Viator Viator Travel Blog

Call it synchronicity, call it what you will. When I receive two emails about something, then it must be a trend. Or a coincidence. Or possibly just another day on the internet.

Case in point. A few weeks ago I was forwarded a link to a fascinating article on BudgetTravel.com about 10 Celebrity-Trashed Hotel Rooms. Normally I don’t pay attention to celebrity gossip. But how can you resist a story about hotels and their celebrity guests. Keith Moon after a stay at the Day’s Inn in Michigan? $24,000 in damage. Johnny Depp after an altercation with girlfriend Kate Moss at the Mark Hotel in New York City? $9,000 in damage. Billy Idol after a three-week drug and booze binge at the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok? Carried out in a stretcher plus a $200,000 bill.

Now that’s quality celebrity entertainment!

Then just last week a coworker (we’ll call her elly-kay to protect the innocent) sent me a link to a new celebrity hotel development, the Brando Eco Hotel on the island of Tetiaroa in Tahiti (a.k.a. French Polynesia). Marlon Brando apparently fell in love with the island in 1965 after filming Mutiny of the Bounty. So of course he bought it. As one does.

Brando’s Eco Hotel: Population 1

Here’s an excerpt from the website. We’ll do some close textual analysis in a moment:

The former playground of Tahitian Kings, Tetiaroa is now virtually uninhabited (population of one – Brando’s son Teihotu). The project is being overseen by Tahiti Beachcomber SA, whose CEO, Richard Bailey, owner of several luxury resorts in French Polynesia, had been in contact with the actor for a number of years… “The Brando eco-hotel will be exactly what Marlon would have wanted: Energy-autonomous and built with natural materials, it will rest lightly on its environment and be nearly invisible from the water. It will showcase the latest in renewable energy technologies, including some we are already employing in our new hotel in Bora Bora, which Marlon had promised to inaugurate. We worked together on this project for three years before he died,” says CEO Bailey.

If you don’t think too hard about, it sounds like a lovely story. Marlon Brando falls in love with a Tahitian island, buys it, and pours millions of dollars into developing a luxury hotel complex built on ecologically sound practices. Good on ya, Marlon.

Now for that close textual analysis...

Tetiaroa is now virtually uninhabited (population of one – Brando’s son Teihotu). Hmmm, population of one. Could that be because Marlon Brando begged Teihotu’s mother, Tarita Teriipaia, to have his child but later changed his mind and urged her to have an abortion? (She refused and the couple had a son, Teihotu, followed by a daughter, Cheyenne.) Or maybe it’s because Marlon later committed Teihotu’s sister Cheyenne to a revolving door of psychiatric institutes. “When she started being ill, Marlon stopped coming here, to Tahiti, and no longer called,” Teriipaia writes in her tell-all book, Marlon, My Love, My Suffering. Or maybe it’s because Teihotu’s sister Cheyenne hanged herself in 1995 after her brother (Teihotu’s half-brother), Christian Brando, shot and killed Cheyenne’s boyfriend, Dag Drollet, in 1990. Either way, Teihotu has plenty of reasons to live alone.

And what about this bit: The Brando eco-hotel will be exactly what Marlon would have wanted: Energy-autonomous and built with natural materials, it will rest lightly on its environment and be nearly invisible from the water. Yeah, that sounds like the Marlon Brando who demanded a multi-million dollar fee to appear briefly in the film Superman. Or the man who helped Leonard Peltier flee the FBI in a motor home filled with dynamite, guns and airplane tickets charged to Brando’s own credit card. Yup, that sounds like somebody who’s primary concern in life is energy autonomy and natural building materials.

And then there’s that final telling detail: It will showcase the latest in renewable energy technologies, including some we are already employing in our new hotel in Bora Bora, which Marlon had promised to inaugurate. My interpretation of CEO Bailey’s comment — ‘Marlon you owe me money! You said he would pay for all this, is the check really in the mail??’

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m sure the Brando Eco Hotel will be a lovely place when it opens. If it ever opens. But let’s not get carried away. Let’s not paint the place with a brush dipped in Marlon Brando’s good name or fame. The man was a nut. The man brutalized his children. The man was out of control.

The Brando Eco Hotel may well prove to be a great place to stay. But it will have nothing to do with Brando, or the Brando mystique. This is a case of celebrity hotel-trashing that leaves a sour taste in the mouth, and CEO Bailey ought to do everything he can to distance the project from the deceased star.

In the very least, we all should leave poor Teihotu alone in his splendid isolation. The last thing Teihotu needs is a pack of celebrity-seeking tourists demanding autographs and remembrances of the Great Man.

–Scott McNeely