude, that they’ll still be there, that they won’t be away… Because, as you can imagine, if you’ve won all these different prizes, opportunities come up with other companies; everybody’s always trying to poach your people; it’s not easy to find good people today who know the business. And when you have achieved certain recognition, we’re obviously a good place to poach from. But we’ve got such a loyalty factor in us. So what would happen if I decided to retire? Well, I’ll never retire! But as the business gets bigger there’s so much you can do in a day. But I hope that our management team is so passionately inspired that they’ll always keep up these standards, so proud of the name. It all depends on who is at the tope and who is orchestrating it – and keeping them that proud. Because everybody is proud, with all the accolades they’re winning; they’re all so proud to be working with this company… we’re fighting giants; I always say it’s David and Goliath.

RC: It’s truly amazing – with all the huge resources that these people have. I’ve talked to a number of what I call entrepreneurs, or family companies… I talked to Richard Branson, two years after he started the airline, and how he was trying to be competitive by training his cabin staff in the Virgin way without the ‘plastic’ smile. So he didn’t want cabin staff with actual airline experience – except heads of cabin and flight crew, who he poached from BA.

BT: That’s basically what it is. And you know the thing is, I try and inspire the young people to know that there’s somebody watching over them, that everybody has an opportunity to grow; that your talents are noticed.  And I also try and explain to them that we have lots of meetings; we have our newsletter, and I watch over them. I like to tell them that anybody can do anything and in the hotel business you can rise in the different ranks quicker than you can in most businesses because you are noticed – by us, not in every hotel.

But we notice… we have all these different ways of noticing people and their performance because we have these weekly, these monthly meetings and they all vote who was the best…  in the hotels. They have an afternoon tea party in every hotel once a month. And then they win points and they’ll say, who was the best manager of these departments last month, and they’ll get points; then they’ll have stars, and that’s how they manage their own competition so to speak. So it motivates them all to win a star, get so many stars, and then at the end of the year when we have that party, they themselves vote who they thought was the manager of the year in that hotel; they vote for themselves who they all recognize. Now this person, let’s say, in the food and beverage department, during the year he’s got so many stars or points, and they all know that…

We don’t choose every prize winner. The staff themselves choose the prize winner of that hotel; they all see; they all work together…

Then they also change positions during the year.  The doorman might end up being a receptionist; a manager will be a doorman… so they see how difficult or easy or whatever it is working in another department.

RC: So how do they compare departments?

BT: Well, it’s difficult, you know. Some of them may say, gosh, my job is so difficult, the most difficult type of job in the hotel, and they’re put into another position… And then when they try this out in different positions, they get to understand what it’s all about. So they get the experience of knowing … how a hotel runs, and how important everybody is whether they’re washing the dishes in the kitchen, or whatever…

So we have all these things. And at Christmas times, myself and the manager of the hotel and the management staff all give a Christmas party where I give my gifts to 2,000 all over the world – from me. Then at the party all the management team will wait on the staff; we’ll give out the presents, serve them dinner and everything. And we go from hotel to hotel and give a Christmas party, in two shifts, we give out the presents, I give a little speech, encourage them all.  And we do picnics in the park and all kinds of things like that. So they feel they’re part of a big family. 

Jonathan and I work at this all the time and watching the standards. There are so many things that I notice and watch, food-wise as well as everything else; if they look clean and tidy, if their shoes are polished, all kinds of things that can slip. Nothing should slip.

RC: I’m going to do some interviews at the Hotel School in Lausanne [Ecole Hoteliere] which is a huge resource for ideas… What sort of things, which areas, should I be looking at? I mean, I can ask questions like, how are you developing the hotel manager of the future? That sort of thing…

BT: It’s sort of knowing the standards of a hotel and having a very critical eye; you should be watching everything. It’s by example. Nothing should be left half done; if you see something that’s not right, you should immediately do it, and be enthusiastic about doing it. It’s just about caring; knowing that certain standards have to be kept up. But you’ve got to learn, and train your eye to notice these things; to put them right; and then to be genuine, to be sincere. Because hotel management is the same all around; everybody is taught the same things: how to run a department; what you should look for.

It all comes down to service.

RC: In a number of industries – especially at a very high level – people can move around fairly easily between different types of business… Is the hotel industry so special, or different, that you cannot bring in a manager from another discipline into a hotel? 

BT: I don’t think you could really; I don’t think you could. Because, you know, you have to be really trained in the hotel business.  It’s looking for the detail – because it’s a detail business. I think every business is detail really; a business is as good as its manager. There’s no such thing as a bad business. It’s management really.

But the one thing about being in the hotel business for people working in the hotel business; you’ve got a way of traveling around the world, and you can take your qualifications and get a job anywhere. That’s very nice because young people can travel the world and gain experience, get jobs in other parts of the world, and move with their talents. In the hotel business every thing is the same. If you’re a chef you can cook anywhere; if you’re a receptionist… if you’ve got some experience in the hotel business.

RC: That’s interesting, because I’ve always had this thing about the mobile manager with ‘portable skills,’ being able to translate yourself to another company. Many redundant middle-aged executives who find it hard to find another job because pretty well all they have to offer is expertise in the culture of their old company.

BT: Exactly. In the hotel business you can actually go anywhere, do anything, step down into another position, you can still be useful, helpful and able to earn a living. And I feel a lot of our young people… I encourage them to move; I hate losing them when they’re good.  But I understand, because that’s the way they’re going to learn. A lot of the people we’ve had working for us didn’t know anything when they started; and I see this at Summer Lodge so much of the time.

They come from France and all around Europe and they work in the restaurant, housekeeping, or reception. And they can’t speak English; they don’t know what to do. And in a year or so they are management material; they are fantastic. And then after a couple of years they want to move on to something else, they don’t like the country life any more, they want to go to a city, to go to another country, and I’ve got the most wonderful people, my students I almost call it, they’re all over the world now. Other hotels are lucky to get people who have been qualified in my university.

RC: That reminds me of Proctor & Gamble in the old days. If we could get a product manager who had been at P&G, we knew they’d be good people… we knew they would have been properly trained in consumer marketing.

BT: I see these young people, and they’re young, and I say, why are you leaving? And they’ll say, we want to go and work in America or somewhere else. The e-mails we get from people in Australia, Canada, from all over, who have left us and gone on to other things, and have been made managers; thanks to the basic grounding we’ve given them. Because when they came to us they knew nothing.

RC: With thirteen hotels now it seems to me you’ve got the critical mass to be able to some extent offer career development across the hotel collection.

BT: Yes, it’s wonderful. You know we have people coming and going from South Africa to here, where they get trained… and of course it’s wonderful.  We train them so well, and they’re keen to learn, and they know they’ve got a future with us. And they back to our hotels there; it’s a wonderful resource for them in South Africa – and for us.  We’ve got the opportunity to train people and make it a better industry in South Africa, for instance

A letter from Joan Draper in Ramat Gan, Israel tells of her dog Turtle creating mayhem in transit at Paris Charles-de-Gaulle Airport, when he escaped from his unlocked cage, might have been a scene from Keystone Cops.   To lock or not to lock the cage of a traveling pet is a crucial concern for civil aviation.

But the arcane domain of frequent flier programs becomes  even more surreal with news that Virgin Atlantic has launched  a ‘Flying Paws’ reward program for traveling cats, dogs, and ferrets. (Rabbits, hamsters, crustaceans and ornamental tropical fish are left to make their own arrangements (www.defra.go.uk)

On their first flight Virgin Atlantic gives jet-setting pets a ‘welcome onboard pet pack.’ Dogs are given a ‘Virgin doggy t-shirt and sparkling dog tag.’   Cats are given a toy mouse called ‘Red’ and a Virgin collar tag; and ferrets receive ‘a cool limited edition flying jacket and collar tag.’

Pets that travel on the European Union’s Passport for Pets scheme are given a passport ‘which not only gives them a record of all their flights, but allows them to collect “paw prints” which they will be able to redeem for gifts.’ After 10, 15 and 20 flights pets can claim rewards from ‘blow-dries and pedicures to Prado, Burberry, and Gucci pet clothing, to a personal “Pawtrait” from famous artist Cindy Lass, renowned for her paintings of celebrities [sic] furry companions around the world.’

One paw print is awarded per flight; five paw prints brings a galaxy of goodies, such as handmade Virgin bowls plus a non- slip mouse mat so they can ‘dine in style’ or choose to donate their rewards ‘worth £50’ to their favorite animal charity or sanctuary.’

‘If they’re feeling especially loving toward their human friend, they can show their true feelings by donating 1,000 bonus air miles to his or her “Flying Club” account.’

How do I deal with readers’ letters asking how to convert pet miles into people miles?

Question: ‘My ferret Joshua has accumulated 100,000 pet miles in the Virgin Atlantic program. Can I redeem these for an upgrade to business class on my next flight to Orlando?’ 

Answer: ‘Joshua and you should have reciprocal rights on flights taken separately or together. But check the exchange rate between pet miles and people miles.     Joshua could be entitled to elite status with access to the cargo hold lounge. But do make sure that Joshua, or heaven forbid, the animal rights folk do not get to know what you are planning.’

Airlines have different requirements about carrying pets on board.   Virgin Atlantic, in common with most carriers, does not allow pets to travel in the cabin with their owners.   But they are individually collected at check-in and travel in a separate part of the hold from the baggage, with controlled temperature, and fed water, according to Marianne Jenson, a Virgin spokeswoman in London.

Air France, one of the few dog-friendly airlines, allows dogs up to 5 kilograms to sit in the cabin; United Airlines allows ‘small dogs or cats’ to travel in a cage under the seat; guide dogs are confined to the hold.    British Airways requires all pets to be checked in as ‘excess baggage;’ except for guide dogs which are allowed a seat of their own.

Pets should not be sedated and given a light meal before traveling. Take care to check quarantine and vaccination rules and make sure you have the documents you need. You’ll find useful tips at www.hotdogsholidays.com. 

China Southern Airlines joins our ongoing debate on the crucial issue of traveling with pets, with a charmingly succinct release in the apocryphal (‘There’s a French widow in every bedroom’) guide book tradition.  

‘Pets are not allowed on board the aircraft, except for dogs for the seeing impaired.’ This is because ‘once a dog or a cat becomes agitated… it may run about the cabin and is very likely to bite off its restraining leash, or hamper flight attendants in their duty.’ Or ‘the pet could carry bacteria or parasites and since the cabin is a sealed and constant temperature environment which is favorable to the multiply [sic] and infection of the bacteria, it could affect the health of passengers and aircrew.’ What is more, ‘some pets, such as mice, could easily throw passengers into a panic; and pets of any species can leave their droppings randomly in the cabin.’

China Southern provides exemplary specifications on the size and the ventilation of pets’ traveling boxes, ‘which must be firm enough to prevent the pet from opening it from the inside, and able to hold the pet’s droppings during the flight and ground    handling,’ along with the need for quarantine certificates.

‘If you consign your pet to China Southern, it will enjoy a first class cargo service; it will not only be looked after before the boarding but also be supervised during the entire trip,’ we are assured by Li Kun, chief operating officer at China Southern  Airlines.

I am pondering the possible fate of my ferret Joshua on a hypothetical flight to Guangzou, when another release from China Southern, this time with a Chicago dateline, hits my mailbox.

It transpires that 470 ‘Canadian breeding pigs’ were flown to Shenzen; ‘accompanied on board with their own “welcoming ceremony” of a three-step disinfection.’ After the 14-hour flight to China ‘the foreign travelers were greeted in the Middle Kingdom with fire hoses and showered disinfectant.’ Quarantine clerks ‘inspected all swine documents’ to see that there were ‘no illegal aliens.’  

The ‘porkers were humanely treated and had three in-flight meals during their journey.’ That we should be so lucky!  On the other hand – ‘they did not get to see an in-flight movie, nor earn Sky Pearl Club frequent flier miles.’

So pigs do fly! Have a nice year.

Despite draconian measures to restrict hand baggage since the  airline bomb scare last month, that still forbid one to bring liquids, whether bottled water or hand lotion, into the cabin on some flights, it is pretty much business as usual when it comes to traveling with pets; an issue of crucial concern to a growing number of readers. While pets and their containers may now be required to pass through an X-ray machine, in addition to a metal detector, Air France (one of the world’s most pet-friendly carriers) still allows cats and dogs of up to 5 kilograms to travel under your seat in the cabin; larger animals are consigned to the hold. British Airways still allows guide dogs to sit next to their owner free of charge; while Virgin Atlantic will welcome dogs, cats and ferrets (in the hold) and award them ‘pet miles.’  KLM hosts pets at an ‘animal hotel’ at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, where they are fed, walked and watered, and their cages cleaned before re-boarding. Humans should be so lucky!  Itineraries and choice of airline can depend upon whether you can take a pooch or feline with you on board. 

So I was hardly surprised to learn from the American Pet Product Manufacturers Association, Norwalk, Connecticut, that ‘pet travel soared 33 percent last year to a record 80 million and a full 14 percent, or 29 million, Americans travel with their pets.

‘People love their pets, and love being with their pets, and that means hitting the road with them,’ says Leslie Downey, director of communications at TravelersAdvantage.com. ‘The surging trend in pet travel has put more bark in luxury vacations, and airlines and resorts are listening.’

I can hardly wait to take my ferret Joshua on his first flight with Virgin Atlantic, when he can claim his ‘cool limited edition flying jacket and collar tag.’

Meanwhile, I am wrestling with a rising tide of anguished letters from peripatetic pet owners seeking the right airline, and the best route to fly with their pet – vaccination documents and quarantine rules, and arcane rules on certain breeds banned from cargo holds.

The latest pet conundrum arrives from Hans Carl, a reader, recently resident in Montreal-du-Gers, France, who asks how he can bring his ‘hand-fed female green-gold yellow head Amazon’ parrot over from Massachusetts.

‘We have searched for information from American and French veterinary authorities, but have nowhere been able to get firm advice on what is needed,’ Carl says, ‘Can she travel in the cabin (a cat cage does fine)?   If not, is the hold safe for a bird?’ 

Alas, I can find no way for him to bring the bird – short of getting her to talk her way through security and on to a flight, or fit her with a homing device to fly the Atlantic. British Airways, Air France and Virgin Atlantic say they do not fly birds either in the cabin, or in the normal baggage hold, although nobody could explain exactly why (aside from a frivolous suggestion that a parrot might cause a noise disturbance in the cabin, especially if it were to bark commands in a strange tongue).

Warwick Smith, a spokesman at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, in Britain (Defra.gov.uk),  explained that there is a ‘temporary ban on importing live birds’ into any European Union country until December 2006, because of the risk of spreading avian ‘flu, although there are exceptions in the case of ‘endangered species.’

For advice on pet travel in or from the United States, go to  www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dq/faq_animal_importation.htm.     

But it’s an ill wind as they say… And indeed, the economic downturn has been good for business, according to an American Express survey of senior UK finance executives over half (58 percent) of whom reveal that decisions made during the downturn have actually improved their firms’ long term prospects.

‘Business travel spending increases are planned in those areas of travel that are linked to revenue growth,’ the survey quotes. And I am betting that these increases are focused on such areas as winning new business; protecting and developing client/customer or partner relationships; and networking at industry conferences and events. At the expense (no pun intended) of corporate get-togethers; internal wheel-spinning (‘I must visit Jean-Pierre in Paris to discuss his marketing plan’): And forgoing (just this year anyway) on lubricating that ‘essential’ economic forum in Monte Carlo. (Let the pundits wallow in the trough of their own confusion.) 

Even during these months of tough trading, owners of growing businesses understand the need to travel, not only within their own region, but farther afield.    When the going gets tough (especially for small entrepreneurial businesses), the tough get going!   Let the bad times roll.   My credo has always been … ‘what is bad for the travel trade is good for the traveler; and vice versa: Although I’m happy to discuss caveats and corollaries.

‘Zero-base’ planning (aka ‘navel-gazing’ or sitting on a sharp stone) is a salutary exercise in these lean times.

Road warriors have made travel decisions on a shifting equation of cost, convenience and comfort, depending on where they are headed, and purpose of the trip. But tighter budgets and the sheer hassle of travel today have thrown into sharper focus the need to assess the ‘productivity’ of a business trip, taking into account the cost of management time rather than cost of travel alone. 

So whenever a business interaction is needed, instead of automatically thinking of a trip, even inveterate road warriors now think of other alternatives first, such as videoconferencing in every form – from state-of-the-art virtual reality with eye contact and wrap-around sound to desk-top teleconferencing; and an old-fashioned telephone call (a ‘hot’ medium as Canadian media guru Marshall McLuhan once famously said, making one focus entirely on the voice, the spoken word, which makes the phone as confessional as the psychoanalyst’s couch; making it easier to deal with intimate or difficult subjects.)

Travel is no longer the first resort to the need for a business meeting.  Videoconferencing can be an essential complement to travel.    Fly to New York and hold a videoconference with the troops in various cities instead of traipsing around the country to visit them.

‘Travel management’ has evolved from being essentially a bookkeeping function – travel policy, traveling in the most efficient way, getting the best deals – to ‘management’ in the management sense.   ‘Why are we making this trip? What are we going to achieve?   Can we do business some other way?    How can we achieve better productivity by cutting out unnecessary travel and achieve better productivity for trips that we do make?  Companies are reshaping the pattern of their travel.     Management productivity has become the new byword for business travel.  

Consider a spectrum from what you might call ‘hard-core’ business travel (a sales trip, or clinching a deal) and internal meetings with associates and partners to ‘soft-core’ travel (association conferences, exhibitions, seminars and incentive trips).

Videoconferencing has substituted some internal company travel, such as visiting other plants and offices, especially global companies with people having regional responsibilities and large time differences. Not all the troops need to travel to the same place for a monthly update.  There is a need to build relationships, but not to meet every time.

Videoconferencing is best used for getting things done rather than building relationships. It can help to accelerate decision-making by letting people interact more often and move things along.   It allows for informal and impromptu meetings that would not happen otherwise.

There is also the ‘opportunity cost’ of traveling somewhere when it might be more productive, going somewhere else, or having somebody fly in to meet you in the office, where you can call other people in when you need them. Or else do you fly to New York and convene a video-conference instead of making a whistle-stop tour around the country. Or do you send Joe? There is always an opportunity to do something else. One has to ask, what’s the trade off?  It is fairly easy to quantify travel productivity for sales people and line managers; harder for staff people. But that’s another challenge.

The ‘bottom-line’ in travel management is getting other people to visit you.

It is hard to find that authentic welcome, a true home from home, to coin another cliché; it is palpable but at the same time elusive; it is hard to define, except in industry clichés, but seasoned travelers recognize it at once – typically in the first ten minutes of stepping into a hotel, or boarding a jet.

Travelers cherish recognition, whether they are traveling for business or pleasure, or both. Hotels that treat every guest as ‘mystery shoppers’ can reap dividends in goodwill and future business. 

Legend has it that Fats Waller, when asked for a definition of jazz, replied: ‘Lady if you have to ask, I can’t tell you.’  (It is a nice analogy when you think that jazz engages both the brain and the feet.)    

I call it the ‘boutique experience.’

It comes down to training and example which has to come down from the top through the organization. It has to be dyed deep in the culture and in the reward system of a company; and permeate through to every employee whether in direct or indirect contact with guests.

‘People are our most precious asset’ is a corporate mantra that has a hollow ring in many organizations, whether it applies to staff or customers.

‘Boutique’ is an overused word describing any small environment with ‘luxury’ facilities. But small is not necessarily beautiful; although there does seem to be an optimum size – and a staff/guest ratio of typically one to three. It is the ‘software’ – the soft-skills of the people who provide the service – that can make or break the experience.

Bea Tollman is founder-president of the Red Carnation Hotel Collection of fourteen boutique hotels in outstanding locations – five in London, two in Dorset, Guernsey, Geneva, Palm Beach, and three in South Africa. She inspires awe and affection among the staff.

‘The boutique experience for me is that people feel they are walking into a home where the welcome is warm, genuine and where they are recognized for whom they are. Every guest should be made to feel special; that is what we really aim to do. And we do this through training and leadership example – how you genuinely feel about people.  But to make a real boutique hotel you should have less than a hundred odd rooms; I think that’s the optimum number really.’

Guy Young, president of Uniworld, a self-styled ‘Boutique River Cruise Collection,’ based in Los Angeles, says. ‘What makes us unique as a river cruise operator is that the décor on our ships has a different look and feel… plush, intimate and warm; we’re not a cookie-cutter company. We average about 130 guests, with one staff member for every three guests. So they get to know the guests personally, and greet them by name when they come back on board after an excursion; it’s like a big family on board, and our staff work very hard to express that sincere, caring attitude. And there’s a lot of interaction between the guests.’

The Virgin Limited Edition of boutique properties includes the Necker Island resort in the British Virgin Islands, along with the Necker Belle, a 100-foot catamaran; Kasbah Tamadot in Morocco; a private game lodge in Ulusaba, South Africa; the Roof Gardens and the Babylon restaurant in London; and The Lodge in Verbier, Switzerland.

The Lodge, a large chalet style hotel, consists of two big communal floors and nine en suite guest rooms; and 14 staff.    

Hannah Allen, general manager of The Lodge, says, ‘It’s a very relaxed feel. With one staff member for every three guests, we can be up till four or five in the morning, until the last guest goes to bed. It’s a tailor-made environment. Richard [Branson], whether he is staying with us or on Necker Island, likes to come and relax; he likes a homely feeling and to share that with other people. We have groups of business people; family couples with friends; winter skiers; corporate clients… it’s a real mix.’

‘When you go into some of the larger hotels, it’s clear the staff have been taught certain things they have to say; it doesn’t come from the heart; and everybody you pass along a corridor or anywhere in the hotel they all say the same things; you just feel they’ve been taught to say that,’ Bea Tollman says. ‘I believe my staff genuinely feels pleased to see a guest – hopefully know their name – and feel that they mean what they say.

‘Training is everything; and the motivation; to motivate passion into your staff, for them to be proud of working in that hotel or that company,’ Tollman adds. ‘That’s the thing that makes their working life more interesting and they know there’s a chance to do better in a company where someone is watching over them, and encouraging them to grow.

‘It comes down to knowing the standards of the hotel and having a very critical eye; you should be watching everything,’ Bea Tollman says. Nothing should be left half done.  If you see something that’s not right, you should immediately do it, and be enthusiastic about doing it. You’ve got to learn and train your eye to notice these things; to put them right; and then to be genuine, be sincere; because hotel management is the same all over the world. Everybody is taught the same things; how to run a department; what you should look for…

‘What it amounts to really is the service; and looking for the detail, because it’s a detail business. Everybody’s got everything and doing the same things today; you read up what your competitors are doing, and you do it.  What really counts is your staff: and how you genuinely care about your guests.’

I believe it was the legendary Soichiro Honda who once said that Japanese and Western management was 95 percent the same, ‘but different in all important respects.’  He meant the software – personal skills that make the difference and provide the competitive edge – especially true in the service industry.  

On a recent visit to the Ecole Hoteliere in Lausanne, I was exploring an angle for a story:   how and why hotel managers can readily adapt to other management roles but seemingly not the other way round: Perhaps because hotel managers learn an eclectic range of skills having hands-on experience in so many diverse areas of expertise.

Red Carnation has what you might call ‘peer-performance’ reviews in the form of weekly or monthly meetings at each hotel when all the staff vote for the ‘best manager’ of each department.  They’ll also acquire experience of how other departments work by changing positions during the year and functions by changing positions for a time during the year. The doorman might end up as a receptionist; a manager will serve as a doorman; or work in the food and beverage department…

While there seems to be an optimum size for a boutique property, I asked Bea Tollman if there is an ‘optimum’ size for a personally managed family group such as Red Carnation.

‘One wants to be able to grow but not too much that you can’t keep up the standards with the input that the higher level of management has to give to the different hotels,’ she says. ‘You can only spread yourself that thin because you just get busier and busier; standards get higher in the hotels; the things we do take an awful lot of time and effort…   How can you keep that spirit up when you’ve got too many hotels? We’ve got fifteen operations now, and to look after all of those and to watch what’s going on, know what’s happening, and encourage them and do the right thing… it takes a tremendous amount of work.’       

Although I have always assumed that every silver lining has a cloud; I cling to the belief that every cloud has a silver lining. The events of 9/11 precipitated a crisis among world airlines, which went into free fall, with empty seats and canceled services, and large hotel chains suffered falls in occupancy levels, there was a boom in the charter market for business jets (even for trans-Atlantic travel) and ‘boutique,’ and boutique hotels reported business almost as normal at a time when fewer people were traveling.

It is easy to understand why. Jet charter (and the growth of scheduled business-only airlines that use business jets) addresses a need for security, discretion and confidentiality. Book a charter and you travel to your own schedule in an unmarked plane with private access at major hubs or convenient small airports, even taken by limo to the steps of the plane. During the flight, you can relax, work or have meetings. And speed by limo (motorcycle escort is optional!) to your office – or boutique hotel.             

Business jets (whether chartered or scheduled), along with boutique hotels are ‘private’ environments compared with the public arena of large hotels and even the premium cabins of conventional airlines. You might call it ‘closed circuit’ travel, segregated from the madding crowd, and cocooned in your own security blanket. What I would call a true boutique experience.

Back to basics, what makes a great hotel? This is a recurring theme that I am often asked to talk about. There is no ideal. People travel in different modes, different frames of mind, with different needs, motivations and prejudices, that can vary from trip to trip, depending on why we’re going and where we’re headed.

Are we traveling only for business or trying to combine that with a vacation? Do we need to use the room as a high-tech business center? Do we need a prestigious address with facilities to entertain, a high-tech ‘command center’ to work and keep in touch with the office, or simply a room for the night? How important is location? Are we looking for adventure, new experiences? What is our budget? How much do loyalty and frequent guest programs count? And who is picking up the tab?

Everybody expects a quiet room with high safety standards and service. Add to this your own pet foibles, predilections and prejudices, such as wall-to-wall Muzak, $50 club sandwiches from room service and egregious mini-bar prices.  Some people seek recognition, such as being greeted by name by the deputy assistant duty night manager. Others thrive on anonymity. Or ‘added value’ options, such as early check-in, late check-out, room upgrades, airport transfers, cocktails and canapés, exquisite bed linen, or a luxurious turn-down service with candles and chocolates on the pillow. Small things can make a big difference; a sincere handshake; a misplaced smile; or a gesture beyond the normal call of duty that can make or break the experience. (I once shocked a group of hotel managers by jokingly averring that one of my criteria for judging a hotel was by the quality of the removable wooden coat hangars that I might accidentally take home to add to my collection.)

Hotel experiences (good and bad) stick in the mind like burrs. There was the late night welcome at the Hotel Splendido in Porto Fino with prosciutto and ripe pear and a cold bottle of Chablis; the giant Edwardian bathtubs and lemon-scented soap at the old Hyde Park Hotel in London; the vital telephone call that I took when caught short in the bathroom of the Excelsior Gallia in Milan; and, in a hurry for the airport, losing, for forty fateful minutes, my sole pair of shoes that I had left outside my door to be cleaned at the Plaza Athenee in Paris. The warmth and sincerity of the welcome and goodbyes I receive at the Beau Rivage Palace in Lausanne is truly heartwarming, with calls beyond the call of duty. I shall never forget the time when Sylvie, the luminescent head concierge gave my sick wife care beyond the call of duty; and offered us a car to the airport. The Beau Rivage is a rare example of a traditional grand hotel with an authentic boutique feel.    

My wife and I once booked into the Westminster Hotel in Nice, a fine rococo building on the Promenade des Anglais.   I was on a hard-core business assignment, but we had made arrangements with British Airways’ frequent flier miles.  We got a lousy room and reception to match: I had to wield my vestigial management skills to change the room and rearrange the attitude.

Flashback to several years ago which shows that a truly grand hotel is still a class act:

I was on a magazine assignment in the south of France with a photographer from New York. We entered the Negresco Hotel in Nice, the grandest of the Belle Epoque palaces almost next door to the Westminster, in pursuit of a room for him - he had not made a reservation.

Nothing strange about that, except that photographers can sometimes look very strange. This one had red suspenders and a purple vest. And I looked strange in a black leather jacket, white pants, espadrilles, no socks, and a mane of windswept hair. But we were received with elaborate courtesy by a liveried voiturier, doorman and desk clerk.

There was none of the usual: “How will you be settling your bill, sir?” or, “Can I take an imprint of your credit card?”

I explained our mission to the manager, congratulating him on the charm and hospitality of his staff. He smiled, “Ah, yes, Monsieur C, you can never tell who you have in front of you these days!”

Years ago, I always stayed at the same small, somewhat decrepit, hotel in Paris, because of the charm and graciousness of Nicolas, the elderly and erudite White Russian night porter.   I will return to that tatty hotel with a big heart in Avignon, but never to the four-star palace hotel in Nice because of its rude and uncomprehending staff.   Cattle class on one airline can sometimes be a better experience than business class on another. You may have noticed how often two flights on the same airline is like flying with two different airlines.  Frequent fliers are able to detect a ‘bad’ crew from a ‘good’ crew the moment they board the plane. One hotelier says that he can tell a good hotel from a bad hotel in the first ten minutes.

Welf Eberling, former executive vice president and chief operating officer in New York of Leading Hotels of the World, says, “The perception of luxury today is not gilded moldings or a plasma flat-screen television, but a harmonious blend of product and service. There are certain givens. For example, we don’t measure the size of rooms, but how often does room service push in the trolley and there’s only one easy chair so the other person has to perch on the corner of the bed?

‘Rooms should have three phones with two lines: one by the bed, one on the desk, one in the bathroom. Turn-down service is always a great point of discussion. There’s more to it than folding back the top sheet and putting a chocolate on the pillow — it should be full room service, straightening out the bathroom, bringing in new towels. Then, there is the whole spectrum of food and beverage. We are not giving a Michelin star for food it’s the service that counts. How is the guest received in the restaurant? Is the waiter attentive, does he pre-empt some of your wishes? In a five-star hotel it should be an experience; like a restaurant.’

Trent Walsh, managing director of Leading Quality Assurance in London, says, “Leading Hotels’ members are inspected twice in a three-year cycle. Our inspectors stay anonymously for 48 hours and score each department against a total of 1,200 quantitative standards and a qualitative scoring — the fuzzy, touchy-feely aspect that is so important in the luxury sector.”

He adds: “Luxury five-star hotels must fulfill what you would expect: a good bathroom, separate shower, double sinks and quality linen. But only 35 percent of the assessment is based on product; the other 65 percent depends on service, which is much more important. You can have the most wonderful product in the world, but if you don’t couple it with a phenomenal service, you are not going to succeed in the luxury hotel market.”

This is why some smaller boutique hotels achieve good scores even if they don’t have all the amenities of larger properties. They make up with gains in service.           

Andy Thrasyvoulou, founder of myhotel bloomsbury, a four-star boutique hotel in London, claims to have found the right balance between high-tech rooms and comfort. The idea is that the hotel should work to the guest’s pace.

“We try to know as much as possible about the guest before he or she arrives,” Thrasyvoulou says. “Maybe you want to check in at the bar area with a coffee or drink, talk about London with one of our guest service people, or, if you’re in a hurry and we know about that, you can sign off quickly.

“One of my frustrations with hotels was that if I wanted something done, you’d have this endless directory of numbers. You ring one up and they say, sorry, it’s not us, it’s the concierge, or housekeeping. So what we’ve done is, you ring one number that goes to the guest service pool where they’ll have all the information about you. Even if they can’t help you immediately, they’ll go to talk to housekeeping or whoever and get back to you.”

Thrasyvoulou admits to being influenced by Stuart Scher and J.F. Hofmeyer at Taylor Nelson Sofres, a consultancy in London, who have examined the relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty.

“There are three elements to customer loyalty and commitment,” Thrasyvoulou says: “First is reasonable satisfaction, the second is having a compelling reason to use your product or service, the third is being better than your competition.” At least 20 percent of satisfied customers do not stay loyal, he says. The reason may be that competitors have shown them an alternative, which could be as simple as air miles or hotel points.

So I was intrigued to read the other day that two in five bored business travelers spend meetings daydreaming about holidays; one third fall asleep during ‘especially dreary meetings,’ with 35 percent often ‘catching themselves on the brink of dropping off;’ while 83 percent treat meetings ‘like a long telephone call with a relative – only paying attention for the first half, when they can expect to hear ‘all the bits worth knowing.’

These are the ‘shocking’ conclusions of a poll of 1,207 British business travelers by Crowne Plaza Hotels & Resorts.

Tactics for staying awake include doodling (59 percent) and ‘fiddling’ (52 percent); and ‘playing with a pen when the mind wanders off the topic’ (33 percent).  More than half the respondents said that ‘looking out of window is their biggest distraction;’ 73 percent admitted ‘they’ll pay no attention if a person conducting the meeting has a monotonous voice.’

Crowne Plaza promises an end to boring meetings with  the ‘Think Box’ designed by Roger von Oech, a  California-based ‘creativity consultant,’ known for his book, ‘A Whack on the Side of the Head.’

The Think Box (of brushed aluminum about 18 inches by 14 inches by 8 inches)  is the latest gimmick in Crowne Plaza’s ‘Think Tank’ campaign to stimulate business guests with tools and tips from ‘innovators and visionary thinkers.’ Boxes will be distributed in hotels across Europe and Middle East.

Think Boxes contain three items designed to overcome  three key hurdles that Von Oech claims beset meetings. They are: Loss of focus; lack of creativity; and achieving meeting goals.

-The Inspire Boards use brain teasers to help get people focused at the start of meetings and stimulate creative energy activity.

-The Ball of Whacks, a rhombic triacontahedron puzzle made up of 30 detachable magnetic blocks, is a ‘tactile tool to release nervous energy, prevent distraction and to reinvigorate creativity during a meeting.’

‘The Ball can be taken apart and manipulated into a lot of different shapes,’ von Oech says.   ‘Using your hands and eyes together stimulates the brain.’ (Squeezing the Ball in your hand and showering your neighbors with magnetic shards is certainly a great way to break the ice!)

-The Think Cards contain 32 of von Oech’s strategies for creative thinking and to get a new perspective on an issue.  One card says, ‘Avoid arrogance;’ others say, ‘Laugh at it;’ ‘Drop an assumption;’ ‘Slay a sacred cow.’  ‘Picking cards at random can get you off thinking in other directions,’ von Oech says.   What you might call, thinking outside the box.

‘Meeting planners typically look at the technical needs for the meeting, such as space, catering and audiovisual needs,’ von Oech says. ‘But not enough attention has been given to how you energize the thinking of people in the meeting, and to spark their creativity.’

The Think Box might be great for brainstorming; but I can think of meetings where using it would be unthinkable. Surely it depends on the type of meeting? 

‘Absolutely not,’ Von Oech says.   ‘There are three or four different types of meeting; some where you’re just disseminating information; others where you trying to come to a consensus; making a decision; then some where you’re trying to come up with ideas – to the extreme of a brainstorming session.  Some of the products can be used for a stepping-off point, or as an ice-breaker.  People are more engaged, participatory, rather than being lectured at, or power-pointed to death.’   

After a short meeting with myself I’ve decided to go on thinking without the box.

But unless you can really cope in that language, it’s usually best to save it for social chat. A little learning is a dangerous thing (although a few gracious phrases in, say, Chinese, Arabic and Russian, are always appreciated.) English, of course, is now accepted as a lingua franca for business travelers in most parts of the world. But forcing people to speak it when they’re not completely fluent can lead to serious misunderstanding.

There was the case of a former German chancellor who was presented to the Queen during a visit to London. He had brushed up his English for the occasion. But when he was introduced to her he said, ‘Who are you?’ instead of, ‘How are you?’ She replied, ‘I am the Queen of England.’ That’s supposed to be a true story.

A good compromise is for both parties to speak their own language, which may bring a dialectical if not an entirely cultural, meeting of minds. Although it may be worth remembering the old German adage that you should sell in the other language and buy in your own. A variation, perhaps, of the maxim ‘Dress British, think Yiddish.’

For most people this means speaking through interpreters.  But the ability to work well with one is a technique, a skill in itself. You have to make sure that your message is received in a cultural as well as a linguistic sense.

You have to be very careful about using humor on formal occasions. If you make an after-dinner speech in the UK, you’re heavily criticized if you don’t make a joke; in France you’ll be criticized if you do. They’ll say, he’s a clown, he’s a lightweight. The British self-mocking humor is not understood.

It can be quite disconcerting with simultaneous interpretation. You make a witty remark and those people listening in English laugh; then the French and Italians laugh; then there’s a pause because the Dutch and Germans are waiting for the verb at the end of the sentence before they get it. Meanwhile, you’re saying, ‘yes, but to be serious I must make an important point.’ At which point the Germans and Dutch burst out laughing.

The Japanese seem to have found a face-saving solution to this contingency. The story goes of the Japanese interpreter who said: ‘The British gentleman has now started telling a joke. When he stops speaking, please laugh and clap loudly – or I’ll be in trouble.’

Another solution when faced with strange English from a non-native speaker is to tune in to the French translation – or tune in to space music on your iPod.

Alas, this is not always possible in face-to-face meetings. Everything depends on the skill of the interpreter. Confusion generated by faulty translation is less hilarious. Experts recommend that both parties in a negotiation bring their own people to interpret for important discussions. It’s convenient, but dangerous, to rely on the home side’s interpreter, who may unconsciously represent the interest of his or her employer.

Keep sentences short and simple but avoid oversimplifying – which may give an impression that you’re condescending – and pause frequently. Avoid vague and imprecise expressions; use visual aids when you can; and look at the person with whom you’re dealing – not the interpreter; look for signs of confusion; keep eye contact when culturally appropriate (in the Far East it’s sometimes interpreted as aggressive or challenging behavior – only the occasional glance into another person’s face is considered polite).

When it comes to the Far East, it’s not so much ‘read my lips’ as ‘read my mind.’ The silences between utterances are just as meaningful as what is spoken. The Japanese method of listening comprises a repertoire of smiles, nods, and polite noises. The idea is to keep you talking, usually misinterpreted by Westerners as agreement.

If the Japanese have a reputation for inscrutability, it is because they have developed ambiguity of expression to an art form. They have delicate ways of voicing personal opinions. The British may have invented circumlocution (not to mention elocution) but the Japanese have made it an art form. It’s not that they’re hypocritical. But they manifest quintessential politeness , which can mean they say ‘yes’ when they really mean ‘no.’

The Japanese are concerned with saving face and have developed a set of rules to prevent things going wrong. So try to avoid saying no or asking questions when he answer might be no. If you do hear a no in Japan, it is likely to be expressed as a sucking of breath through the teeth. The closest anyone will get to articulating the word no is, ‘It is very difficult,’ or ‘We will need to give this further study.’ The real message is likely to be, ‘Let’s forget the whole business.’

Closer to home, there are defective cognates between languages like English and French. The entente cordiale was in jeopardy when the French head office of its recently acquired subsidiary in Britain faxed: ‘We demand your latest profit figures…’ Demander in French means to ask, not to demand.

Much more important than language, the psychologists, say, is your ‘non-verbal behavior,’ your awareness of different ‘business modes’ and ‘nonverbal behavior’ or body language. This must take into account different notions of politeness, manners and social rituals. Actions speak louder than words. Saying the wrong things – eye contact, hand gestures, touching, bowing, using first names, how to eat and drink can be a minefield for the unwary. The snappily-dressed young Chinese in Hong Kong with the portable phone may seem to talk the same business language, but if you unintentionally offend him, you may lose his trust – and his business.

You first need to know whether you are dealing with people from so-called ‘low context’ cultures (North America, Britain, Sweden, Switzerland, Germany), who spell things out verbally, or ‘high context’ cultures (France, Japan, Spain, Greece, Saudi Arabia, China and Korea) who communicate more by nuance and implication and are less dependent on the spoken word.

For example, the Swiss and the Germans like to lay their cards on the table. Talking to a Frenchman or a Spaniard, what is unsaid is often most important. Low context folk need to attune their listening skills; high context folk should try to be more explicit. ‘Your context or mine?’ is the dialectical ideal.

The handshake is probably the most common form of greeting in the world (except in Japan). But even this simple gesture is fraught with complications. The British handshake is firm but used sparingly; in Italy and France – where handshaking is something of a national pastime (the French are said to spend 30 minutes a day shaking and re-shaking hands) –a gentler, kinder grip may stand you in good stead.

In Germany and Denmark, you nod your head when you shake hands as a gesture of respect. Somebody who does not know this may interpret it as aggression (which it may well be). People in Mediterranean countries sometimes tilt the head back when they shake hands. Northerners may interpret this for arrogance (which it may well be). Anglo-Saxons learn to look people in the eye. This is sometimes interpreted as aggressive or challenging behavior, especially by Orientals, for whom only an occasional glance into the other person’s face is considered polite.

Unless you really know what you’re doing, close bodily greetings are best avoided. Kissing has many pitfalls – unless you are fortunate enough to have been coached by a French general. You need to know which cheek to start with. The British start with the right cheek. In Belgium you start with the left cheek; left, right, left. The French generally kiss twice; left, right. In some Middle East countries they kiss three or even four times – men kiss men, women kiss women. (In Saudi Arabia, greetings are particularly elaborate: after shaking hands a Saudi is likely to kiss you on both cheeks then take your hand in his as a gesture of kinship.)

Should you ever summon the nerve to kiss a lady’s hand (a French aristocrat says it takes three generations to learn how to do it properly), your lips must never actually make contact. In Spain, men who are close friends often give a bear hug, or abrazo. The story goes that a British businessman so shocked the Americans he was with when he greeted a Spaniard with a hug, that he almost lost the contract he was negotiating. Look out now for the Slavonic bear hug.

One area where handshakes, kissing and (heaven forbid) bear hugs have not become established is Japan where such bodily contact is considered impolite. On the other hand, the Japanese custom of bowing can be daunting to a Western businessperson. (Let your hand slide down towards your knees, back and neck stiff with eyes averted.) The act has crucial social implications, depending on title. It is essential for Japanese to know the ranking order within any group because rank is applied to all circumstances – whether business or social.

The way other cultures like to put people at their ease can be confusing. The American use of first names as an instant form of friendship does not go down well in countries like Germany, even England. (Germans like to be addressed by their last name with full academic titles, like Professor Dr. Schmidt, rather than Willy or Ilse. In Austria, you have to contend with Dr. Dr. Schmidt. In Italy, address anybody over 40 wearing a suit as Dottore.)

The British and Americans share at least one thing: they like to break the ice with a joke, which means sometimes being thought flippant. We in turn may think the Japanese are amused if they giggle: but they may sometimes do this when they are perplexed. In Japan, Korea and China, laughter is often a sign of embarrassment. In the Philippines it can mean, ‘Take note! I’m about to say something important!’ And Thais laugh at tragic news to cheer you up. (Something we are all getting used to now!)

The classic Anglo-Saxon ‘time is money’ approach to negotiations is unlikely to go down well in Asian societies, which are based on personal relationships and building reciprocal trust before agreeing to clinch a deal. The cold call often brings the cold response.

The Japanese in particular set great store by long term relationships and human value. They need to know the sort of person they are dealing with. An evening’s karaoke or a day’s golf isn’t enough. One must submit to an exhausting spiritual inquisition. ‘What are your first impressions of Japan?’ Four pairs of liquid black eyes are hanging on my reply. I venture something about the felicitous co-existence of tradition and the modern industrial state. ‘What impresses me,’ I hear myself say, ‘is that traditional values seem to be an integral part of the business and social fabric. And that tradition is more than ever relevant in these protean times…’

I seem to have passed the test. My host smiles. ‘It is important for the Japanese to explore the heart of the person he does business with.’ And refills my cup from his own sake flask, a gesture of friendship.

Consequently, the Japanese take much longer than business people in the West to make a decision. They are more committed to group consensus.  But once everyone is on board, implementation can be swift. The getting-to-know-you process often takes weeks or months instead of hours and days. Reaching an agreement takes five times longer than it does in the west. But it’s usually time well invested.

If you’re late for a meeting or dinner in the Philippines nobody cares. But elsewhere in Asia it’s a fatal faux pas. But don’t be surprised at constant interruptions during meetings in India, Africa and the Middle East, especially with ministry officials. People rarely instruct the secretary to hold calls or tell unscheduled visitors to wait. This would be inexcusably rude to legions of friends and relatives who are likely to drop by unannounced at any time.

Meetings themselves can drive Anglo-Saxons to distraction. The French style of working is often incomprehensible to us. For example, in America or northern Europe, the point of having a meeting is to get decisions made or to allocate projects. The French meeting (which can go on for three or four hours, even longer than the business lunch) may not have a particular agenda. People simply talk and talk, with the idea of putting themselves in context – as the sociologists say – with other people. It’s a form of jockeying for position and networking. Consequently, the French work long hours. You often find French managers in the office at seven in the evening. They manage to get things done, although not always to deadlines, which don’t have the same awesome imperative as they do chez nous.

People set great store by details of etiquette. Gestures need not be extravagant or deliberate to be considered offensive. For example, in the Middle East, never give or receive anything with the left hand (which was traditionally used for cleaning up after bodily functions) or sit showing the sole of your shoes. And it’s often considered impolite to refuse refreshments.

Even a classic Anglo-Saxon OK sign – a thumb-finger circle – can get you into trouble. In Brazil, Russia and Greece it is considered vulgar, even obscene. In Japan it signifies money and in France zero or worthless. In Finland, folded arms are a sign of arrogance, while in Fiji, the gesture shows disrespect. In Java, placing your hands on hips means you are looking for a fight. So place your hands on the table out of trouble.

Except at an English dinner party, of course, when they should be placed on your knees, when you’re not actually eating. (In France, place them by the side of your plate.) And in Japan remember not to speak when you’re eating (not to be confused with speaking with your mouth full). And, of course, Americans have this curious habit of cutting a piece of something, putting the knife down then switching the fork to their right hand. No wonder they invented fast food.

People do business with those whom they feel comfortable. It comes down to sincerity and spontaneous good manners.

If you’re not sure how to behave in someone else’s culture, then at least be polite in your own. Unless, of course, you are into power behavior.

But that’s another story.

But for a weekend break Marseille has to be one of the best kept secrets in Europe. It is not a question of coming here out of season (although July/August can be cruel months for a pale-skinned Celt like me): there is no specific tourist season (60 percent of visitors – apart from film crews making gangster movies – are here to see friends and relations). Tourists are so rare that the city will absorb you like a surrogate immigrant into this magical melting pot of Mediterranean and African cultures. Whatever else, Marseille is an authentic experience.

‘Marseille as the Mediterranean’s largest port has always had a transient population,’ says a Marseillaise. ‘Nobody here can claim five pure generations. My father was Russian, my mother from an old Marseille family but mixed with Armenians and Italians. The problem is that the Arabs don’t mix; we’re lucky not to have the same problems as Paris, Lyon, Avignon, Toulon… Marseille is only the ninth city in terms of crime!’

‘Il faut briser les fantomes,’ an acquaintance says. And indeed this visit is long overdue. A taxi driver is pathetically concerned that we should bear glad tidings of this city back home with us; a black waiter, whom I’d forgotten to tip in the bar, wishes me a cheerful bonjour when I meet him on the stairs with a breakfast tray. A lovely black waitress serves breakfast with a dreamy smile. And the most dangerous encounter back from the restaurant late at night is with a gabby old gent in a grey chalk-stripe suit who is trying to persuade his dog to cross the road. ‘I don’t walk him; he walks me,’ he says with a well-rehearsed smile.

I’d always thought of Marseille as a city where one changed trains with some trepidation, never daring to venture down the steep steps of the Gare St Charles. Marseille always seemed somehow different – and dangerous. And indeed, on my first fugitive visit in the mid-1980s, a Foreign Legion officer in a white kepi and sun-bleached khaki, had appeared right on cue in front of the serried lines of sleek orange TGVs. A back-lit poster showed legionnaires marching bravely off into the sunset.

Sitting outside in a café on the Quai des Belges, facing the Vieux Port, with a tall pastis and the sun coming over the yard arm of the city behind, the only frisson we feel is of imminent gastronomic enquiry. Three hours away from the gun-metal skies of northern France, the sky is pale blue, whitening towards the horizon, with thin strips of high cloud; the sea is a deep hypnotic blue. In December, January and February, you can expect cloudless days with temperatures in the ‘60s; except when the Mistral blows – an icy knife slicing down the Rhone valley; howling over roofs, through crevices in doors, and etching icicles into the hearts of respectable folk. In September it is still warm enough to swim, but without the ferocious summer heat.

For a weekend visit, it makes sense to stay in or around the Vieux Port. Looking out towards the sea from the Quai des Belges, down the long rectangle of the Vieux Port, you are looking west, not south as you might expect; which explains the marvelous sunsets over the sea; and the luminous quality of the strong light reflected from the white chalk cliffs north-east of the city along the long streets: a hard light of uncompromising brightness and shade. The city is a sepia print in the late afternoon. One side of La Canebiere (Marseille’s Champs Elysees, a vestige of its former glory, which leads inland from the center of the Quai des Belges) is bathed in yellow light, while on the other side it is already night.

Arriving by boat into the deep rectangle of the Vieux Port with the sun setting behind you can be almost a religious experience; like entering the dark recesses of a cathedral with the light shining behind you. While the most wonderful way to view the city and the sea is from the gardens of the Palais du Pharo (or the nearby Sofitel Hotel) on the southern promontory at the mouth of the harbor.

On the right side (north side) of the Vieux Port as you face the sea, behind the Quai du Port, are the narrow streets of Le Panier winding up the hillside – the oldest part of the city settled by the Greeks in 600 BC, followed by the Romans and latter-day immigrants from North Africa. Many of the fine 17^th/18^th century houses along the quay were razed by the Germans in 1944. But the baroque façade of the Hotel de Ville (Town Hall) still faces the harbor (perhaps because the Vichy authorities were even more Nazi than the Germans). The building contained a courthouse from whence prisoners were led across an enclosed bridge to the adjacent prison for incarceration, or worse…

There are vestiges of the Greek and Roman city in the public gardens, the Musee d’Histoire de Marseille in the Centre Bourse just behind the Quai des Belges, and the Musee des Docks Romainson the Place Vivaux farther down the Quai du Port. The Place des Moulins in the heart of Le Panier is reminiscent of a Greek village. Old stone fishermen’s cottages are now bars, cafes and Arab grocery stores.

On our way up the hill, our guide knocks at a nondescript door at what seems to be a private house in the Place des 13 Cantons. This is Michele Leray’s Chocolatiere, a savorous atelier-cum-front parlor inhabited by a sea of yapping dogs. Here we sample rich dark chocolate made somewhere on the premises (’85 percent cocoa’) and weighed out per kilo on ancient brass scales.

Crowning the hill is the Hospice de la Vieille Charite, a 17^th century almshouse built by the Marseille architect, sculptor and painter, Pierre Puget. The building was saved from the ravages of property developers by Le Corbusier and Andre Malraux (Charles de Gaulle’s minister of culture) and restored between 1970 and 1986. It is now a museum and a center for exhibitions and concerts.

The Marche aux Poisson is held every morning from 9 until one o‘clock along the length of the Quai des Belges. Fish is fresh off the boats which are tied up behind the trestle tables – so fresh that from time to time a fish will slap about on the scales.  Check that the registration plates on the stalls match those of the boats behind. (A few unscrupulous stall owners truck in their wares from somewhere else; supermarkets perhaps in the suburbs.) Bargains abound around noon when the fishwives colorfully strive to sell off the last of their catch.

The Marseillais go fishing or Sunday sailing en famille in the small boats crowded onto both sides of the Vieux Port. (There are about 300 much sought-after berths.) These are the sturdy high-prow pointus – serious little boats built to survive the open sea when the Mistral is blowing, a far cry from the plastic gin barges of Antibes, Cannes or St Tropez. While along the quay in front of the Hotel de Ville are the boat clubs – Groupe Amicale des Canotiers Phoceens; Union Nautique Provencale; Association des Vieux Marins Bateliers du Vieux Port…

On the left (south side) of the Vieux Port, behind the Quai de Rive Neuve, is t.he arsenal that Louis X1V built between 1665 and 1670 along with the two forts on each side of the entrance to the Vieux Port, less to protect the city from invasion than to establish the sovereignty of Paris over the unruly Marseillais. The Cours d’Estienne, a pedestrian precinct in the front of the restored arsenal buildings, is a popular gathering place with a multitude of bars and restaurants.

High up on the hill above the Quai de Rive Neuve is the florid much loved 18^th century basilica of Notre Dame de Garde. While ten minutes drive, heading south around the headland on the Corniche are the parks and beaches of the Plage du Prado, where on winter Sundays the Marseillais parade their children and dogs.

You can drive as far as Callelongue just past Cap Croisette, where the coast road ends. Here begins the famous Calanques – a series of rocky creeks, a wilderness of cliffs and sea stretching 12 miles between Marseille and the picturesque little seaside town of Cassis – an unspoiled edition of St Tropez – 20 minutes drive on the D559. After Callelongue there is nothing but raw nature which you can only visit on foot – or by boat from the sea. You can walk for hours above the Calanques without ever seeing a sign of human habitation. In summer there are boat trips to the Calanques from the Vieux Port. In winter, you can hire a boat from Cassis.

You come in over the sea to land at Marseille-Provence Airport 18 miles north of the city. A terminal designed by the British architect Richard Rogers. It’s worth renting a car    

at the airport: follow the signs on the autoroute to Vieux Port/Hotel de Ville. Parking is not a big problem over the weekend.

Arriving early evening on a Friday, we just wanted to stroll along the Vieux Port to get our bearings. A little ferry, which plies between the Hotel de Ville on the north side of the harbor and Place aux Huiles on the south side, saves you the longish walk via the Quai des Belges. For a taste of Provence, head for the fish restaurants around the Place Thiars. In the pedestrian precinct just off the Quai de Rive Neuve; or Les Arcenaulx on the Cours d’Estienne nearby – a bustling restaurant which comprises an art gallery and bookshop open till midnight.  Or take the ferry across to the Bar de la Marine on the Quai de Rive Neuve – where Marcel Pagnol gathered material for his Marie et Cesar trilogy.

Saturday morning we explore Le Panier and La Veille Charite. Either have lunch in or around, or drive to l’Estaque, a small fishing port ten minutes north of Marseille past the Docks de la Joliette (restored like London’s docklands into offices and apartments) and the working commercial port.

Cezanne, Braque, Derain, Dufy and Renoir lived and worked at l’Estaque. Braque developed Cubism during several visits here between 1906 and 1910.  Looking down on the roofs of the village from the little square in front of the church you could be sitting behind the easel of Braque or Cezanne, witnessing the birth of Cubism. There are lots of good places for lunch.

The Marche des Capucines, a 10-minute walk back from the Vieux Port, to the right of La Canebiere, is a taste of Africa, a crucial part of the Marseille experience. Here people come to shop among a dazzling array of fruit, vegetables and spices. Close by in a maze of streets and alleys around the Cours Julien is a multitude of restaurants – Pakistani, Indian, Chinese, Armenian, Jewish, Tunisian, Morrocan… Here you can eat authentic couscous; stewed lamb and spicy merguez sausages. Afterwards, you might want to stop by the Cantini Museum of contemporary art, a short walk away on Rue Grignan.

Saturday evening is the time to splurge at somewhere like Le Patalain, an elegant, rather garish restaurant in post art deco style – a place for serious gastronomes, shirt-sleeved arms akimbo… who want to see what they’re eating.

We had looked forward to bouillabaisse, the famous Provencale fish stew, said to be at its best in Marseille; but here you have to order it 48 hours in advance and for four to six people. Don’t expect the real thing unless you order it the day before, we are sternly told,

The ‘real thing’ consists of ‘at least six’ kinds of fish – baudroie; rascasse; rouget; St Pierre; congre; grondin – islands of juicy chunks swimming in a saffron-tinted broth. Don’t ask me to translate: some fish have different names in Marseille than in other parts of France. (Similarly, deep sea bass is called loup de mer along the Mediterranean and Bar if it is caught in the North Sea.) All I can tell you is that the villainous looking rascasse, which you often see in fish tanks, is called hog fish and that rouget (red mullet) is full of bones (filets de rougets need to be well filleted). Shell fish and prawns and the like are often simply tourist trappings. Today’s gastronomic presentation is a far cry from its origins as a simple fish stew made from the remains of the unsold catch (mostly bony fish) left over at the end of the day.

Bourride is a simpler, some say more refined, form of bouillabaisse, using firm white fish such as cod, brill, turbot or monkfish, in fish stock and laced with aioli – the provencale garlic mayonnaise.

I compromise with dos de loup aux epices while the others have moules mariniere and pieds et paquets marseillais (‘little parcels’ of lamb wrapped in its tripe and stewed for seven hours in tomatoes, herbs and white wine, which sounds revolting but is delicious). We drink a crisp white wine from Cassis.

At table, the French invariably talk about food, what they ate yesterday, what they are eating now, and what they’ll eat tomorrow. We are joined by the ebullient patronne-chef Suzanne Quaglia. She orders up portions of other dishes for everyone to try.

‘I’ve taken to putting coriander in my moules.’

‘I use the broth from roast quail to make risotto.’

‘My sauce was too thick.’ ‘Ah, too many tomatoes: and you must let it simmer slowly.’

Plus a lot of cross-table talk about the illegal delights of small birds (including, would you believe sparrows and robins?) for which the French have a bizarre predilection and consider as fair game (no pun intended)…     

‘Ah, yes, I had a warning last year,’ Suzanne says. ‘Next time it’s a fine.’ She gives a Gallic shrug and stretches her mouth in a mock grimace.

Sunday we have time for a leisurely drive along the Corniche, past the Plages des Prado to Callelongue, just after Cap Croisette, and walk down to La Grotte for lunch of charcoal grilled steaks and the best pizzas this side of San Remo. And more chat with the natives.

‘Marseille isn’t dead city, a museum like Florence or Venice,’ our Marseillaise says. ‘People don’t like tourists who just come to gape and stare. You have to discover the city through the people. The spirit of Marseille is the Marseillais.

1994 – revised 2010.