Saturday, February 10, 2018
Club Lounge hr603
A Japanese high-class hotel chain has one property in my small town that
situates in a mountainous region. The hotel looks uncommonly luxurious
for a rather obsolete town like this. It operates to attract rich
customers who visit for skiing. I had never stepped into that hotel
although I had lived in this town for seven years now. Since my
apartment is here, I don’t need to stay at a hotel. Also the restaurants
in the hotel are all too expensive and out of my reach. I had just
imagined that the most gorgeous space in this town existed inside it. I
took a trip to the Tokyo metropolitan area a few years ago, and happened
to choose a hotel of the same chain there to stay. When I booked it, I
joined its loyalty membership program to get a discount for the room
because the membership fee was free. The chain has a club lounge at
selected locations that a loyalty program’s member can use for free of
charge. Lately, the lounge was newly added to the hotel of my town. As a
free bus to the hotel circulates around my town in the skiing season,
it was a good opportunity to take a look at the hotel for free. I
visited there for the first time after seven years in this town, wearing
better clothes among what I have, with my partner. The hotel was lively
with many skiers. A menu board stood at the entrance of its luxurious
lobby lounge. The prices were depressingly high and my partner was on
the verge of fainting by looking at them. I was confirmed that the only
affordable place for us in this hotel was the free club lounge. I told a
clerk who stood smiling at the entrance that I was a member of the
loyalty club and wanted to use its lounge. She ushered us right away
treating us as if we were VIPs. She opened the lounge door and let us in
without requiring my membership card. “Enjoy”, she said bowing and
left. The club lounge was small but empty. It had a Keurig coffee
machine and a heap of its cartridges beside it. There was an abundance
of clean expensive coffee cups and saucers. Packs of a well-known
specialty cookie were laid out neatly. An array of chocolates in gold
and silver wrappers was in a glass case like jewelry. We had all these
to ourselves, and they were free! I sat in one of the soft quality easy
chairs beside a sofa, looking at the blue sky and the snow-covered
mountains out of the large windows. While I was pouring mineral water
into a flute glass and smelling fresh brewed coffee, I felt a sense of
happiness filled my brain. “Is all of this really free? It’s too
incredible!” I doubt I could feel this kind of happiness if I were rich
and afforded expensive foods at an exclusive place. It’s natural that
things are gorgeous when you pay a lot. But experiencing luxury without
paying anything doubles happiness because I feel luck is on my side. It
was that feeling above all that made me fall for this club lounge. I
wanted to come here every day if I could, but a monthly visit would be
at best. After I had two cups of coffee, two cups of tea, a bottle of
mineral water and five pieces of sweets, the time to catch a free bus
came and I left the lounge. I got out of the gorgeous hotel through its
elegant entrance and got on the shabby, ramshackle free bus like magic
on Cinderella finished working...
Labels:
Cinderella,
Club Lounge,
free,
happiness,
Keurig,
membership,
mountainous region,
skiing,
VIP