Another metric might be whether and how much the hotel is profiting in addition to what it generates for the charity. If it’s just an expensive event, with the hotel contributing part of the cost of staging it, then they are well within what counts as charitable activity in many parts of the world. Even if they are making a profit, as credit card companies do on their alumni affinity cards and the like, they may still be fulfilling a reasonable charitable purpose. But then we would count their part in the event as a business rather a charitable undertaking.

In the US there are tax laws that prevent donors, the would be guests at this dinner, from disproportionately serving their own interests. They get to count only the portion of the fare that is in excess of the fair market value of the meal as a donation against their tax liabilities. So if it’s a $10,000 fare for a $3,000 dinner, all of the $3,000 counts as perfidious expense, none of it as donation. However, all of the $7,000 is a potential deduction, the tax code’s way of saying worthy.

My guess is that the villagers are not offended at the waste of wealth and will welcome a well executed water project, if such is the outcome. Whether the hotel deserves our respect for its business savvy or for its charitable heart or not at all remains to be clarified. The donors, prestige seeks louts that they may be, may well have done a good thing.

A taste of poverty for the rich: Thai hotel stirs controversy over lavish feast for charity (4/7/08)

By Jocelyn Gecker, Associated Press Writer

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP, 4/7/08) — A Bangkok luxury hotel treated its top clientele to a tour of a poverty-stricken Thai village on Saturday before dazzling them with a lavish feast, ignoring outrage over the event that prompted a boycott by elite chefs around the world.

Controversy has surrounded the event, which critics characterize as a tasteless publicity stunt and organizers call a novel approach to helping the needy.

The posh hotel hosting the event, the lebua, is offering a 10-course meal — for free. The catch was that the guests — 35 bankers and corporate executives from the U.S., Europe and Asia — were required to spend the afternoon visiting a village in one of the poorest parts of Thailand.

“Who better to give poor people what they need than rich businessmen?” said Deepak Ohri, the hotel’s chief executive, who puts the hotel’s cost for the dinner and trip at $300,000.

Early Saturday, the hotel jetted its well-heeled group to Ban Tatit village, a ramshackle community of wooden shacks in northeastern Thailand that is home to 600 residents. The village once raised hundreds of elephants but there are now only five of the giant gray beasts, villagers said.

Organizers said they hoped the visit would inspire their wealthy customers to act charitably.

Participants disputed the controversy surrounding the event as misguided.

“How would I ever have known these people needed help?” said Javed Malik, an airline executive based in Hong Kong. “I might not help the elephants but I’d like to help those children,” he said, pointing to a group of smiling girls in dirty T-shirts.

The controversy appears to have delighted organizers, who credit the resulting publicity with drawing nearly $50,000 in advance donations. Contributions will be managed by a foundation the hotel is creating with its own donation of $96,000 to bring clean drinking water and other basic infrastructure to the village, Ohri said.

The executives toured the village’s broken water filtration system, its dilapidated schoolhouse and parched farm land, which is too dry to grow crops for themselves or the elephants.

The sights of poverty did not appear to dent anybody’s appetite.

“Would they have gotten everyone here together if it hadn’t been for the 10-course dinner afterward?” said Shanghai-based businessman Peter Foster.

The 10-course meal awaiting the group back in Bangkok included a seafood risotto, scallops with truffles, roasted rack of lamb, neck of Iberico pig — each to be washed down with a different fine Burgundy or Bordeaux.

An outcry in the French media prompted three of France’s top chefs to bow out of the feast last month after initially agreeing to cook it.

“You can’t see people living in misery and then go back to Bangkok to eat foie gras and truffles,” said Paris chef Alain Soliveres, one of the three who opted out.

The bad publicity spooked 20 other top-ranked chefs in France, Germany and Japan, who feared that taking part in the event would harm their reputations, Ohri said.

Despite the boycott, four chefs from top-rated restaurants in Europe agreed to cook the meal.

Three of them will walk away with $8,000 each for the night’s work: Christian Lohse from Fishers Fritz in Berlin, Henk Savelberg of the Restaurant Hotel Savelberg in The Netherlands and Atul Kochhar of London’s Benares.

Belgian chef Yves Mattagne, whose Sea Grill in Brussels has two coveted Michelin stars, said he was donating his earnings to the village of Ban Tatit.

“This is to help people,” Mattagne said, while chopping chives for a red tuna with ginger entree. “For me, the most important thing is the charity.”

Why are there no articles about what actually happened and how lebua plans to help these people?

Please see the first news as covered by AP.
I am really appalled at how misquotes by the Press, especially AFP is trying to marr the entire event. If you’ve been a part of the event, you would know how few cynical journalists are making a mockery of a sincere effort. Even Asia Pacific News, which roger has rightly quoted, has got its facts wrong. The 1million baht dinner that is mentioned was held last year and was not a part of emotional tourism

In this profiteering corporate jungle, I rarely find any company braving the fussilade of inaccurate, at times deriding media coverage
and yet remaining steadfast to achieve greater good. A fund of 4.5 million baht is not built up through hypocrisy. Let’s for once appreciate an earnest effort.

The very purpose for the trip was to let people understand and feel the cause to which their money would be contributed. The profile of people were top bankers, industrialists, hospital owners..and the idea was to help them see and understand how they can change the face of the village even without direct donations. The hotel never told me that you have to contribute to Lebua’s fund, they were free to do so in any way they wanted.

Personally I feel that the objective is a noble one, and yes when talking about the dinner William got it right, the cost for the entire event for all the guests together was $300,000 and more importantly the dinner was there to help people understand how fortunate they were to enjoy the best in life. This indeed is a sublte prod to one’s conscience to share a part of their fortune with the underprivileged.