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Hilton International Taipei, welcome note
Small (2-7/8″ x 3-7/8″) card, placed in the room to welcome the guest. Unmarked. Grade: 1
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Amari Hotels Executive Housekeeper (Thailand)
A small card, printed on this side only, apologising for lack of service. Unmarked. Grade: 1
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Alhambra Hotel Leospo, Nice (France)
As a reminder, this is not a postcard. We are shamelessly “borrowing” the description from the identical item that had been sold by someone else, because it fits ours too: “This is an old, vintage Advertising Booklet from NICE, FRANCE. It is for the ALHAMBRA HOTEL LEOSPO. The HOTEL located on a hill in CIMIEZ / NICE. The booklet has 10 pages with great photos. It measures 5-1/2 inches / 14mm by 4 inches / 10.3mm. The booklet has no rips or tears. Minor wear on the cover. If you collect TRAVEL / HOTEL Advertising Booklets, ALHAMBRA HOTEL LEOSPO related items, CIMIEZ related items, items from NICE or from FRANCE then you might like this vintage 1930’s advertising item.” (We can see how that seller was also appealing to search engines.) In general, we call ours Grade: 3.
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Nairobi Hilton welcome drink card
From somewhere between 1968 and 1975. Grade: 1
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Tecolutla (Mexico), Hotel Balneario
Travel folder and price list for 1952 from this resort hotel. Minor abrasions along bottom edge. Grade: 2
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Acapulco (Mexico), La Hamacas Hotel
Brochure from the mid-1950s. Grade: 1
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Palace Hotel (Guatemala) – brochure
From the early 1960s, but looking older; bilingual Spanish/English. Grade: 1
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Do Not Disturb: Kandara Palace Hotel (Jeddah, Saudi Arabia)
The first of what should be many “Do Not Disturb” signs, for which we will create a new category and move these over once we list enough of them. They come in all shapes and sizes, and a special note for our younger readers: no, hotels did not always have the electronic versions of these. Grade: 1
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Asia Hotel, Bangkok
One of the original mass-market tourism hotels in Bangkok, in this 1970s single-sheet folded brochure. Grade: 1
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Sheraton-Bangkok Hotel
A folder from 1976 from a long-gone hotel, even as other Sheratons are scattered around. They’re not this one. Grade: 1
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Hotel Sintra (Macau)
Well-located and still there, long after this brochure was published in the 1970s when the Sintra was “Macau’s newest first-class hotel”. Grade: 1
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Hotel Lisboa (Macau)
When this folder was published in the mid-1970s, the Lisboa set the standard for elegance and dominance in Macau. Now there are two Lisboas, across from each other, and the competition is far more intense. Grade: 1
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Metropole Hotel, Macau
Well-preserved folder with rates from the 1970s, trilingual English and Chinese and Japanese (no Portuguese?). The hotel is still there in an updated version; rates are different, of course. Grade: 1
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Hotel Indonesia, Jakarta
This brochure from the 1970s presents one of Jakarta’s (and the country’s) most significant hotel properties. It has a rich history, was restored/rebuilt in the 2000s, and sits in the singular prime location in Jakarta. Grade: 1
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Kartika Plaza Hotel, Jakarta (Indonesia)
Not to be confused with similarly named hotels scattered around the country, especially the one in Bali, the property in this 1970s brochure is long gone and replaced by an office block. Grade: 1
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President Hotel, Jakarta (Indonesia)
From 1977, when the exchange rate was Rp. 415 to US$1 (check what it is now), and before the President Hotel evolved into the Pullman or whatever it may be now, this brochure with room rates. Grade: 2
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Hotels in the DPRK (North Korea)
This 36-page book from the 1990s lists and shows facilities for many of the hotels then available in DPR Korea. The only problem was that ordinary tourists — if they could get into the country at all — had no say in where they stayed. Things have become even tighter since then, but the biggest prize of all, the Ryugyong on page 14, is made to look as if it was in use. All 3000 rooms of it. But it wasn’t open then, and as far as we know, still is not. Grade: 1
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Acapulco, El Mirador Hotel (Mexico)
Single-sheet multi-fold brochure from this hotel — which is still there but possibly not functioning at its best these days based on online reviews. We think this brochure dates from the 1950s. To be fair, Acapulco has also changed. Grade: 1
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Bujumbura (Usumbura), Hotel Paguidas (Burundi)
Everything has changed: the name of the city, the name of the country (at that time, Ruanda-Urundi), and it should be no surprise that the hotel itself is long gone. We stayed there. It was good. This small card, in French, describes features and rules for customers. Grade: 1
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The Stanley Hotel & Suites, Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea)
From 2017, this single-sheet folded brochure for one of Port Moresby’s better hotel options at that time. It is connected to a shopping mall and from our own experience they did everything possible to ensure our security, including gently reminding us that going outside the grounds alone was a no-no. Grade: 1
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Hotel Bacata (Bogota, Colombia) – tips for international visitors
Published in August 1975, this mostly bilingual single-sheet folded guide and map to central Bogota has a route marked out and was useful during the short stay there. Grade: 4
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Tanzania Rest House, Zanzibar (Tanzania)
A small ad card from what amounted to a hostel where we stayed in 1967. It was nice. Grade: 1
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Fariyas Hotel (Bombay) – brochure
This single-sheet folded brochure explaining hotel facilities dates from about 1975. Bombay may have changed to Mumbai, but the Fariyas is still there and we stayed in it for quite awhile, marveling each day at what was always just outside the front door. Grade: 1
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Hotel Transatlantique (Casablanca, Morocco) – ticket
On 8 June of some year in the mid-1970s, this ticket was good for something — most likely a bus to somewhere. A small tear on the left edge shows it was used. Grade: 2
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Hotel Hafnia (Copenhagen)
This was the little folded paper of room and hotel information, and a map of the immediate area, that you got when you checked in, in 1969. Lucky it was then, because Wikipedia tells what happened next: “Hotel Hafnia at Vester Voldgade 23 was built in 1899 by architect Philip Smidth and burned down in a catastrophic fire on 1 September 1973 . 35 people died. The hotel, taken over by the neighboring Hotel Kong Frederik, was then rebuilt until 1976 in a slightly altered form. Erik Solbakke Hansen was found guilty of starting the fire in 1986, however doubts later arose about Hansen’s conviction due to objectionable circumstances during the investigation. One consequence of the fire was that stricter fire regulations were introduced, also for already existing buildings.” Grade: 1
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Hotel Merida (Yucatan, Mexico) – brochure
This little and somewhat battered brochure is a bit bug-eaten and unaccountably has no information about where the hotel actually was (is?) or how to contact them. The leaflet dates from some point during the 1950s or 1960s. It did stress that the hotel had running water. Grade: 4
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Ducor Intercontinental Hotel (Monrovia, Liberia) – brochure
This brochure from the early 1970s is a bit scuffed in places but is otherwise intact and shows the hotel in its glory days. We Googled to see how it might be doing now, and were met by a Wikipedia entry that would be hard for any other hotel to rival. Here’s part of that (heavily abridged): “The Ducor Hotel is an abandoned luxury hotel in Monrovia. Established in 1960, it had 106 rooms (but fell) into disrepair after being occupied by squatters who were removed before a failed effort at a Libyan-funded renovation. The Ducor Palace Hotel opened in 1960, was the first international-class hotel in Liberia, and was for many years one of the few five-star hotels in all of Africa. Intercontinental Hotels assumed operation on April 1, 1962 and it was renamed the Ducor Intercontinental. The Ducor Intercontinental hosted important meetings between African leaders. Idi Amin is said to have swum in its pool while carrying his gun. President Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast was so impressed with the hotel during his stay that he commissioned a similar luxury hotel in Abidjan, the Hotel Ivoire. Inter-Continental Hotels ceased managing the hotel in 1987. With political uncertainty looming, the Ducor Hotel closed in 1989, just before the coup led by Charles Taylor which ousted President Samuel Doe and marked the beginning of the First Liberian Civil War. The building endured much damage during this period, due both to the violence of the war and to postwar looting.” And yet, this little brochure has survived. Grade: 3
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Hotel Embassy and Hotel Fransae (Nairobi)
When folded, this small room card serving both hotels measures 4″ x 3″. Information for the Embassy is on one side, and for Fransae on the other. The card dates from 1967 and we stayed at Embassy many times for many reasons — though we don’t know whether the Embassy and the Fransae as appearing in Google now are the same hotels in the same locations or not, because everything has changed. Of course it has. Grade: 1
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Hotel Miramar (Hong Kong) – baggage tag
Now rebuilt as The Mira Hong Kong, it was formerly named Hotel Miramar, opened in 1948 with 32 rooms as Hong Kong’s first post-war hotel. A major expansion in 1953 added 160 new rooms. A new wing was built in two phases, increasing the number of rooms to 380 by 1973 and then the grand opening of the rebranded and redesigned hotel took place on 17 September 2009. This baggage tag dates from 1974 and is overwritten on the reverse with instructions for the bellboy. Grade: 1