The Upgrade: A Cautionary Tale of a Life Without Reservations by Paul Carr Read Free Book Online

anywhere
     
    Hi, my name is Paul Carr. I write for [name of British newspaper—they never check] and I’m going to be in town for [x] days, starting from [date].

    I’ve heard great things about [name of hotel] and I wondered what your media rate is for those dates? I’m happy to take whatever class of room you have …
    “Media rate”: those are the key words. Every hotel has one and, depending on how prestigious your publication or how convincing your email, the discount can range anywhere from 10 percent off the rack rate up to 100 percent.
    Even hotels that claim they don’t discount for media, do. The Lanesborough says it doesn’t have a media rate—why would it? It’s the most prestigious hotel in London—and yet it certainly does. In December 2009 it was £350 for a £1000 room. 16
    The important thing is you’re not asking for a discount, and you’re not asking for a freebie—you’re just enquiring as to what the rate for journalists is for those dates. Asking for a free room is always a bad idea as a) it marks you out as a blagger, and b) hotels tend to expect something in return. Although that can work, too: Zoe was once offered a free room in Manhattan in exchange for doing a book reading for hotel staff.
    As far as I know, no hotel has ever actually checked my credentials with a newspaper. At most they might Google my name, find details of the various things I’d written and assume that all was on the level. It helped that I usually was on the level—but I’ve often thought that there’s no reason why non-journalists couldn’t pull off the same con, if they did it with enough confidence. Of course, I never told my friends that. No sense in killing the golden goose. 17

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    The hangover was raging with full force now, my second beer was finished and my laptop was warning me that it had less than 10 percent power left. It was time to make a final decision.
    My best bet looked to be the Hotel QT, near Times Square: a boutique hotel, recently refurbished and a couple of steps up the ladder from the Pod. The TripAdvisor reviews were great and they were offering rooms for $139 a night. Oh, and they had a swimming pool in the lobby. Perfect; that’s who I’d call first.
    I scribbled down the hotel’s reservations number in my notepad: I reckoned the laptop probably only had about five minutes of life left and I wanted to quickly check my email before it died. The UK is five hours ahead of New York so my inbox already contained a day’s worth of mail from back home. 18
    I scanned quickly down the list—ignoring the usual crap from Amazon and the spammers offering to make me a fortune—and opened the only two that were from people I actually knew. The first was from Robert who wanted to know how New York was treating me. I’d reply to that one later, when I got to the hotel—the naked elevator story demanded more than 8 percent battery.
    The second was from my friend Michael and bore the subject line “ Vegas baby !”
    I clicked it open.
    From: Michael Smith
To: Paul Carr
     
    Hey mate!

    Rumor has it you’re in New York. I’m at a conference in San Francisco today and I have to be in LA next week for a meeting but I’ve got a couple of days free.
     
    According to Facebook, Michelle is heading to Vegas tomorrow for her 30th birthday—was thinking of joining her.
     
    You in? Should be fun.
     
    M.
    Fun is the right word. Michael is one of my favorite people to party with. The founder of a string of multi-million-dollar businesses, he’s hugely successful by any metric you care to use. But he’s also the living embodiment of the phrase “work hard and play hard.”
    A constant fixture on London’s lists of “most eligible bachelors,” he also has a way with the ladies that makes him the ideal wingman for adventures with the opposite sex. 19 Michelle too is always good for adventures—she’s been friends with Michael and me for years and, as we’d both already had brief—very