Actually, the President of Sierra Leone Needed Only Two Hotel Floors, Not Three

October 10, 2011 at 9:12 AM | by ASchechter | Comments (0)

President Ernest Bai Koroma, center

When we learned the particular hotel used by the President of Sierra Leone during the United Nations General Assembly in NYC, of course, we figured it was worth sharing. And even more so when we found out that the four-year official had supposedly taken up three floors of the hotel.

But in fact, as we learned from a rather petulant email we received at the beginning of the weekend (from the Sierra Leone embassy, no less), the President and his entourage only took up two floors of Hyatt 48Lex�the penthouse floor and the one below. Phew. Well, that really clears things up. Between $16 muffins and this, we were seriously considering a saucy little email of our own denouncing extravagant spending by governments in hotels. But for now, we'll just downgrade that to a warning.

To read a portion of the email, which doesn't exactly present the hotel in the most favorable light, click below.

On October 8, The Embassy of the Republic of Sierra Leone wrote:

"The Hyatt 48 Lex is a moderate 3-star hotel with only 116 rooms. Due to its size, there are only six rooms to a floor. The penthouse has only 2 medium-size suites�one for the President's sleeping quarters and the second for scheduled meetings with dignitaries and Sierra Lenean nationals and which also served as living quarters for the President's security personnel.
To keep the delegation together the six-room floor nearest to the penthouse was therefore booked for the rest of the delegation, bringing the floor bookings to two."

Well, for starters, we'd feel a little gypped if we were those security guards who had to share their rooms with dignitaries during the day for scheduled meetings.

When we check into a penthouse suite, we like to make blanket forts, test out the massive shower stall, throw a dinner party (in fact, we made a whole to-do list, which you can browse here)...basically, whatever we want to do. Using the space for business meetings? Not high on our priority list.

But it is not our place to compose a schedule of activities for the President of Sierra Leone (he obviously has a very busy team doing precisely that), and we respect that a national leader and his delegation have a slightly different set of priorities than we do. Hopefully, we have cleared up any suggestions to the contrary.

[Photo: Wikipedia]

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