The 17th Largest Hotel in the World

Nashville, Tennessee, is a city that's famous for three reasons. 

The first, of course, is music: Nashville boasts the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Ryman Auditorium, the Grand Ole Opry and Jack White's brand spanking new studio. The second is the fact that it's home to a full-scale replica of the Parthenon, which exists for reasons that are too strange and lengthy to set out here.

The third reason is the fact that Nashville is the site of the world's 17th largest hotel, the adventurously-named Gaylord Opryland, which is the subject of this column because a) it's bizarre and hilarious and b) it seems to embody certain aspects of America that will (hopefully) become clear over the course of the next 800 words or so.

Entering the Gaylord Opryland is like stepping into one of those drawings of buildings that haven't been built yet. It's like a down-home Dubai, a rootin' tootin' plastic wonderland. Being here evokes the same existential dread as spending too long in an airport or a shopping mall; the difference is that while those are places you end up because you have to, this is a place where you're supposed to stay of your own free will—and never, ever leave, y'all.

It's difficult to explain the scale of the place without relying on either non-specific superlatives (like "gargantuan", "enormous" and "really fucking massive") or on bare numbers. So let's do the latter: the Gaylord Opryland houses three thousand hotel rooms. There is an indoor river here, which comes complete with boat cruises and a waterfall. There are 600,000 square feet—which, according to the internet, translates to 13 acres—of "flexible meeting space". There is a radio station. And there is entertainment, hoo boy, yes there is: a nightclub that is exactly how you'd imagine it, a Jack Daniel's themed restaurant, and an "authentic" Irish pub that stretches the meaning of the word "authentic" like taffy left in the sun. 

The complex is set out around three atriums (atria?), which are really huge outdoor areas that feel like the product of a theme park doing something unspeakable with a corporate campus. Except, wait, they're not actually outdoors. Nothing here is outdoors. Everything is under a colossal vaulted glass roof that, as we're told by the intimidatingly efficient publicist who acts as our guide, involves two acres of glass. Two acres. Maybe it forms part of the flexible meeting space. 

The complex has the air of a planned capital city, of monumental architecture whose scale is designed to instill awe in the visitor, except that it's not a capital city—it's a hotel in fucking Tenneseee. But in its own way, it's political, alright—it's as much a triumphal proclamation of the ascendance of capital as any grand Soviet plaza was of communism. 

In this respect, the Gaylord Opryland reminds me of Palm Springs, the strange desert enclave of manicured lawns and golf courses that embodies the weird Calvinist desire for subjugating nature to the interests of man, the pioneer spirit subverted into a desire for brute dominance. A golf course in the desert? A hotel whose air-conditioning bill alone—because yes, everything is air-conditioned, even the atria—probably equals the GDP of a medium-sized African nation? They exist because the Americans can build them, and you can't. 

A fellow writer asks our host what the place's annual revenues amount to. Our host responds with a professional smile and no answer. She does, however, happily answer a question about who actually stays here. "Conventions!", she beams.

Yes, despite all the corporate genuflecting that has gone on over the course of the last couple of years—since the appetite of American banks for palming predatory mortgages off onto consumers ill able to afford them managed to bring the entire world's economy to its knees, lest we forget—there still seem to be a lot of companies who will spend a shitton of money on flying their employees from various parts of the country to somewhere like the Gaylord Opryland, so that the whole team can play mini-golf and drink themselves stupid at Findley's Irish Pub™. Even in 2011, conventions are big business. Big, environmentally disastrous, managementally dubious business whose value shareholders should be questioning, perhaps. But big nonetheless.

It's not just corporate conventions, either. By the river that isn't a river, there's a "serene English garden" that's neither serene, a garden nor English. Here we encounter a sad-looking group of Vietnam veterans, who are all wearing matching caps and all presumably here for some sort of reunion. They look old and lost. 

As they shuffle past, I stop on the bridge and look down at the fish swimming in the "river" below. It occurs to me that I feel sorry for these fish. They've never been in a real river. And they don't even know the difference.

Photo: Allan Gray