Travellers should boycott hotels that charge for WiFi connection, according to the editor of technology bible Wired UK. Speaking at Abta Travel Convention in Palma, David Rowan expressed his dismay at being charged €18 for 24 hours connection at his hotel, only to find the service was too slow.
The new Radisson Edwardian Guildford has now been open for exactly one week. I was lucky enough to get an exclusive sneak peek inside the hotel one day before it officially opened on September 29th when I also got to meet some of its friendly staff. I discovered a stylish new 4 star hotel with a sense of history, great design and a passion for good food. It was the first time I’d witnessed the birth of a new hotel. Builders put finishing touches to the public areas while cleaners added a bit of spit and polish. Staff scurried around making last-minute preparations and I even saw some of them doing a final test of the head chef’s canapes and the head barman’s cocktails. There was real excitement in the air. I’d love to check up on the hotel 6 months, 1 year and even 2 years from now.
ROYAL BANK of Scotland is set to seize control of Jarvis Hotels, the troubled hotel operator, as the lender looks to claw back £130 million (€151 million) of debt. The bank, which has teamed up with private equity group PatronCapital, is preparing to push Jarvis through a pre-pack administration that would allow it to acquire 20 hotels the group owns under freehold.
By strange coincidence, it seems that 2011 is the year of the Big Birthday for London’s hotels. Join in the party at these favourites… | Happy 20th to The Halkin... This month marks the 20th birthday of The Halkin and it’s celebrating with a series of events showcasing the ‘Home From Home’ ethic that it has always been proud of. Until 30th November, you can enjoy the pop-up ‘Culture Lounge’ in The Halkin’s bar showcasing the most iconic coffee table books from art publisher ASSOULINE. It’s open both to guests and non-residents. Literary events with the authors are also planned.
Based on the success of the newly created Paris-Lausanne Society last year in Paris, Prof. Michel Rochat, Director General at Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne, has signed the Foundation Chart of the London-Lausanne Society together with His Excellency, Mr. Anton Thalmann, Swiss Ambassador to UK, on the 15 September 2011 at the Swiss Embassy in London. The London-Lausanne Society shall be a platform to promote new partnerships and collaborations between different key stakeholders such as entrepreneurs, the industry to Universities and Business School together with the Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne.
Mint Hotels is to be rebranded as one of the Hilton Worldwide brands following the acquisition of the company by the private equity Blackstone Group for a reported £600m. It is believed that the DoubleTree by Hilton and the Hilton Garden Inn brands are the most likely names to be attached to the eight Mint hotels - seven in the UK and one in Amsterdam. The Blackstone Group is the owner of Hilton Worldwide.
We’ve recently been naming and shaming 5 star London hotels with expensive WiFi charges – a policy we believe can never be justified. To further challenge these hotels, we’ve identified four significantly cheaper hotels in the 4 star category which outperform their more expensive 5 star competitors by offering free WiFi to their guests. What’s more, the following free WiFi London hotels are also all currently in the top 20 on TripAdvisor – so they give you great value for money in other ways too:
The problem with London hotels in the past wasn’t always that the food was unexciting; quite a few hotels had extremely good chefs working for them. No, the problem was that the ambience was unexciting – ancient waiters in dinner jackets, rooms that hadn’t been redecorated since the Duke of Wellington’s day and a rather starchy feel. That’s all changed today and so has the way many hotels see their food service. Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, for instance, is really a Heston Blumenthal restaurant which just happens to sit within the Mandarin Oriental hotel – rather than being the hotel’s dining room.
The latest eagerly-anticipated hotel offering from The Dorchester Collection, 45 Park Lane, opened last week. And with room rates starting from £395 we were pleased to see that WiFi is free throughout the hotel. However we were not so pleased to discover that the original Dorchester Hotel in London - a 5 star hotel with similarly lofty room rates – is charging a hefty £19.50 per 24 hours of WiFi. What’s more, if you want to log on quickly for 10 minutes there is no option for a shorter cheaper tariff - you’ll still need to pay the full £19.50. It sounds like a big rip-off to us. What a pity when this grand old hotel is celebrating its 80th anniversary in style.
The German government is trying once again to sell its famous five-star hotel, but market participants say the property, on a mountainside overlooking the former West German capital of Bonn, will be a hard sell. The Grandhotel Petersberg, the government's former guesthouse, first went on the market—with no success—shortly before a reunified Germany moved its capital back to Berlin.
The budget hotel chain yesterday commenced the programme with 33 apprentices. The scheme titled JuMP (Junior Management Programme) is a fast track route into management and provides A-level students (18+) with a real alternative to going to university. On this programme school leavers can continue their education, obtain work experience, receive a salary and become a manager by the age of 21. JuMP has been developed to support Travelodge's aggressive growth strategy. In addition, to supporting the Government's appeal for British companies to generate more high value apprenticeship placements.
If our post on London’s four most expensive hotel rooms whetted your appetite for the high life, you’ll be pleased to know that you can live the lifestyle without bearing those eye-watering prices. Whilst these suites certainly aren’t cheap, they do offer super value given the “wow” factor they offer, proving you can splash out without breaking the bank. Here is our top 5 “value without compromising luxury” rundown.
French catering group Sodexo has sealed a deal to buy gourmet caterer Lenotre from hotel group Accor for over 70 million euros ($99.4 million), the website of French daily Les Echos said on Thursday. Accor declined to comment while Sodexo could not be immediately reached for comment.
How gingerly should travel managers and business travellers approach London’s hotels during next summer’s Olympic Games? The UK capital at the end of July and the beginning of August 2012 is going to be a busier place than normal in a city where hotel occupancy rates of 90 percent are common in summer. No matter how many locals flee the capital for calmer climes (Oxford Economics forecasts that the UK will lose £91 million from Londoners heading overseas due to overcrowding fears), hundreds of thousands of Olympics ticket-holders and ticketless hangers-on are expected in town. They’ll all need somewhere to stay.
Michael O'Leary said a £1 per night tax on rooms could recoup a significant proportion of what is now raised by APD, while cutting costs for British holidaymakers and encouraging more foreign travellers to visit Britain.
Barbie was never exactly slumming it. From the Dream House to the Corvette, to the Mattel-inspired designer clothes, shoes, jewelry and handbags, Barbie has it all. Even after 50 years, Barbie still has a hot guy who, despite her cute friends and brief stint with the The Rockers, has remained completely devoted to her (although some of us still have our suspicions of Ken, but that's not the point). And as if that wasn't enough, now Barbie has her own suite at the Hotel Plaza Athenee in Paris.
France granted a few top hotels the right to call themselves a "palace" on Thursday, a label which distinguishes them from rivals and is designed to boost the country's profile as a luxury destination. The eight winners of the accolade include Paris hotels Meurice and Plaza-Athenee, both owned by the Sultan of Brunei, as well as the Bristol hotel, owned by Germany's Oetker family.
The word “luxury” is bandied about so freely these days that it has lost much of its value. Nowhere is this more true than with hotels. Tired of the hype? This post takes a guest-centric view on luxury using TripAdvisor. In a previous article we criticised the use of misleading star ratings. Today we take aim at the term “luxury”, especially as applied to “boutique hotels” (a problematic term in itself). And particularly hotels that go for the double whammy by calling themselves “luxury boutique hotels”.
London hotel revenue per booking is to increase by nearly 400% for the Royal Wedding weekend, according to technology provider Pegasus Solutions.
In a special edition of The Pegasus View produced on the eve of the nuptials, the average revenue per booking is shown to rise by as much as 383.7% on 30 April compared with the same day in 2010, 215.1% on the preceding weekend and 210.9% for the post-wedding weekend.
Three major hotel groups are being investigated by the Office of Fair Trading over claims they fixed prices. The Radisson, Thistle and Starwood chains – which run hotels all over the world – are accused of secretly setting room rates with online travel agents and ordering them not to offer discounts. It means holidaymakers may have had to pay hundreds of pounds more than they should have.
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