Hotels of the past belong to the past

In his editorial in the last issue of Job, Emilio De Risi, known to be interested in artificial intelligence and the web, was caught into the cobweb of nostalgia, and what to do when a friend – a dear friend – gets entangled in a cobweb? We give him some time to meditate a little, before lending him a hand to free himself. In the meantime, we tell our side of the story.
In one of today’s hotels, they would never name a Salon after Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust, for the simple reason that, having booked through byHours o DayBreak, he would only stay a few hours, hardly enough time to sit on a sofa. At the most, his name would be in the heading of a registration form, and the sofa would remain a normal sofa, without beatification by such noble buttocks.
We doubt that John and Yoko’s bed is still in the Lennon suite of the Amsterdam Hilton or in a warehouse, waiting until 2069 to be put on auction.
We doubt that the furnishings of the Gallia or Mandarin, prestigious Milanese hotels, that are now virtually brand new, will be kept for a dozen decades in their current function and position, poised to build up a formidable pedigree because they were used by some millennial who achieved virtual success, maybe some influencer with tree million followers. The most that could happen to our sofa, indeed, would be to be used regularly by a night porter while on duty. Of course, if the night porter then became a famous multimillionaire due to a start-up that duplicates golden keys with 3D printers, the sofa, in turn, would gain value and could be placed on auction. Not a hundred years from now, though. Handcrafted and high-quality as they may be assured to be, sofas and chairs last as long as they last.
We also have doubts about the tea and coffee sets with the brand of the prestigious hotel, in a hundred years’ time. If we survive, by dribbling Alzheimer’s through massive transfusions of gigas via bluetooth with our iPhone CXI (111 in Roman numerals), in the best of cases we will participate in the auction for an Ikea-branded spritz set for two.
Yes, there’s quality craftsmanship, chairs and sofas, but they just don’t make hotels the way they used to be.