Kabul Clarification

Just to be clear: The Kabul Intercontinental Hotel attacked by terrorists this week is not connected to the global InterContinental Hotel Group, according to the London company, which has issued press releases explaining that it lost control of the Kabul property when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Since then, other operators - no great respectors of trademarks or intellectual property, evidently - have continued to run the now-unaffiliated hotel under the same name.

When it comes to globalized commerce, you just never know. Back in the 1990s, on my first trip to Asia, I booked a room in the Fairmont Hotel, in Tokyo, and got a really good - which is to say low - rate. When I arrived, I found a perfectly good old-school hotel built after World War II when Japan was reconstructing. It was not affiliated with the upmarket Fairmont chain, now based in Toronto; Fairmont didn't own the rights to the name in Japan. That hotel has since closed and was demolished.

Anyway, it's a very different Intercontinental in Kabul.

Welcome to Kabul

Travelers remain a target in politico-religious conflicts, as today's bloody attack on the InterContinental Hotel in Kabul shows. The latest unconscionable assault on civilians by suicide bombers and gunmen follows February's attack on the Kabul Safi Landmark Hotel and the horrific 2008 hotel attacks in Mumbai. The common thread in all these mass killings is that they were launched by Islamist terror cells based in Pakistan who see travelers as soft targets.

Early media reports vary, as they always do amidst the chaos, on the number of attackers and victims in Kabul. It will take time to sort out the final toll. The Taliban have claimed credit, if that is the word, for carrying out the latest outrage, which they will dignify by calling an "operation.'' Afghan government officials and foreigners were reportedly singled out.

Protecting hotel guests is an especially difficult proposition. Hoteliers I have talked to say they want to have effective security consistent with hospitality; they don't want their hotels to look like fortresses. In some parts of the world, they already do. Hotels I have visited in and around Cairo, Egypt - where attacks on tourists are manifold and tourist sites and hotels are often staffed by uniformed Tourist Police - station conspicuously armed guards at the main lobby and have X-ray screening machines like those at airports. Alternate exits and entrances are often blocked off. In Mumbai, the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, one of the hotels attacked in 2008, was flanked outside by an armored car, paddywagon and concrete street barriers when I stayed there in 2009, almost exactly a year after the attack.

Not every hotel wants to go to those lengths, but every hotel has to have a flexible and constantly updated emergency plan, just in case. Without question, organized violence against travelers makes traveling less pleasant and at times downright dangerous. So, welcome to Kabul, and welcome to the new normal. It will be like this for the foreseeable future.