Christmas Hotel

Thursday 29 December 2022

The Environment

Where's the hotel? The Yorkshire Dales, 23rd December 2009

Christmas isn't just about presents and a huge meal. It's the whole package for me and a big part of that is freezing temperatures and snow. Snow is pretty rare over Christmas in the UK - we have more "snow days" in February than we do in December, because Winter has really only just begun on Christmas Day, but it's an ingrained part of the tradition, no matter how unlikely. A good example of the importance came just this year, 2022, when we had light snowfall and very cold temperatures in Oxfordshire in the middle of December. The usual Christmas markets felt much more "Christmassy" than they had in the many previous years when shoppers were sometimes dressed in T-shirts.

It is therefore an absolute must that the hotel is surrounded by cold and snow. I'm not just talking about a 10m radius around the walls of the main building, I'd like to see an entire "park". Ideally, I'd want a traditional English pub at the bottom of the hotel drive. Maybe a toy shop. A bandstand with carol singers, chestnuts being sold from a traditional wheeled barrow, and so on. In all, we're probably talking about a space the size of a football field. We need to be able to cool that to around -3C, and we need complete control over real snow (more on that in a later post), AND we probably need to be able to warm it above freezing during the "maintenance" days (Monday afternoon to Thursday morning) to "reset" the ground. That's a big ask.

Obviously, no natural environment is going to be suitable. Apart from any other considerations, the hotel has to offer the same conditions whether it's mid-February or late July so it needs to be a totally controlled space. I imagine it'll either be an abandoned quarry, or a purpose-built warehouse. A quarry has the possible advantage of natural insulation for the walls, but likely has disadvantages in terms of access, drainage, safety and so on. A purpose-built warehouse has the advantage of being built for purpose (!), but may be more difficult to cool, especially when it's 40C outside, and it could present problems in terms of building permits, etc.

Whichever route we take, here are some of the problems to face.

Access
Obviously, the visitors will need an appropriate "entrance" to the environment. It's not going to set the right tone if they park up outside a grey metal warehouse and walk in through a side door. So there needs to be an appropriate reception area and a walkway (and/or powered transport) that'll take them on a ride into the space and around to the entrance to the hotel.

There needs to be access for maintenance, food and drink deliveries, laundry, staff, emergency services, etc. and ideally these need to be hidden.

Vegetation
There have to be real plants in the grounds, including real pine trees. I've no idea if it's going to be possible to keep them healthy in a sealed environment but plastic just won't cut it. We also need real grass, shrubs, etc.

Lighting
Luckily, lighting during the guests' stay is probably fairly simple. The UK has limited daylight hours on the 25th December (the 21st is the shortest day), and since we're having it snow every day, the lighting can be very diffused, with no need to replicate a "sun". But, on maintenance days (and probably in emergencies) we'll likely want something much brighter and all encompassing.

Services
There are going to be pipes and wires everywhere to provide for the various facilities around the ground and these need to be hidden from the guests. It's possible there will need to be underground tunnels for maintenance access and hidden panels scattered throughout the grounds.

Drainage
We'll want to melt the snow during the maintenance period (so that visitors see a fresh fall on Christmas Eve) and that means water everywhere, so drainage will be key.

Lots to think about. In the next post let's look at the hotel itself.

Wednesday 28 December 2022

Welcome to the Christmas Hotel

I've always loved Christmas. I know some people don't, but for me, it's a magical period of the year when everything changes and the ordinary world becomes a place of wonder. However, when I look back at Christmas as a child, with no responsibilities other than to enjoy the experience, it seemed to last forever, with Christmas Day being merely the highlight of two or three weeks of excitement. As the years have passed, Christmas has become increasingly fleeting with work commitments sometimes meaning it's almost entirely lost with nothing but a brief nod towards tradition. No sooner has the tree been erected than it seems it's being taken down again. We're all working until the last moment before the big day and most of us are back at work again on the 27th. Blink, and you miss it.

I can't remember when I first had the idea for a "Christmas Hotel", but it must have been many decades ago. I don't claim this is an original idea, I'm sure I've seen TV shows or read stories covering the same idea, but it's one I've thought about incessantly. The practicality of the venture is daunting, so this blog will serve as possibly the closest I'll ever get to actually building the darn thing.

What is the Christmas Hotel? The idea is straightforward. A hotel where every week, Saturday is Christmas Day. Guests would arrive on the Thursday, enjoy Christmas Eve on the Friday, Christmas on Saturday, and Boxing Day on Sunday, checking out on Monday. So far, not that unusual, I know such places already exist. But my Christmas Hotel would pull out ALL the stops. It would be more than just decorations and a meal. When you spend the weekend at this hotel, everything that makes a traditional Christmas (as seen through the eyes of a UK resident) would be in place, and that's quite a tall order.

The next few blogs will examine my vision of the hotel, and each element that goes into that vision. I'll then seek out expert advice to gauge whether those plans could possibly be achieved and, if so, roughly how much it would cost. First of all, it's got to feel like Christmas.

Nothing spoils a Chrismas more than warm weather. While snow at Christmas in the UK is statistically rare (it is, after all, only early Winter, and there are more snow days, on average, in February than there are in December), the idea of snow is firmly entrenched in our traditions. We can mostly blame that on Charles Dickens, who wrote in the mid-1800s when there were several heavy snow falls and whose stories include many descriptions of snow and ice at Christmas. We can also blame the burgeoning Christmas card trade that appeared around the same time. The cards of that era all showed snowy scenes, and no matter how unrealistic that perception is, it's firmly linked to Christmas.

The hotel must, therefore, be surrounded by snow, and it's got to be cold "outside". Properly cold, cold enough to need gloves and scarves and to feel "Jack Frost nipping at your toes". There's no way to achieve this all year round, especially not if we want to be able to precisely control the temperature and snowfall, so we're facing a big challenge at the first fence. How can this be solved?

Read on to find out, in "The Environment".