First Class and Homeless: On the Rootless Life of the Boutique Hotel Set

To paraphrase Sigrid Rausing’s point in GRANTA, on the difference between the world as we see it and the world as it actually is, in hotel living perception becomes reality, the map is the territory. Or, at least, it was. When you live in hotels, you change. There are no rules. Or at least, fewer of them than we live by in our everyday lives. You become part of an illusion.

“I spent what seemed to many people I knew an eccentric amount of
time in Honolulu, the particular aspect of which l...