Hotels can still be a Find Wally puzzle

FOR those who remember, in the days before Google maps, the only way to get to your hotel in a foreign country was to throw yourself at the mercy of the taxi driver and cross your fingers. It was a universal practice with unpredictable results.

Travellers from Colombo to Calcutta arriving in the wee hours – as this was the only time international flights deigned to land – were spirited off to unfamiliar lodgings while “overbooked” hotels scratched their heads to account for missing guests. That’s when a savvy few decided to deal with the situation.

In several Asian cities newly opened hotels began wooing cabbies in novel ways. In March 2003 when the stylish Conrad Bangkok launched, the dynamic duo of its then-general manager Gregory Meadows and the late Ross Cunningham presented lavish lunch boxes to drivers bringing in their first guests. All left smiling.