"EVERY time I would walk past I would think, 'How on Earth did this building manage to function as a hotel?' says Professor Kenneth Morrison of the former Holiday Inn hotel in Sarajevo, a distinctively garish building which became a media hub for journalists reporting on Bosnian War during the 1990s – despite being situated in one of the conflict's kill zones known as 'Sniper Alley'.
"It was not just within siege lines, it was 500m from an active frontline," explains Morrison, whose new book with co-author Abdallah El Binni, War Hotels, builds upon the research the pair undertook for the excellent recent Al Jazeera documentary series of the same name to explore the often harrowing stories of the hotels inextricably linked to warfare.
War Hotels features interviews with those who witnessed the violence and intrigue which took place around (and, occasionally, within) these infamous hotels – from shootings, shellings and car bombings to violent coups and kidnappings – including recollections from hotel staff and reporters such as Martin Bell, John Simpson, Jonathan Dimbleby, Peter Arnett and the late Robert Fisk.
Some hotels, like our own Europa Hotel, offered 'soft targets' for insurgents striking a blow at their enemy's economic base. The Belfast city centre building was blown-up 33 times by the IRA, earning its infamous reputation as 'the most bombed hotel in Europe': it was quickly nicknamed 'the hardboard hotel' by the international hacks who frequented its rooms, restaurants and bars.
Indeed, throughout the Troubles, the Europa played a vital role as a Belfast base of operations for press visiting the north, putting it among an elite group of hotels around the world which became vantage points for reporting on warfare: The Continental Palace and the Caravelle in Saigon during the Vietnam War and Phnom Penh's Hotel Le Royale during the subsequent conflict in Cambodia, the Hotel Commodore in Beirut – a city in which the entire hotel district became a deadly battlefield during the Lebanese civil war of the 1970s and 80s – the Al Rasheed and The Palestine in Baghdad during Gulf Wars one and two respectively and the aforementioned Holiday Inn in Sarajevo.
"Former BBC correspondent Martin Bell describes the Holiday Inn as the 'ultimate war hotel', because you couldn't escape the war there," comments Morrison, Professor of Modern Southeast European History at Leicester's De Montfort University.
"At some of the other 'war hotels', journalists were sitting around the swimming pool drinking gin and tonics with the sound of bombs detonating in the distance – but not at the Holiday Inn."
In fact, the book details how Bell became so paranoid about being caught by sniper fire at the besieged Sarajevo hotel that he developed superstitions: he always wore his trademark white suit with green socks, entered and exited through the same broken window, walked to his room only in a clockwise direction and celebrated safe arrival at his room each night by listening to an entire cassette of The Love Songs of Willie Nelson before bed.
Morrison, a specialist on the modern history of the western Balkans, was so struck by the remarkable story of the Holiday Inn – which was built for the 1984 Winter Olympics and survived the Bosnian War to remain in operation today as the Hotel Holiday – that he ended up writing an academic book on the subject, Sarajevo's Holiday Inn: On the Frontline of Politics and War (2016), a publication which sowed the seeds for the subsequent War Hotels series and book.
"I knew there was a story to tell about that building," he explains.
"It was the first time I began to think about the significance of hotels in the context of urban conflicts: how hotels ended up playing an important role either as a base for the media, like the Holiday Inn, but also as places where refugees and internally displaced people end up.
"Sometimes, they can become militarised, taken over by armies or paramilitary groups – often they are tall buildings, so the make ideal sniper positions – and of course hotels are often soft targets for terrorist groups. A number of luxury hotels in Egypt, Somalia and Mali which have been targeted by Islamist groups, because they represent a little slice of Western culture or values."
Morrison adds: "However, mostly hotels are considered to be 'neutral spaces' which lend themselves quite well to peace conferences and negotiations. The Europa was one of those places where secret talks would be held during the Troubles and in fact just this week the negotiations between the Russians and the Ukranians took place in a hotel in Turkey.
"So hotels do play these particularly interesting roles in times of crisis, particularly wars."
However, he admits that the book is really something of a time capsule for a bygone era: it concludes with a chapter titled The Demise of The War Hotel which details how, in the digital age, the access to essential communications technology that well appointed hotels in conflict zones once offered has become obsolete.
"Journalists do still need hotels, to an extent," comments Morrison.
"They have generators, so even if there is a power cut they can still function, food and refrigeration, water supplies and basements to shelter in. And we speak a lot in the book about how hotel managers have often proved to be very canny at being able to bring in whatever is needed [for reporters working in war zones].
"But in the case of the Caravelle in Saigon, the Commodore in Beirut and the Holiday Inn in Sarajevo, these were for years actual press operations where you had bureaus established in these buildings and a proper journalistic infrastructure.
"Back then, foreign correspondents had lots of equipment like cameras and satellite phones and they needed a base of operations as well as somewhere to locate all of that gear. And there would be telex machines and satellite phones based in those hotels.
"Now, you can kind of do everything on the go from a mobile phone or laptop. I have a few friends who are working as reporters in Ukraine at the moment. They have generally been staying in private accommodation and all the filming they are doing is on their mobile phones – they then send the footage immediately and delete it, in case Russian soldiers might get hold of it."
As for Ireland's very own 'war hotel', Morrison marvels at how the Europa endured despite the best efforts of the IRA.
"The IRA knew that if they left a bomb in the lobby of the Europa, they would be guaranteed publicity – the press would essentially be right there to report the story for the evening news and the next day's front pages," he tells me.
"It is amazing that the Europa survived. Some of the detonations were massive and the fact that no-one was killed was a miracle – but much of that was down to the fact that the Europa's manager, Harper Brown, learned to run quite a slick operation in really very difficult circumstances.
"At the heart of the stories behind all of these buildings are one or two remarkable individuals, and of course Harper Brown was one of them."
Morrison adds: "The story of the Europa is a story of resilience. It's a story that runs throughout the book in terms of the hotel managers and their staff, and how hospitality manages to adapt to the most unusual of circumstances."
:: War Hotels by Kenneth Morrison and Abdallah El Binni is available now, published by Merrion Press. Watch the documentary series online via Aljazeera.com/program/war-hotels
