The new luxury hotel in Whitehorse – LOL
Every time I drive by the former Airline Inn on the Alaska Highway, I have to chuckle. This is being heavily promoted as Whitehorse’s newest luxury hotel. Some day. What it looks like is a cheap reno of a former $50-a-night dive. The photo of a very narrow hallway in a Yukon News article 3 weeks ago makes it pretty clear that the renos don’t go very deep – not as deep as the hole that a couple of D-9s would make to knock the place down and build a real luxury hotel. And the flambouyant manager, Dikran Zabunyan, comes across about the same way, fitting in nicely with the carwash and gravel used-car lot sitting tightly next door.
Month after month they announce new opening dates that never materiaize because “labour was hard to find”, according to a quote by Zabunyan in the News article. Their Web site now says late September. I’ll watch for that along with the squadron of flying pigs 🙂
The News article begins by talking about the rumours of Mafia money being involved in the hotel – I hadn’t heard the rumours, but stories like that are always fun during what has turned out to be a pretty gloomy summer. The hotel’s designer makes comments about current Whitehorse hotels that are quite funny given the look of his place (they are “… caught in a 1970s time warp.”). The comments prompted a Letter to the Editor from the hotel corporation’s CEO, saying that the comments were the designer’s personal opinion. They certainly weren’t the sort of comment a person new to town would make if he wanted to get invited to a Chamber of Commerce luncheon. Everything in the hotel from bed frames to slippers and hardware will have the Skky logo, and the logoed stuff all came from China (imported from China – well, now I’m impressed! 🙂 ).
What the hotel has done very well is promote – they are listed in every hotel database I’m familiar with, and even made it into a recent En Route magazine as one of the top 3 places to stay in town! Good promotion, lousy credibility…
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