External Articles

External Article

March 27, 2012

Stephen Alden, CEO of Maybourne Hotel Group: Grand hotels have to stay true to the heritage | livemint.com

Mumbai: Stephen Alden tells an anecdote related to one of the hotels he administers. The chief executive officer of the Maybourne Hotel Group— which operates three of London’s most iconic hotels, the Claridges, the Connaught and the Berkeley—says the Claridges is often considered an extension of the Buckingham Palace. Therefore, not surprisingly, there was once a call to the hotel by someone who wanted to speak to the king. The hotel staff, who answered the call, asked which one. “There were three kings staying at the Claridges then,” explained Alden, while speaking at the Mint Luxury Conference at the Taj Land’s End Hotel in Mumbai on Friday, as a way of reiterating the significance of the property.

Maybourne Hotel Group

External Article Markets & Performance

March 16, 2012

London hotels set for Olympics price spike | reuters.com

David Roche, president of Hotels.com which carried out the survey, told Reuters he would not be surprised if prices were pushed even higher, to a trebling of 2011 prices. "Hoteliers like to hold back inventory and drip-feed it in, testing price elasticity. It remains to be seen what fraction of inventory is available," he said. This can be a gamble -- at last year's royal wedding, says Roche, hotels got "caught red-handed" and ended up with lower occupancy.

reuters.com

March 15, 2012

Airport NabCabs Pod “Hotels” in Munich Airport | happyhotelier.com

In Munich airports they have installed a couple of NapCabs. Minimal charge € 30 per stay of 3 hours. A bit less classy than the Sleepbox 01 of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport. Napcabs are actually prefabricated boxes at the Munich Airport Terminal which has simple provisions like a bed and a work desk which you can rent for as short as 3 hours or for as long as 12 hours. You basically purchase some time via a touch screen using your credit card. The concept is quite familiar if you know Day Stay and Yotel capsule rooms but without the other person and the restroom.

Munich, Germany

March 12, 2012

London hotels case heads for High Court | ft.com

A high profile legal battle between the publicity shy Barclay brothers and Irish property magnate Patrick McKillen for control of a company that owns some of London’s most exclusive hotels is set to reach the High Court later this month. Mr McKillen, who is one of Ireland’s most prominent developers and co-owns Dublin’s Clarence Hotel with rock group U2’s Bono and The Edge, is suing the Barclay brothers, owners of the Ritz hotel and Telegraph newspaper group.

ft.com

External Article Human Resources

March 1, 2012

UK: Hotel chain 'can't find UK staff' as foreign workers take most jobs |

Just 40pc of the group’s 2,300 jobs in the UK are held by British nationals, according to the company’s people director, Mike Williams. The rest are largely given to Eastern Europeans from Latvia, Slovakia and Poland, he says. The admission is set to inflame tension over immigration , which this week intensified when official figures showed employers circumnavigating the annual immigration cap by transferring thousands of non-EU workers from their overseas offices to Britain.

telegraph.co.uk

February 24, 2012

London 2012: hotels persist with Olympian price hikes | telegraph.co.uk

Visitors to London during this summer’s Olympic Games can expect to be charged up to three times the normal rate for accommodation, despite a sharp increase in the number of hotel rooms available.

telegraph.co.uk

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February 17, 2012

Top 10 new London hotels in 2012 | londonhotelsinsight.com

To say that 2012 is a big year for London is perhaps an understatement. The Olympic Games are of course at the forefront of many people’s minds, but that’s not the only event which will make 2012 a special vintage for the UK capital. The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations will bring an influx of extra visitors for the extended bank holiday weekend at the start of June and then of course there are the “usual suspects”…Wimbledon, the London Marathon, RHS Chelsea Flower Show – the list could go on and on.

February 13, 2012

Hotels Prices During Sochi Olympics to Be Capped at $160 to $240 | themoscowtimes.com

During the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi a three-star hotel room will cost $160 per night and a four-star room $240 per night, organizing committee president Dmitry Chernyshenko said Sunday, RIA-Novosti reported. He said these are below-market prices but that investors are "meeting [the government] halfway."

The Moscow Times

Sochi, Russian Federation

February 7, 2012

Gold standards for hospitality – the 19th Master Innholders' Annual General Managers' Conference | caterersearch.com

In London's Olympic year, the theme of the Master Innholders' 19th Annual General Managers' Conference, held at the London Hilton on Park Lane, was Going for Gold. Janet Harmer finds out what makes winners and losers in business. With speakers including former Olympians, Sebastian Coe and judo champion Karen Roberts - as well as a host of leading hospitality personalities - the 450 delegates at the Master Innholders' 19th Annual General Managers' Conference were inspired in ways and means of taking their businesses to world-beating level.

January 27, 2012

Berlin’s Waldorf to Open as Hotel-Building Boom Curbs Rates | businessweek.com

Hotel Mani, a new 63-room boutique hotel on Berlin’s Rosenthaler Platz, is bustling with suitcase- pulling travelers arriving for Fashion Week. It’s the second hotel Ariel Schiff has built in the trendy Mitte district, and four more are in the pipeline. “We’re being offered new sites every week,” Schiff, a 46- year-old entrepreneur who was born in the city, said in an interview last week in the hotel lobby. “There are no free spots in Paris, London or Rome.”

Berlin, Germany

External Article Finance

January 23, 2012

NH Hoteles seeks debt refinancing | reuters.com

Spanish hotel group NH Hoteles said on Thursday it asked creditor banks to back a near-term debt refinancing ahead of a 195 million euro ($249.92 million) payment on a syndicated loan due in a month's time. The group, which operates some 175 hotels at home and more than 225 abroad, said it hoped banks would soon agree to a five-year refinancing of the 650 million euro loan, which was taken out in 2007.

reuters.com

Spain

External Article Design & Architecture

December 13, 2011

Thomas Cook to sell hotel-golf unit to Iberostar | marketwatch.com

Thomas Cook Group PLC , the travel group, Tuesday said it has reached agreement to sell its interest in Hoteles Y Clubs De Vacaciones, a hotels and golf club group, to IBEROSTAR Hoteles y Apartamentos S.L. (IBS), the hotel division of Grupo IBEROSTAR, for EUR72.2 million in cash. Thomas Cook will continue to benefit from access to HCV's hotel portfolio through a separate commercial arrangement that has been agreed with IBS.

Iberostar Hoteles

Spain

December 1, 2011

London boutique hotels round-up Nov. 2011 | londonhotelsinsight.com

As we move closer to Christmas and the start of London’s big Olympics year, there are many new developments in the UK capital’s boutique sector – things to look forward to and offers to check out. We summarise what’s hot in the London boutique hotel scene below in our monthly round-up. The five-star Egerton House Hotel plans to make guests feel even more at home this Christmas with complimentary refreshments in the drawing room.

November 28, 2011

London hotel free WiFi touchdown is launched! | londonhotelsinsight.com

This blog has been campaigning intensely for free WiFi at hotels for quite a while. We’ve been supported by a network of leading travel bloggers and tweeters across the world including the likes of Velvet Escape, Top Travel Content Europe, Elliott.org, Travel Rants and many others. The hostility to hotel WiFi charges across the blogosphere is almost universal and yet many hoteliers choose to ignore it, while hypocritically pretending they’re “in” on Twitter and Facebook. They’re acting like embarassing dads – inappropriately dressed and showing off dated moves in a club they don’t belong in. Because charging guests extra for WiFi at expensive hotels goes against the whole grain of how people live today.

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November 21, 2011

Bye-Bye to the B&B | independent.co.uk

The expansion of budget hotel chains and the emergence of travellers with high standards but tight budgets, are forcing the old-fashioned, low-grade guest house out of business. More than 1,500 B&Bs with fewer than three stars have closed in England since 2007, a cut of more than a third. In Scotland, one- and two-star B&Bs are down by 63 per cent, while the number of budget hotels is up 80 per cent. A third of guesthouses and B&Bs in the UK report having fewer guests in last month's school half-term than in 2010.

November 21, 2011

Sir Rocco Forte: 'I still haven't got to Paris...and I want to try New York' | independent.co.uk

He lost one empire to Granada, but now hotel magnate Rocco is well on the way to building another. Brown's Hotel in Mayfair, where Rudyard Kipling wrote The Jungle Book, to see the current owner Sir Rocco Forte. The sleek interior is a very different setting to the last time I interviewed him, in January 1995 on the occasion of his 50th birthday. He had just been knighted and had not long taken full control of the family business.

independent.co.uk

External Article General Management

November 10, 2011

Hotels risk £20,000 fine for selling Olympic tickets | caterersearch.com

Hotels could potentially face fines of up to £20,000 if they are found guilty of selling tickets to events at the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympic Games. Police officers from Operation Podium - a dedicated unit set up by the Metropolitan Police to tackle ticket touts and Olympic related fraud - has been liaising closely with hotels throughout London to ensure they are fully aware of the guidelines relating to the sale of tickets.

caterersearch.com

External Article

October 28, 2011

How newly-built hotels can set new standards | londonhotelsinsight.com

About a month ago I visited the lovely new Radisson Edwardian Guildford hotel on the day before it opened. Last week I also met the CEO of Tune Hotels, Mr Mark Lankester, who told me about the budget group’s second cheap London hotel which will shortly open in Liverpool Street. Despite the fact that each of these hotels operates in different market segments – I was struck by the advantages of being able to construct a new hotel virtually from scratch (or at least being able to convert a modern building), versus the renovation of a legacy hotel in an old building.

External Article

October 20, 2011

Meet Frank Laino, concierge at The Stafford, London | londonhotelsinsight.com

I recently interviewed Frank Laino, who is the Concierge at The Stafford London. He’s been in the hotel business for 25 years, the last 20 as a concierge, though he looks far too young for his CV (I’ll get round to just how he manages this later in this post). He says of The Stafford, “We have a higher percentage of guests who use the concierge than many other hotels I’ve been associated with.” That’s partly because the luxury 5 star hotel has a high number of repeat customers, who use the concierge desk whenever they stay for advice on theatre, dining, sightseeing, or just directions.