Orientalism: Race in the Travel and Culinary Industries

Just before Christmas, the Mount Nelson – Cape Town’s grandest hotel – caused a minor kerfuffle on social media after posting a photograph of its latest confection: a corrugated iron shack made out of gingerbread. When several people pointed out that this was, at best, a stunningly insensitive gesture, the hotel’s representative replied that its purpose was partly ‘educational’: that it was to ‘raise awareness’ among hotel guests, most of w…