"Beyond the new products and resources found on the show floor, education will further enhance the BDNY experience by offering valuable industry insight," said Michael Schneider, publisher of hospitality brands for ST Media Group. "Timely topics addressed by notable speakers will foster professional development and make this a seminar program not to be missed."
Thompson Hotels CEO and co-owner Stephen Brandman will be CEO, while co-owner Jason Pomeranc will share chairman duties with John Pritzker, whose private equity firm Geolo Capital acquired a majority stake in Joie de Vivre last year and brings a $150 million fund dedicated to hotel acquisitions and co-investments to the partnership. We spoke with Pomeranc about Thompson’s next step.
Trust Hospitality, a professional hotel management company and operator of boutique hotels worldwide under its Desires Hotels collection, has received special recognition from AAA for its two Midwest hotels, The Iron Horse Hotel in Milwaukee and the Moonrise Hotel in St. Louis, where they both received AAA's prestigious Four Diamond designation.
Formerly the Se Hotel, the new Hotel Palomar San Diego boutique boasts 183 guestrooms, including 17 skyline suites and 20 luxury flats, featuring elegant textures, contemporary design and state of the art amenities. The hotel also offers a lavish roof deck lounge and infinity-edged pool, a spa and in-room spa services, a dramatic 19-foot floor-to-ceiling ballroom and more than 20,000 square feet of event space decorated with art from a wide array of San Diego artists.
Ian Schrager, whose indefatigable pursuit of buzz over the last 30 years has produced memorable hotels like the Royalton and the Gramercy Park in New York, the Mondrian in Los Angeles and the Delano in Miami Beach, is about to open his first new project as an independent hotelier since the 2008 financial crash.
"As W Hotels continues to expand globally, we have a great opportunity to provide a platform for supporting and showcasing what's new and next in fashion," said Eva Ziegler, Global Brand Leader, W Hotels Worldwide and Le Méridien. "We are taking the W Hotels Fashion Next program global for the first time, which now allows us to share our point of view on fashion with W guests and locals around the world."
Marriott International Inc. early Sunday morning lost control of a Honolulu hotel that was part of Edition, a trendy new hotel brand the company is trying to jump-start.
In a dramatic move, the owners of the Waikiki Edition in Hawaii said Sunday that in the early morning hours they installed new management and changed the signs and locks on the hotel to reflect a new name, the Modern Honolulu. The changes were made in spite of a contract that allows Marriott to run the hotel as an Edition for 30 years.
Boutique hotelier Vikram Chatwal talks about living a more focused life, his favorite haunts and why he decided to open a new hotel in South Beach. Chatwal was in town last month for the grand opening of Dream South Beach at 1111 Collins Ave., a 108-room hotel made up of the former Palmer House and Tudor Hotel, the historic buildings connected by a central courtyard.
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.
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.
Veteran boutique hotelier Ian Schrager appears to be defying the "slick and trendy" style with his newest hotel venture. He's going for a retro approach, starting with a simple, unassuming name - "PUBLIC." Based on the rather generic name, it doesn't sound like you'll find red-velvet roped bar entries, but we'll see.
The American hotelier talks to The Wall Street Journal Europe about how he starts his weekend. Ian Schrager is often credited with creating the concept of the boutique hotel, having launched the Morgan's Hotel Group in 1984. But he first shot to fame opening the now legendary Studio 54 in New York in the 1970s.
The International Hotel, Motel + Restaurant Show® (IHMRS) invites hospitality designers from around the world to submit entries for the 31st annual Gold Key Awards for Excellence in Hospitality Design, the premier interior design competition for the industry. The coveted Awards are presented in eight categories – Best Hotel Design, Guest Room, Lobby/Reception Area, Lounge/Bar, Restaurants/Casual Dining, Restaurants/Fine Dining, Spa and Suite. Entries must be submitted by July 1, 2011.
Hotel experts have all sorts of definitions for boutique hotels. “Not cookie cutter,” one said. “Chic,” said another. “100 rooms or less,” said a third. But whatever the definition, big hotel chains and smaller boutique brands are planning to open many more of them in cities across the United States and overseas over the next few years.
The Boutique & Lifestyle Lodging Association, (BLLA, www.blla.org), a leading hospitality industry association dedicated to uniting the world's boutique and lifestyle properties and the suppliers that sustain them,announced the next steps for developing a universal standard and criteria for defining boutique and lifestyle lodgings. Initiated by BLLA's Founder and hospitality industry veteran Frances Kiradjian, the research project has begun and includes prominent international hospitality universities as well as industry thought-leaders, all of whom have been invited by BLLA and the research team to participate.
"From cutting edge technology to the décor in its public areas and accommodations, all elements of the hotel are cultivated with every imaginable approach to luxury and convenience in mind."
Fabric Innovations, a leading supplier of bedding, drapery and custom fabrics to the hospitality industry, recently revealed the offering of their new Taffeta Lover Blackout Collection, a chic approach to fulfilling an everyday need. The collection's sheer elegance and superior versatility is taking the hospitality design industry by storm. Top hotels and resorts across the country have already begun to embrace this taffeta-faced blackout fabric as the new standard of light-blocking in drapery design.
The Boutique & Lifestyle Lodging Association (BLLA) To Host A First-ever Conference On Food Trends Specifically For The Boutique Hospitality Sector. Renowned Food Consultants, Chefs And Food Writers And Editors To Be Featured As Speakers At The Conference To Be Held On January 14 In San Francisco At The Hotel Monaco.
Ian Schrager’s newest venture—two new hotel brands under his new private hotel company, Schrager Hotels—comes as a direct result of his optimism for the hospitality industry during the next five years. In an interview today, Schrager said he’s been through three bad cycles and that the market always recovers to a higher level than its previous peak. He’s banking on consumers’ confidence and their willingness to travel as a driver to add more supply in the marketplace.
"We call it 'the invisible store,' " said Luke Ives Pontifell, founder of Thornwillow Press, the bespoke stationer now in bed, figuratively, with the St. Regis Hotel in New York. Mr. Ives Pontifell was referring to the new stand-alone Thornwillow at the St. Regis shop, a wainscotted drawing room showcasing the company's engraved wares and leather-bound books. "There's no cash register, no counter—it's more like being inside someone's home."