The answer to the title of this article is, of course, yes. Each hotel, even the ones opened and built recently have their own cultural heritage. Hotels with longer histories are even more bound by their heritage. Of course, this poses a new question, especially relevant for Slovenia – are the hotels even aware of their heritage, do they know it, do they recognize it as an important strategic ingredient in planning their day to day activities? I’m not posing this question without a reason. My many years of working with students and mentoring their papers as well as master’s and doctoral theses offer an abundance of concrete cases, which confirm my doubts about the aforementioned question. The question is actually too mild, given the circumstances, hotel philosophies are actually much worse, not to say critical. And this considering the fact we have many positive examples in our Alp and Mediterranean neighbourhood – from smaller family-owned hotels to large objects and hotel chains. Of course we can’t omit the development period after the Second World War, which was aimed at destroying everything built in the previous few decades. The whole issue is actually ironic. In fact, hotel heritage was not destroyed yet it found its way into numerous private apartments and their interior design. Even today you can have dinner on tablecloths and silverware of a famous hotel in one of Slovenian cities. Numerous receipts, menus, pictures, guest logs, diplomas, awards, cooking recipes and other materials are scattered among collections of private collectors, we can find it at flea markets and auctions. Do our hoteliers even know the meaning of the word documentation? And I’m not referring to the one they are obliged to keep for a certain amount of time according to the law like receipts, pay checks and other administrative materials. I recall for example, the trouble one of my students had some years ago, when she tried to get information on menus of hotels in one of our larger cities. There was no order, system, everything was scattered through folders, drawers. Of course, the former Austro Hungarian Empire knew how to create marketing opportunities. In that time excellent handbooks for hotel staff were published (we no longer have such manuals because…), which also included sample menus for every day and special occasions, types of place settings etc.
The next hurdle in preserving material cultural heritage are the architects (except an honourable few, who can be counted on the fingers on one hand), who plan the renovations or new additions, without any regard to everything we call "that extra something" which can make or break a hotel. Of course, it cannot be solely their fault, but a piece of the planning strategy of the hotel, which has to be taken into account by the leadership and those who will build hotel programs, from interior design to culinary offer, in the future. But mostly to create what we call hotel tradition, identity and many more.
Also, the locations of including possible testimonies of the hotel’s history are pretty unsystematic and mostly unprofessional. What hangs (or lies) on the walls of the management or dining rooms or receptions? This could be a subject of a separate study with specific Slovenian examples, for starters Ljubljana, then Portorož, Rogaška Slatnia, Radenci with a collection of paintings by some amateur painter, …actually all our so called tourist cities.
We often whine about our tourism not developing the way we would like it to. We truly can’t catch a break despite the fact the state has allocated substantial sums of money for all kinds of studies and strategies, which are to put it simply – recycled seminar papers we’ve seen a thousand times before. The entire developed tourist world has been building their recognisability on identity and continuity, also shaped by right hotels, for decades. I’ve stated many times we could achieve a lot if we could come close to the level of distinction we possessed during the time of the monarchy between the two World Wars. A time when the area of hotel’s offer was built on the right ingredients, I’m talking about in this article. By that I am certainly not suggesting all the walls of a hotel should be decked by old relics and turned into a museum. This would miss the point and would be difficult to achieve due to a lack of materials. The guests come and will continue to come to modern hotels, but with a consideration of the cultural heritage of hotels, places, regions and the country. Therefore all hotels should start with a systematic and selective (i.e. professional) managing of their documentation, materials on all aspects of their work, from room furnishing to menus to events. All the materials need to become the right hand of marketing, planning, promotion, propaganda and mostly as the material of periodical or permanent exhibitions in the hotel’s spaces. How many of our hotels for example, have a gallery of celebrities on their walls (and I’m not referring to music, sports or similar mascots), how many offer a “replica” of famous special occasion meals from different periods of the hotel, how many of our most modern remodelled hotels keep a historic room with original furniture and rent it out at highest prices, are the owners of villa Široko in Šoštanj aware they have a (hopefully still) superiorly preserved bathroom with the oldest massage shower in Slovenia, etc. The exception might be Vila Bled, which offers the guests an unaltered Tito’s suite. The other exception is Hostel Celica in Ljubljana, where the heritage of a special “hotel” category, namely an army prison is introduced in a modern and functional way. It seems some more innovation can be seen at tourist farms, though it mostly occurs without any formal knowledge and education on tourism. Some offer sleeping in rooms and beds from historical periods and include other furniture, which addresses the identity and tradition of the family running the farm. Among hotels, there is another exception, namely Dvor Jezeršek 1768 in Zgornji Brnik, where the furbishment of the old part of the house, now a hotel, was done exclusively with furniture, objects and also documents, which shaped the life of the house before changing its purpose. Yet another example: the magnificent collection of menu cards from most of Tito’s receptions or gala diners is somewhere in a private collection (!). This would be excellent material for a special offer or event in a well preserved socialist environment. This era of our, European and worlds history gives numerous, also less developed tourist countries an excellent starting point for development of special offers and motives. The motives themselves namely hold the essence of all tourism’s efforts – and hotels can be the ones who shape them.
