Beware the Crappy Orientalism of Radisson Blu

I’ve never had any feelings about the Radisson Hotel group one way or the other – I sort of assumed they were pretty good and so, when passing through Brussels last week, I booked a room at their new Radisson Blu (supposedly all eco and that – plenty of greenwashing though I suspect). It’s a great location if you like Brussels (I don’t much personally – way to characterless and EUrlish for my tastes) but the Radisson Blu might want to get a new design team – it seems they are currently employing a couple of schoolboys.

It looked OK on the outside. We checked in and were proudly told we were on the ‘Oriental floor’ – as opposed to the Maritime Floor or Art Deco Floor (which might be better) or, thankfully not, the Business Floor (basically IKEA style and a free copy of an EU newspaper).

So what was the Oriental style room like? Well you can see for yourself here – Quite bizarre and quite crap actually. It seems someone from Radisson went on a package holiday to Beijing or more likely round the corner to the local Chinese shop and bought some Chinese tat for a few dollars. These wall hangings and fan are seriously Chinese market tourist tat cheap and then mixed in with the sort of cheap picture you pick up in Bali or Java and some ‘Oriental’ peach lamps. The hanging things were broken, a problem many tourists to China will identify with when they get home and open their suitcases.

If this is Radisson’s new look then God help them! At least nobody will be stealing the room decorations!! Incidentally, they stuck us in room 404 which is about as unlucky as it gets on an ‘oriental floor’.