Asia Pacific Viewpoint, Vol. 46, No. 3, December 2005 ISSN 1360-7456, pp255–265 Consuming colonial nostalgia: The monumentalisation of historic hotels in urban South-East Asia Maurizio Peleggi Department of History, National University of Singapore, 11 Arts Link, Singapore 117570, Singapore. Email: hismp@nus.edu.sg Abstract: This article examines the renovation and commercial re-launch in the 1990s of some of the grand hotels built in South-East Asia during the high colonial era (1880s–1910s) and their social construction as historic monuments. The analysis focuses on architectural enhancement and discur- sive authentication as the key practices whereby the semblance of historic authenticity is bestowed on these hotels and made available as nostalgia to consumers. The article also considers whether renovated colonial hotels should be regarded as sites of consumption or as emerging ‘mnemonic sites’, filling in the vacuum caused by the progressive obliteration of ‘mnemonic environments’ in South-East Asia’s urban landscape. Keywords: architectural enhancement, colonial nostalgia, discursive authentication, historicalness Around the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a modern architectural type geared to the expanding market of intercontinental travellers made its appearance in the cities of colonial South-East Asia: the grand hotel. The buildings’ size and facilities and their superior standards of services distinguished these hotels from other kinds of tourist accommodation, such as inns and travel lodges. Grand hotels in British Burma, Malaya and French Indochina made it possible for colonists and travellers of the high imperial age to experience levels of comfort and luxury previously associated exclusively with the metropolis. After surviving the financial cri- sis of the late 1920s to early 1930s, caused by the slump in the local rubber and tin industries, the golden days of South-East Asia’s grand hotels came to an end with the Japanese occupation of the region in the early 1940s. Following de- colonisation, economic and infrastructural mod- ernisation in the 1960s and 1970s brought to the South-East Asian cityscape the boxy buildings of the hospitality industry’s international chains, which heralded the age of jet-propelled mass tourism. Those colonial-era grand hotels that had escaped demolition could not match the level of luxury and comfort of new establish- ments and thus attracted largely budget tourists. In the region’s socialist countries, the grand ho- tels often became state guest houses. Then in the 1990s, a number of surviving colonial hotels underwent much-advertised renewal and com- mercial re-launch. Having been refitted with all the amenities of five-star establishments (pools, spas, multi- ple bars, restaurants etc.), renovated colonial hotels nevertheless exploit their historical ca- chet to the fullest in their marketing strategies. That facet of global consumer culture that ref- erences colonial imagery, especially conspicu- ous in tourism but noticeable also in cinema and fashion, has been discussed in terms of ‘colonial blues’ (Panivong, 1996) and ‘colonial nostalgia’ (Peleggi, 1996). This article examines two modalities at work in the monumentalisa- tion of colonial-era hotels for nostalgia-oriented tourist consumption in contemporary South- East Asia. The first modality, which operates in the material domain, is architectural en- hancement whereby the buildings and interior d´ ecor of the colonial hotels are refashioned to achieve the semblance of historical authen- ticity. The second modality, which operates in the imaginary domain, is discursive authentica- tion whereby myths about the hotels’ past are forged to claim monumental status as well as to serve as marketing tools. The article con- cludes by considering whether monumentalised C  Victoria University of Wellington, 2005. Published by Blackwell Publishing.