hate

As a former hotel receptionist, I received requests and questions from guests that often left me baffled. One in particular became the most annoying, and most people do it

Receptionists are at the heart of a hotel, handling reservations, addressing guest inquiries, and supporting other departments. But there’s one question that is instantly frustrating, and it’s more common than you might think.

I spent around four years working on the front desk of a hotel, and during that time, I gained a real insight into the hospitality industry from the good, the bad, and the ugly. One of our most popular phone calls was, unsurprisingly, to make a reservation, whether for an overnight stay or dinner at one of the two restaurants.

Friday nights, in the hotel and two restaurants, were often fully booked. The weekends were the busiest times for every staff member in every department, with a buzz and a hint of overwhelming stress seeping through the corridors as we did our best to make the guests’ experience as smooth as possible.

READ MORE: I worked at a hotel – you won’t get a room upgrade if you ask at the wrong time

OPINION

Amy Jones

As front-of-house staff, the often overwhelming demand for tables in the restaurant and rooms for the night landed on us. We’d have people calling up on a Friday afternoon asking for a table in the cosy pub, or attempting to book a last-minute staycation over a weekend.

We’d always politely explain that we were fully booked, whether in the restaurant or hotel, but they’d inevitably reply in the same way. And it went a little something like this:

Me: ‘I’m sorry we’re fully booked in the restaurant tonight’. Them: ‘Don’t you have any tables?’ Me: ‘No, I’m sorry, it’s a Friday night, every table is booked’. Them: ‘Can’t you squeeze us in anywhere?’

It was bewildering how many people would ask these questions, as if we could magically add an extra table and chairs to an already packed restaurant. More often than not, people would fail to understand the concept of reservation times.

Frequently, we might only have had a table free at 5.30pm or 9pm, both of which are awkwardly inconvenient. Yet, people would always push for the time they desired, not understanding how table turnovers work and the running of a restaurant. After all, 90 people can’t sit down all at once to eat at 7pm in a restaurant that only seats 45 at a time.

And it didn’t just happen for restaurant bookings. After explaining to would-be customers that the hotel was fully booked all weekend, we would get the response: ‘Don’t you have any rooms available?’ To which we’d reply, ‘I’m sorry it’s fully booked’. But that wouldn’t stop them.

I had people explain that they wouldn’t mind being in the smallest room, or squeezing their family of five into a room only suitable for double occupancy. While it’s always worth asking, to some extent, these questions became irritating. It was as if those on the other end of the line thought we were making it up.

Hotels and restaurants really do get fully booked, and no matter how much they want to cater to you, sometimes there really is no way around it.

Do you have a travel story to share? Email webtravel@reachplc.com

I am a Palestinian. And increasingly, that fact alone is treated as a provocation.

In recent months, I have watched anti-Semitism — a real, lethal form of hatred with a long and horrific history — be stripped of its meaning and weaponised to silence Palestinians, criminalise solidarity with us, and shield Israel from accountability as it carries out a genocide in Gaza. This is not about protecting Jewish people. It is about protecting power.

The pattern is now impossible to ignore.

A children’s educator, Ms Rachel, whose entire public work is built around care, learning, and empathy, is branded “Anti-Semite of the Year” — not for her engaging in any form of hate speech, but for expressing concern for Palestinian children. For acknowledging that children in Gaza are being bombed, starved, and traumatised. For expressing compassion.

As a Palestinian, I hear the message clearly: even empathy for our children is dangerous.

Then there is Palestine Action, a protest movement that targets weapons manufacturers supplying Israel’s military. Instead of being debated, challenged, or even criticised within a democratic framework, it is proscribed as a “terrorist” organisation, casually equated with ISIL (ISIS) – a group responsible for mass executions, sexual slavery, and genocidal violence.

This comparison is not just obscene. It is deliberate. It collapses the meaning of “terrorism” so completely that political dissent becomes extremism by definition. Resistance becomes pathology. Protest becomes “terror”. And Palestinians, once again, are framed not as a people under occupation, but as a permanent threat.

Language itself is now being criminalised. Phrases like “globalise the Intifada” are banned without any serious engagement with history or meaning. Intifada — a word that literally means “shaking off” — is torn from its political context as an uprising against military occupation and reduced to a slur. Palestinians are denied even the right to name their resistance.

At the same time, international law is being actively dismantled.

Staff and judges at the International Criminal Court are sanctioned and intimidated for daring to investigate Israeli war crimes. Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on Palestine, has not only been sanctioned, but also relentlessly smeared — because she uses the language of international law to describe occupation, apartheid, and genocide.

When international law is applied to African leaders, it is celebrated.
When it is applied to Israel, it is treated as an act of hostility.

This brings us to Australia — and to one of the most revealing moments of all.

After the horrific Bondi Beach attack, which shocked and horrified people across Australia, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the Australian government of encouraging anti-Semitism. Not because of any incitement, not because of inflammatory rhetoric — but because Australia had moved towards recognising Palestine as a state.

Read that again.

The diplomatic recognition of Palestinian statehood — long framed as essential to peace and grounded in international law — is presented as a moral failing, even as a contributor to anti-Semitic violence. Palestinian existence itself is treated as the problem.

What makes this moment so disturbing is not only that Netanyahu made this claim, but that so many centres of power ran with it rather than challenged it.

Instead of forcefully rejecting the idea that recognising Palestinian rights could “encourage anti-Semitism”, governments, institutions, and commentators allowed the premise to stand. Some echoed it outright. Others stayed silent. Almost none confronted the dangerous logic at its core: that Palestinian political recognition is inherently destabilising, provocative, or threatening.

This is how moral collapse happens — not with thunder, but with acquiescence.

The result is not safety for the Jewish people, but erasure of the Palestinian people.

As a Palestinian, I find it devastating.

It means my identity is not merely contested — it is criminalised. My grief is not simply ignored — it is politicised. My demand for justice is not debated — it is pathologised as hatred.

Anti-Semitism is real. It must be confronted seriously and without hesitation. The Jewish people deserve safety, dignity, and protection — everywhere. But when anti-Semitism is stretched to include children’s educators, UN experts, international judges, protest movements, chants, words, and even the diplomatic recognition of Palestine, then the term no longer serves to protect Jewish people.

It protects a state from accountability.

Worse still, this weaponisation endangers Jews by collapsing Jewish identity into the actions of a government committing mass atrocities. It tells the world that Israel speaks for all Jews — and that anyone who objects must therefore be hostile to Jews themselves. That is not protection. It is recklessness masquerading as morality.

For Palestinians like me, the psychological toll is immense.

I am tired of having to preface every sentence with disclaimers.

I am deeply pained by watching my people starve while being lectured about tone.

I am angry that international law seems to apply only in certain politically convenient cases.

And I am grieving — not just for Gaza, but for the moral collapse unfolding around it.

Opposing genocide is not anti-Semitism.

Solidarity is not “terrorism”.

Recognising Palestine is not incitement.

Naming your suffering is not violence.

If the world insists on calling me an anti-Semite for refusing to accept the annihilation of my people, then it is not anti-Semitism that is being countered.

It is genocide that is being justified.

And history will remember who helped make that possible.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

DUNCAN James has revealed how Blue has managed to avoid the boyband curse and not hate each other’s guts ahead of their new album.

The four-piece formed in 2000 and have a wealth of hits to their name including All Rise, One Love and Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word.

To mark their 25th anniversary, Blue – which also consists of Lee Ryan, Simon Webbe, Antony Costa – are releasing a new album in January, and are stronger than ever.

Speaking to The Sun, Duncan, 48, said: “We’re very busy with the new album Reflections coming out.

“Then a big world tour for our 25th anniversary. I just can’t believe we have got to 25 years and we’ve never lost a member.

“We’ve stayed together for 25 years and we’re still there.”

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He’s right – it’s a rare feat in boyband terms to not only have all original members in the band, but for there to still be a lot of love and respect for one another.

Original British boyband Take That famously lost Robbie Williams to a solo career in the mid-90s, and currently perform as a trio after Jason Orange decided to hang up his mic in 2014.

One Direction lost Zayn Malik partway through their world-dominating success, while Westlife lost Brian McFadden after five years and Five fell apart in spectacular fashion at the peak of their fame, before all of them finally reunited for their successful 2025 arena tour.

Meanwhile Boyzone has grabbed headlines in recent years after documenting the tensions behind-the-scenes and announcing a surprise farewell gig with all four remaining members agreeing to take part.

Despite Blue going on hiatus from 2005 to 2011, they reformed as a four-piece to represent the UK at the Eurovision Song Contest, and have remained together ever since.

Revealing the key to their success in avoiding the boyband curse, Duncan said: “I’ve had these ups and downs and different things, we’ve all had a lot of ups and downs but we’re still together.

“For me, I think it’s because we have a lot of loyalty to one another. And I think boys as well, we never really argue.

“We don’t have these bitchy squabbles about clothing or who is going to have what.

“But I think honestly, it’s probably down to the fact that I’m an only child, so I never had any brothers and sisters.

“So when I got into Blue and at the height of it all it was just crazy, we were all over the place around the world, doing songs with Elton John and all that, and I think you just become really close like brothers.”

They’re brothers that I never thought I’d ever have, and we’re family. We always say that to each other, we’re family. And I think that’s the key.

Duncan James

Duncan, who came out as gay in 2014, continued: “They were there for me through everything that I’ve been through in my life, they are literally my brothers.

“They’re brothers that I never thought I’d ever have, and we’re family. We always say that to each other, we’re family. And I think that’s the key.

“There’s been a lot of stuff that’s gone on and we’ve always stood by each other and supported each other, and that’s what families do, don’t they?”

Because of this, the lads still all share a dressing room when they go on tour, but there is one thing they refuse to do.

Duncan, who spoke to us while attending the Children with Cancer gala, said: “The only thing we don’t do is sit next to each other on an aeroplane.

“We all like a window seat and so we all want that seat, and if you don’t get a window, it’s like ‘Oh for God’s sake!’, that’s when you could have an argument!”

New album Reflections, released on January 9, and lead single One Last Time, shows a more grown-up side to the band, who are fans of bands including The Killers and Kings of Leon.

Duncan previously told The Sun: “I think all of us collectively have always loved that rock sound.

“But when you’re put into a boy band, you’re given a kind of direction to go down.”