--- In [email protected], Sal Sunshine <salsunsh...@...> wrote: > > On Apr 25, 2010, at 12:13 PM, TurquoiseB wrote: > > --- In Fair > > > > [email protected], TurquoiseB <no_reply@> wrote: > >> > >> However, since I know quite a few hoteliers here in > >> Sitges, they share the view of Israeli guests you > >> mention above. I have heard quite a number of remarks > >> comparing them to Gypsies, which in Spain is an insult > >> of the highest order. > > > > Before anyone gets on their high horse and considers > > this remark anti-Semitic, I should point out that many > > of these hotel and B&B owners *are* Jewish. They welcome > > Jews from other parts of the world, but experience has > > led them to say that they are "fully booked" when > > Israelis call or write asking for a reservation. > > Go figure, eh. > > Well it's not very nice, whatever the reason, > and over here would be--if the hotel were big enough > and worth the trouble--excellent grounds for a > lawsuit.
These are 6-to-12-room hotels, with the owners barely scraping by in this economy. One of them, and in fact one of the Jewish ones, lost six small (20-inch) flat-screen TVs from rooms rented to a group of Israelis last summer. He's said he'll never rent a room to an Israeli again. He also replaced the small, obviously-suitcase- sized flat screen TVs with old, clunky, cathode- ray TVs. The larger hotels make most of their reservations over the Internet, or through booking services, so they often don't have any idea where the guests are coming from or what their nationality is, only where the credit card holding the reservation is from. These guys handle most of their reservations on the phone or via personal email, so they know.
