Are hotel bars worth your while? Calum Marsh and Dustin Parkes debate.

The room is close by when you are ready to go home for the night

At the Palm Lounge in the Fort Garry Hotel in Winnipeg I’ ve gamely quaffed a dry martini and eaten margherita pizza as a local entertainer covered jazz standards on a seven-string guitar. I have sipped small glasses of European beer alone at the Michelin-approved brasserie in the Hotel Rotterdam. With a prodigal thrill I’ve ordered cocktails at the American Bar in the inner recesses of the London Savoy, wincing as I reached for the cheque. And once, unforgettably, I shared a Chardonnay with Udo Kier at the Club Mala Dvorana in the Czech Grandhotel Pupp.

These exploits in peripatetic drinking shared one thing in common: there was always a room above the bar to go back to. That’s a cornerstone of the hotel bar’s appeal. Across the globe it’s a stalwart sanctuary — the weary traveller’s timehonoured port in the storm.

As any jetsetting drinker will tell you, the world’s bars are nothing if not dependably erratic in both custom and fare. In cafés throughout Europe requests for a martini will be greeted with consternation or interpreted as a demand for a glass of Martini Rosso- brand vermouth. Beer tends to be served in ludicrously minuscule portions in more abstemious countries, while the fixtures of any respectable North American cocktail menu, from the ubiquitous negroni to the indispensable sidecar, tend to be scuppered where they may even be ordered at all.

So you resign yourself to the local rituals — which can swiftly prove a bore. In Mexico last November I became so fed up with bottled pale lager and watereddown pina coladas that I implored every bartender I encountered to track down a bottle of gin. That’s what happens. You begin to yearn for spirituous familiarity.

The hotel bar provides precisely that succour. It’s a kind of oasis abroad, a retreat designed expressly to comfort the traveller. There is a uniform glamour the planet over to the upscale hotel bar, so marvellously reliable at a time of strain and need. That constancy is a gift: amid all the raging turmoil and turbulence of the best- planned vacation, all the unbridled chaos inherent in wrenching oneself away from home, the refuge of the hotel bar should never be taken for granted.

One cannot plan for the uncertainty of travel — always one remains at the mercy of an unpredictable world. But the hotel bar offers protection against the vicissitudes. It’s a place to take a drink, be soothed, and steel oneself against the holiday war.

Of c ourse if you’re away from home you’re encouraged to venture away from your hotel as much as possible, and it’s a benighted t ouris t i ndeed who doesn’t avail himself of authentic local drinks and taprooms. But often are the times when a favoured cocktail close to hand is what’s called for, and few pleasures rival the quick journey downstairs from the hotel room to the bar counter — that seamless transition from lodgings to formal recreation.

The businessman in town solo for the night, the young couple getting away for a weekend, the woman finding herself with a long trip abroad: all of them are united in excursionist repose here, enjoying drinks in the longstanding tradition. And at the end of the evening they may each relish the recourse unique to the hotel- bar experience: they’re already home for the night, no walk, cab, or subway ride needed.

THE HOTEL BAR OFFERS PROTECTION AGAINST THE VICISSITUDES.