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Milana Knowles has been appointed as Spa Director at Mandarin Oriental

Milana has an extensive, diverse and impressive background with a range of spa’s where she has served, including most recently SpaFinder Inc in New York, Avon located in the Trump Tower, The GreenHouse in New York, and Equinox in New York. She began her career in the Spa industry as Vice President of Business Development with the GreenHouse in New York, followed by various spa and managerial roles with the company. Milana is a native of Croatia and is fluent in Italian & Croatian. In her new role, she will oversee all aspects of Mandarin Oriental, New York’s Spa.

David Chase has been appointed as General Manager at The New York Palace

Prior to this, Chase was hired as the pre-opening general manager of Trump SoHo New York in 2008 and oversaw the hotel's opening in April of 2010. It quickly earned a place on Travel + Leisure's 2011 Best New Hotels List, and Conde Nast Traveler's 2011 Hot List for The Spa at Trump. Chase joined Trump SoHo New York from The Ritz-Carlton New York, Battery Park, where he served as hotel manager. He joined the AAA Five-Diamond property as area director of catering and conference services from pre-opening in 2001. His leadership there ultimately resulted in a number of corporate achievements and awards, including Institutional Investor Magazine's #1 Best Business Hotel in the World, Condé Nast Traveler's Gold List - World's Best Places to Stay, Zagat Guide to Best Hotels in the United States, and ELLE magazine's Best of the Best Spa Destinations. Over his 20-year career working with global luxury brands, Chase has developed a strong background in high-end hotel catering and conference services, food and beverage operations, financial management, and team building. He has also held leadership positions at The St. Regis New York, The Ritz-Carlton, Boston, and The Ritz-Carlton, San Francisco. Chase received a bachelor of science degree in marketing from Connecticut's Quinnipiac University, and lectures regularly on hospitality management at New York University's School of Continuing and Professional Studies. Chase, a native of Connecticut, currently resides in Long Island with his family.

The DSK Maid May Have Ruined It For Housekeepers Everywhere | hotelchatter.com

In a stunning turn of events late last week, it was revealed that the housekeeper at the Sofitel New York who was allegedly assaulted by IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn was not such an innocent victim after all.

The NY Post is claiming that investigators discovered that she had been turning tricks at the hotel with other guests, which lends more credence to DSK's defense that the sex was consensual. She even reportedly resumed her "special trade" at a Brooklyn hotel where the Manhattan District Attorney's office had housed her while the investigation into DSK was carried out.

Julian Alden has been appointed as Director of Sales at The Pierre, A Taj Hotel

For 10 years, Alden held increasingly demanding positions at The St. Regis Hotel. As Director of International Sales for eight years, he was responsible for dramatic growth of transient and group business as well as successful sales and marketing initiatives in Europe, the Middle East and Latin America, and was recognized year after year as a top performer for consistently exceeding his sales goals by significant margins. In 2009, he was promoted to Associate Director of Sales, handling strategic planning for pricing and market segmentation while also far exceeding his revenue goals and propelling the hotel into a more prominent competitive ranking in the marketplace. A native of Malta, Alden attended the island republic’s Institute of Tourism Studies – St. George’s Bay, St. Julian’s, where he received a Diploma in Hotel Management awarded with Distinction and was recognized with the “Management Student of the Year” by the Malta Hotel and Restaurant Association.

The iPod of hotels: New York's tiny Yotel | smh.com.au

Forget the bellhop. Meet the luggage robot. It's the first of several high-tech, sleek amenities guests encounter at the Yotel, a new US hotel that aims to provide a trendy stay at an affordable price. Purple lighting, throbbing music in the elevators and futon-like lounges that transform to lie-flat beds at the touch of a button help set the mood. Or maybe they just distract you from the tiny size of the rooms. At 16 square metres, perhaps "room" is too generous of a term. Yotel, in New York, prefers to call them cabins.

Lisa Iaquez has been appointed as Director of Corporate and Group Sales – The Americas at Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces

Iaquez, based in New York, is responsible for corporate transient sales and group sales in the Eastern US. She brings more than a decade of corporate transient and group sales to her new role with Taj Hotels. Most recently, she was Global Director of Corporate Sales with Jumeirah Hotels, where she represented 11 luxury hotels. Previously, she spent five years as Director of Corporate Sales with New York’s SoHo Grand and Tribeca Grand hotels, and two years as pre-opening Group Sales Manager with Hilton Times Square. Her additional experience includes conference sales planning for the Paramount Hotel, Merrill Lynch and Estee Lauder. A graduate of SUNY New York with a degree in marketing, Iaquez also holds certification from Master Connections sales training and Hilton Sales College. She is a member of British American Business, Hedge Fund Association, NYCBTA NY chapter and ACTE, and supports the Sankara Eye Foundation, the Sikh Arts Foundation and UNICEF world water projects.

IHCL

New York, New York, United States

Frances Maxwell has been appointed as Director of Corporate, Group and Incentive Sales – The Americas at Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces

Maxwell, based in Chicago, is responsible for group and corporate segments with a specialty in incentive and insurance sales. With 15 years of experience in hospitality and business-to-business sales, she joined Taj Hotels from her position as Director of Regional Accounts, Midwest, for Wynn and Encore Las Vegas. Her prior experience includes serving as Business Development Director with BI, a Minneapolis-based business improvement company, where she advised C-level clients and sold reward, recognition, marketing and other programs. She also held Corporate Sales Manager positions with Pheasant Run Resort & Spa and Wyndham Hotels in Illinois, was a wedding planner for Radisson Lisle, Lisle, IL and was Director of Food & Beverage for the Drake Hotel in Oakbrook, IL. Maxwell is a member of Meeting Planners International, where she is also on the board of directors for the organization’s Chicago Area Chapter, and HSMAI. She has a degree in Psychology from Illinois State University.

IHCL

New York, New York, United States

Yotel Review – New York Hotels Times Square | bloginity.com

Something big lands in Manhattan today. Imagine the offspring of a Japanese capsule hotel, a transatlantic first class cabin, a rocking meatpacking district club and you may get close to the idea behind Yotel. Bringing technolicious $150 hotel rooms to Midtown Manhattan (or MiMa as the acronym proclaims), Brit Simon Woodroffe aims to shake up our perception of the hotel experience the way Ian Schrager, “Hip Boutique Hotels” and the W crowd did a decade ago. In fact, sit on New York’s largest terrace and you can scoff at the big purple W Times Square logo, knowing that you are enjoying the standard which others now have to attain.

Adele Gutman Milne has been named Sales & Marketing Executive of the Year at HSMAI Greater New York Chapter

Adele Gutman Milne, Vice President of Sales & Marketing for HKHotels, was named the "Sales & Marketing Executive of the Year" by the HSMAI Greater New York chapter during its 18th Annual Frank W. Berkman Tourism Achievement Award Black Tie Gala Dinner Dance June 8th. Ms. Gutman was selected as a result of her commitment to the hospitality industry, career accomplishments, and industry service. In fact just last year, all four of the HKHotels properties in New York were ranked in the top four in New York City by the members of TripAdvisor — an achievement which Ms. Gutman and everyone at HKHotels has been working toward for over six years. As a result, the hotels have enjoyed consistently high occupancy throughout the year and Ms. Gutman was a featured speaker at TripAdvisor's Master Class held in New York last year.