Malta’s InterContinental: A Hotel That Refuses to Be Ordinary

The business of what is and what isn’t a five-star hotel can get a little dismal sometimes, and unless you’re especially prestige-prone, whether something is or isn’t is not necessarily an indication of how much you’ll enjoy your stay at any given hotel.

One of my favourite hotels in Bangkok - a city known for its extraordinary variety of opulent five-star hotels, home of the original Mandarin, still going on the banks of the Chao Phraya after 150 years - is a three-star called The Tivoli. The rooms are big, often with excellent views of the lively street scenes of Sathon below, the lobby is very unrefurbished mid-century modern, and best of all, the typography is out of this world and, as far as I can tell, original to the same era. It’s also 1,000 baht a night (that’s about $38).

It’s not so much whether it’s got the stars. It’s really about whether it’s got what you like.

One of the first things you’ll see when you do a search or query on the Intercontinental in St. Julians in Malta, just outside Valletta, is a back-and-forth about whether it deserves its five stars.

Could there be a more boring topic of conversation? Especially when there is so much else to say about this utterly fantastic hotel.

A playful exterior set of stairs between courtyard levels (Photo Credit: Bert Archer)

Obviously built in a more playful age than our own, the Intercontinental is full of surprises. Like the multiple outdoor stairways going from secret garden to unexpected bar to cool little ponds with bridges over them and enthusiastic turtles in them. Or the balconies, made with marine-inspired metal bars rather than modesty glass, and facing any number of directions, inwards and outwards, east, west, north, and south in this multifaceted building. Some unhappy folk might call them outdated, and I hope the management won’t be listening to them when it’s time for a refresh. Sure, you can see everyone on all their balconies, and they can see you, but unless you’re really devoted to being naked on yours, this ends up being more social than invasive. Couples out sipping coffee or beer, giving each other little waves or smiles from time to time. You don't get that with smoked glass.

There’s a big pool in the enormous seventh-floor courtyard, with plenty of lounging area on various terraces, some poolside, some not. And the gym, two floors down, is the biggest hotel gym I’ve ever seen ; it’s about 2,000 sq metres. It’s open to the public too, or at least to members, and it’s about as far from the standard-issue five-star tasteful and empty boutique fitness centre as you can get.

One of my favourite things about this hotel though is the secret entrance. There’s a big main entrance into the lobby, of course. But to take advantage of its footprint, and enable guests to bypass the labyrinthine streets that make up downtown St Julians, there’s an almost invisible door, which you get to through by taking the elevator to the 8th floor (don’t ask me how that works), and gets you out onto the street on what’s essentially the other side of the downtown core.

The balconies (Photo Credit: Bert Archer)

Walking around this huge but personable chunk of architecture, you can see what the commenters are saying about the whole five-star thing. The carpets are worn, there are cracks in the paint here and there, and the fixtures seem mostly original. But as any Boomer and increasing numbers of Gen Xers will tell you, there’s nothing wrong with showing your age. Do we really want everything looking like it was built 18 months ago?

Malta is an odd place. It’s tiny - 316 km2 - and it’s always built its houses and other buildings on top of each other. It’s the style here, part of the culture, and unlike some of the newer hotels in St Julians (which is essentially where Malta parks its tourists so it can bus them into Valletta and elsewhere), the Intercontinental is a reflection of that. It’s everything, everywhere, all at once, its floors intersecting at unexpected junctures, balconies gazing off in all directions, and possibly as a result of all this, or maybe because of the sorts of people this kind of hotel attracts, its club floor - usually a rather quiet affair in most hotels that offer it - is a hurley burley of happy activity, and well worth it, with breakfast, afternoon tea, and generous pre-dinner drinks all included and well used, with extremely friendly and accommodating if sometimes overworked staff.

The club floor terrace at breakfast (Photo Credit: Bert Archer)

I’ve stayed in places with shinier marble surfaces and more impressive chandeliers with more exquisitely designed coffee spoons in the rooms, but I don’t think I’ve enjoyed a hotel as much as this Intercontinental in a long time.

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