Author(s): Imogen Edwards-Jones & anonymous

Non-Fiction

The hotel business is a licence to print money - not only for the managers, owners and shareholders, but for the people who work there. From chambermaids' tips to doormen taking two thousand pounds a week, to the concierge taking backhanders, to the vegetable supplier's book keeping double entry -everyone in the hotel trade is on the make. The hotel business is a licence for guests to steal - anything from bathrobes, loo seats (wooden and Victorian from the Savoy), pictures, fridges, ashtrays, teaspoons - even refilling the vodka bottle in the minibar with water. The hotel business is a licence for guests to behave badly - from rent boys and girls by the hour, to 800pounds on the telephone porn bills, 24,000pound room parties, office sex, drugs, dead sheep, splashing out on 5000pound bottles of wine, guests falling through windows, naked guests, drunken guests and guests who have to be sectioned. The hotel business is also a licence for celebrity to reign supreme - from Michael Jackson's Evian bath to Madonna's odd curtain fetish, Kate Moss and Johnnie Depp's parties, Princess Dianna's taste for champagne, Pamela Anderson's sexual gymnastics, The Wueen Mother's chips and Prince Phillip's Silver Bullet cocktail. HOTEL BABYLON is a trawl through the highs and lows, the extremes, the tragedies, the miseries, the decadence and the debauchery of the ultimate service industry - where money not only talks, but gets you the best room, the best service and also entitles you to behave in any way you please.