Hotel oh Hotel

I was watching a documentary on the Claridge Hotel in London, this is London most luxurious hotel for the rich and famous, with guests ranging from the likes of Donatella Versace, Mariah Carey, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and the Queen's guest if Buckingham Palace is not big enough, at room prices of more that £3,000 a night you can imagine the service quality is of the highest standard, I would expect the world at that price, in fact I would expect the world at £500 a night!!(prices sourced from: Inside Claridge’s episode 3 on BBC2, on Limerick Leader on line site it states nights can be as high as £6,900) 

Well as I watched this documentary they were featuring some of their guests who visited over the summer in 2012, including the President of Gabon and to my amusement they featured H.E President Joyce Banda of Malawi and the First Husband Richard Banda, with their 15 Malawian delegates, visiting the hotel for 11 days. They showed The First Husband Richard Banda arriving at hotel, and the grand red carpet welcome he received. All the staff of the hotel know all their guests by name, just for the personal touch. (at that price I wouldn't expect less!).

Watching this programme it really doesn't take a phD mathematician to help you understand the larger bill that would have come from this stay, am thinking room rate for 15 delegates each with their own room, the president and her husband therefore 16 rooms at £3,000 a night for 11 nights plus maybe 300 food bill per day ( 5* food experience is expensive and I feel this price is reasonable) a £500 allowance for each person per day brings the bill to £635,800 that is before flights, security, transport etc an eleven day trip costing close to a million pounds and this was only their UK leg! 

For a country such a Malawi going through a series of devaluations that have added up to close to 50% and the lack of foreign money, a bill of this magnitude is 'a bit' excessive. Would it have hurt to stay at a reasonably priced 4/5* hotel say at £500 (don't get me wrong £500 is still excessive when you don't have anything) or deluxe service apartments or maybe cut down the number if delegates that tag along? 

No doubt Malawi has it's issues, and the current state of Malawi, is not down to the current lady president, as the system goes, you inherit other people's mess, and the economic situation has been terrible for a few years now, but I think it's unfair to have this lavish lifestyle when a large part of the Malawi population can hardly survive in the current economic situation, as is evident with the pending demonstrations on the 17^th of January.

(Note: after looking at the Claridge’s website they did have other rooms priced at £390 a night for single occupancy, therefore maybe the rooms that were used weren't at the rate or £3,000 a night as thought. I don’t usually right politically articles, this does not mean I am for or against the current government; the article was merely inspired from a programme I watched.)