Raffles Grand Hotel d'Angkor is a historic hotel located in Siem Reap, Cambodia. First opened in 1932, it was established by French town planner Ernest Hébrard to accommodate the early explorers and tourists visiting the world heritage site Angkor Wat.
Referred to as 'La Grande Dame' of Angkor’, the hotel has welcomed personalities such as Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Victor Goloubew, Princess Margaret, Lord Snowdon, Jacqueline Kennedy, Charles de Gaulle, Sultan Ibrahim Al-Masyhur, Queen Sofía, Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, Lee Hsien Loong, José Carreras, Roger Moore, Chris Noth, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama among many others.
It was acquired by Raffles Hotels and Resorts in 1994 and reopened in 1997 following an extensive restoration. Regarded as "the last bastion of the golden age of travel in Cambodia", the hotel is one of the few remaining colonial hotels in Asia.
History
Early years António da Madelena, a Portuguese Capuchin friar, was one of the first Western visitors to Angkor Wat. “It is of such extraordinary construction”, he told the historian Diogo do Couto, about his visit in 1586. Three centuries later, Europeans were baffled by what they saw at Angkor. Henri Mouhout, a young French naturalist and explorer, who arrived in January 1860, wrote “it is grander than anything left to us by Greece or Rome." His sketches, published posthumously, encouraged successive waves of archaeologists to Cambodia in pursuit of the ancient civilization.
By the end of the 19th century, the ruins of Angkor had become a tourist destination in the Far East. Travel brochures advertised exotic adventures in French Indochina that said: "The thrill of discovering the age-old lost Kingdom of Angkor at sunset, a vast city of crumbling rock, half concealed by the cruel tentacles of the jungle is a pinnacle experience.” Major steamship lines and new air routes were en route to Southeast Asia.
The origin of the Grand Hotel d’Angkor is linked with a mid 1920s proposal to construct five hotels throughout Cambodia and Annam. In 1923, architect and town planner, Ernest Hébrard, inaugurated the 'Indochina Architecture and Town Planning Service' based in Hanoi, which was responsible for the design of many of the public buildings and city squares across the region. In an article published in "L'Éveil économique de l'Indochine" on 22 December 1929, it detailed a contract executed by the Société des Grands-Hôtels Indochinois (S.G.H.I.) to build hotels in Siem Reap, Phnom Penh, Da Lat and Phan Thiết for the expansion of the Bungalow d'Angkor.
In Siem Reap, a proposal outlined the construction of a 60-room hotel which would replace the native lodges that were no longer suitable for the needs of the growing number of travelers flocking to Angkor. Historian Georges Groslier was consulted concerning the location of the new hotel. It was determined that a 'grand hotel’ was to be built in the centre of town along the main road to Angkor. The hotel was aligned with Angkor Wat and the city of Angkor Thom across a north-south axis that links the royal family's summer palace in Siem Reap province.
1929 Construction and 1932 opening The opening date of Grand Hotel d'Angkor is difficult to establish due to the lack of documentary evidence mostly lost during the Khmer Rouge and civil wars. From a 1929 document, it appears that the hotel was already under construction with a projected opening by 1931. Information written in 'L’Indochine: revue économique d’Extrême-Orient' on 5 June 1930, mentions that the Société des Grands Hôtels Indochinois (S.G.H.I.) is building a palace in Angkor, which will include 70 rooms and will open in a few months." It was later reported that on 11 March 1931, Eugène Jean Louis René Robin, then the governor general of French Indochina, "left the capital of King Monivong to visit the 60-room hotel which has just been built and which only remains to be fitted out. The hotel, along with the Bungalow d'Angkor (Hôtel des Ruines), located in front of Angkor Wat, with 45 rooms, will be able to accommodate all the tourists from Bangkok." The construction appears to have lagged with the advent of the Great Depression. Based on records, the hotel began to function only during the 1932-33 season.
In April 1932, Alfred Messner (1880-1943), proprietor of La Pagode in Saigon and "best known as a restaurateur and hotelier," was named director of the Grand Hotel. In July 1932, the 'Journal Officiel de L’Indochine' published a formal notice seeking a general manager of the Grand Hôtel de Siemréap et de l’Hôtel des Ruines d’Angkor. The Hôtel des Ruines (also known as Bungalow des Ruines or Bungalow d'Angkor) became a partner hotel under the same management. On the same year, Messner was duly appointed as General Manager. In a 'L'Éveil économique de l'Indochine' article dated 6 March 1932, it said, "Mr. Messner has big plans. He wants to make the Grand Hotel and Bungalow d'Angkor a place of delight, which tourists will dream of when they leave it and where they will only have the ambition to return."
Messner produced a booklet titled, ‘Archaeological Guide to Angkor’ which was compiled by École française d'Extrême-Orient conservator Henri Marchal and was printed in Saigon. An advertisement inside the guide advertises the two hotels “replete with all modern comforts”. During the mid-1930s, room rates at the hotel were between 6 and 15 ‘piastres’ a night, with breakfast charged at 1.50 and lunch or dinner at 2.50. A ‘piastre’ was the Indochina dollar, equivalent to about 10 French francs at the time. By 1939, the rates had risen slightly for rooms to between 10 and 12 piastres per person per day.
British author H.W. Ponder mentioned the newly-built hotel in her book, ‘Cambodian Glory’ published in 1936. Being essentially a romantic writer, she preferred to stay at the ‘bungalow’ that faced the ruins, rather than the “immense and dazzling white concrete palace that would look more at home on the Côte d’Azur than in its present setting in the middle of the Cambodian plains.” She likened the building's style to hotels in Nice, Monte-Carlo or along the French Riviera. When the bungalow had been temporarily closed in favor of the new hotel, Ponder was forced to travel by local transport to Grand Hotel d'Angkor where she described the “delicious food and wine (that) is immediately set before you”. She recounted that all the ‘table-boys’ were French-speaking, having been recruited in Saigon and they continually insisted the English woman translate everything that a visitor was bound to ask into ‘American!’ Ponder also noted a large area to the rear of the hotel had been cleared and leveled by the manager for golf "a small private course that was added at the request of the wealthy Americans."
The pioneering luxury hotel offered a bewildering array of services, such as torch-lit Apsara ballet accompanied by traditional musicians at Angkor Wat, elephants for excursions, motor tours, interpreters and guides. The enterprising manager published leaflets advertising the program of Khmer dances by the Royal Ballet. The dancers, under the direction of Princess Vong Kat, had performed in the Palais d’Angkor, a replica of Angkor Wat at the 1931 L’Exposition Coloniale de Vincennes in Paris. A poster, a reminder of the colonial exhibition, can be found today at the end of the corridor on the ground floor of the hotel.
To celebrate Christmas in 1936, General Manager Alfred Messner arranged the illumination of Angkor Wat accompanied by music and dancing. According to a newspaper article in 1936, Siem Reap has seen an excess of 3,400 tourists, prompting the provincial administration into action. In an effort to further beautify the town, plans were drawn to expand the public gardens. The huge space in front of the Grand Hotel d’Angkor was levelled and filled for the planting of a formal garden which still exists today. Gardens were also developed along the terraces of the Siem Reap River.
1953 Postcolonial Cambodia In an explosion of youthful vigor and exuberance that accompanied the declaration of independence from France on 9 November 1953, Prince Norodom Sihanouk launched into a campaign of urban planning, development and construction that transformed many provincial centers. The early Sihanouk era from 1955 to 1965 saw immense growth within Cambodia, along with a fervent striving for international recognition and a modernization program that saw Siem Reap blossom. During this period, tourists were able to travel to Siem Reap from Phnom Penh by boat cruising the Tonle Sap River or travel overland from Sisophon to Angkor. In 1953, tourists entered Cambodia through the capital city of Phnom Penh by ship from Singapore via Bangkok or by a bus service from Saigon, or for wealthier tourists, by flying. Architect Henri Chatel was appointed to renovate and enhance the hotel between 1957 and 1958 offering single air-conditioned rooms with bath for 459 Riels.
On 24 August 1959, the newly established royal government sponsored the creation of La Société khmère des Auberges royales (S.O.K.H.A.R.), a concessionary hotel company "primarily responsible for organizing world-class accommodations" in the gateway town of Siem Reap. The Grand Hotel d'Angkor became the company's flagship property while it also managed the l’Auberge des Temples (formerly l'Hôtel des Ruines), the royal guesthouse Villa Princière (now Amansara), and the smaller l'Hôtel de la Paix. M. Ang Kim Khoan was appointed as General Manager of S.O.K.H.A.R., "a dynamic man and a great traveler himself, and who is well aware that in the hotel industry "le client est roi" ('the customer is king')."
The Grand Hotel d'Angkor had "retained its sixty rooms, fifty of which are air-conditioned, all elegantly furnished and naturally equipped for individual comfort." In the lobby, multilingual staff was available at the front desk. It has two dining rooms. The first was a large glass-enclosed terrace that accommodated eighty to one hundred guests and overlooked the forest and the towering spires of Angkor Wat from afar. The second room, also air conditioned, was located on the newly outfitted right wing: it accommodated 150 guests and served "the finest French cuisine, accompanied by wines from the best vintages in France." Leading onto the right side of the lobby was "a spacious bar stocked with drinks from the best world brands."
A regional tourism office was inaugurated inside the hotel offering tourists "adequate equipment, including a fleet of cars including Pullman coaches, high-class touring cars, off-road cars for difficult access tracks and... specially trained elephants for those customers who want [to] exhaust the sum of the picturesque attractions of the region." In addition was a souvenir shop selling "the most beautiful products of Khmer craftsmanship: cut leather, silverware, bamboo or rattan objects, statuettes and the finest silk in the region." The Royal Air Cambodge also opened an agency inside the Grand Hotel following the first plane that landed in Siem Reap's new domestic airport in 1963. Every Saturday evening, the hotel organized, "at the forecourt of the Angkor Wat temple, a recital of Khmer classical dances given by the best dancers of the province dressed [in] sumptuous traditional costumes."