It was the depths of winter, when guests at any hotel were thin on the ground. I came to stay for a few days, returned to my home in Cappadocia, then came back to İstanbul again. On the first visit, my room cost TL 60 a night. However, on the second, it had risen to TL 62.50. In the intervening 10 days, nothing at the hotel had changed. No fresh coat of paint had been applied, no new towels had been provided and no improvement had been made in the breakfast offered. No, the price increase was purely a consequence of the hotelier choosing to charge in a currency other than the one that Turkey actually uses at a time when exchange rate movements meant that he was bound to gain at the expense of the customer.Ten years ago, it was understandable for hotels to charge in a foreign currency (dollars then, rather than euros). Turkey's economy was still in such fragile condition that inflation constantly eroded the lira's value so that hoteliers saw less bang for their buck as the year wore on. But that was 10 years ago. Since then, we have had the rude awakening of the 2001 crisis that saw Turkish banks put on a firmer footing than many of those in Europe and the US. Inflation has not been driven out of the economy, but it has been brought to heel, relatively speaking. Why, then, are some hoteliers still charging for their rooms in foreign currencies? And why are they being allowed to get away with it?
“You know that I've lived here for 10 years. I'm British. I don't have any euros, so why are you charging me in them?” I demanded.
“We charge all our customers in euros,” was the receptionist's cool and unsatisfactory reply.
Actually, I doubt that it was even true. I can't believe that they would charge a Turkish guest in euros, which means that there is an element of discriminatory practice involved here. But that wasn't what really bothered me so much as the image it projected of Turkey as a banana republic, only one step removed from somewhere like Zimbabwe where the local currency has been abandoned in favor of the dollar.
I hate to use the expression “rip-off,” but how else is something like this to be explained? Along the south coast they'll be charging in pounds or euros depending on whether it's east or west of Antalya. Away from the tourist areas, however, hotel rooms, like everything else, are charged in lira in the same way that hotel rooms in Britain are charged in pounds and those in America in dollars. The price is the same, no matter who you are or where you come from. Isn't it about time the government stepped in to insist that this should be the case all over the country?
Charlotte McPherson is away. Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia.
