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Tags: Gossip Girls Hotels / Hotel Cocktails / Hotel Restaurants / Manhattan Hotels / → All Tags
The Empire Hotel Celebrates Chuck Bass With Gossip Girl Cocktails
If you've been paying attention in the slightest to this most recent season of Gossip Girl, then you'll have noticed how New York's Empire Hotel has become one of the characters, after it was bought by Chuck Bass. Now that the hotel is making appearances on TV, the real life property believes it should embrace the connection by debuting "Gossip Girl cocktails."
Concocted by the Empire's cocktail consultant Somer Perez, there are drinks for each Gossip Girl main character (even the dudes!). You can find them being served in the hotel's Lobby Bar, and each cocktail is $15. There's even an "XOXO" cocktail, with secret ingredients they'll never tell.
After the jump, the rest of the character cocktails...
Tags: Holiday Hotels / San Diego Hotels / Hotel Deals / → All Tags
Se San Diego Offers a Naughty Holiday Package for a Nice Price
The holidays are all about Santa, cookies, snow and all that cheery goodwill toward others, but sometimes during the chaotic season you need to just get away with your honey for some coal-worthy behavior. All you bad boys and girls can head to the Se San Diego for its Naughty and Nice holiday package.
The one-night package allows you to get dirty in a Moroccan Rasul steam room. There you'll get the Se Spa's mud bath for two—the mud treatment is the spa's signature service, so it should be good. Then you and your sweetie can clean yourselves off with a soak in in a couple's tub.
Tags: Hotel Restaurants / Gordon Ramsay / West Hollywood Hotels / → All Tags
We Do Lunch at Gordon Ramsay's Boxwood Cafe at the London WeHo
Though famously cantankerous chef Gordon Ramsay hasn’t been seen around the kitchen at the The London West Hollywood lately, the restaurant there still bears his name. It’s also still pretty empty. Maybe all that will change with the recent opening of Ramsay’s new Boxwood Café in the front section of the restaurant space.
The new Boxwood is much more casual than Ramsay’s main restaurant, and is the second installment of this franchise for Ramsay. The first opened at the Berkeley Hotel in London in 2003. No white tablecloths and hushed teams of waiters clearing every stray crumb here. Instead, the service is friendly but not overbearing, and you can get every meal of the day with minimal fuss.
Tags: Ace Hotels / Movie Set Hotels / Hotel Secrets / Massify / → All Tags
Thousands of Stories Waiting To Be Told at New York's Ace Hotel
Behind shut doors and "Do Not Disturb" signs, hotel rooms hold stories to tell, and maybe a few secrets that shouldn't be repeated. Illicit liaisons, romantic fairy tales, or just plain goofball mishaps take place on any given day and can serve as cinematic fodder.
That's precisely the idea behind a new partnership between Massify, an online network of filmmakers, actors, and crew members, production company Killer Films, and New York's Ace Hotel.
"One hotel. Thousands of stories." reads the tag line to a recent contest sponsored by Massify, Killer, and Ace. They called on members to submit creative takes on hotel stories, as they launched a search for material to be turned into "very short, very funny vignettes":
Set at Ace Hotel's New York outpost, we'll develop a collection of original, concise narratives that clock in at under five minutes in length. Avoid relying heavily on sketch comedy and take advantage of this unique location to create character driven pieces that are intelligent, artful and comedic.
Tags: Miami Hotel Mambo / Loews Hotels / Hotel Renovations / Jonathan Tisch / → All Tags
The Loews Miami Beach Gets a Facelift To Keep Up With Hot New Neighbors
Image is everything in South Beach. And keeping up with the hot new things requires maintenance. So, with all those swank new hotels opening up further up the beach—the W South Beach, Gansevoort South, et. al.—one of Miami Beach’s stalwart oceanfront hotels, the Loews Miami Beach, is getting a facelift. A $50 million facelift at that.
The Loews has been a Miami Beach landmark for 10 years now, so it’s probably time for a bit of a spruce up. As one of the chain’s most visible properties, the hotel’s renovations were a priority for Loews Chairman and CEO, Jonathan Tisch. It was Tisch who asked for a more dramatic, open, and inviting lobby—so the overhaul includes the removal of a spiral staircase and the addition of a cascading water wall and a 20-foot long aquarium housing 57 fish. (The Gansevoort South’s lobby aquarium is 50 foot.)
The lobby will also gain an ice-cream shop and a boutique where guests can pick up items from Trina Turk and Lacoste.
Tags: HotelChatter Reviews / Boston Hotels / Morgan Group Hotels / → All Tags
Inside The Ames Hotel in Boston
When we think of Boston hotels, we tend to think of stately properties like the Taj and the Fairmont Copley Plaza—places befitting the city’s preppy-Yankee vibe. But with the Morgans Hotel Group now in town, that image is getting a shake up. The new Ames Hotel brings some serious sexiness to Boston’s financial district, and you know what? We kinda like it.
Location
The Ames is just around the corner from Faneuil Hall, amid banks and legal firms in the financial district. And since this is Boston, where blocks are small, it’s also a short walk to Boston Common. The New England Center for Homeless Veterans is next door, and South Station is less than 10 minutes away on foot. During our stay at least, there was some noisy construction going on just down the block. The kind that wakes you up before 8 a.m. on a Saturday.
Tags: NYT Reviews / Boston Hotels / Historic Hotels / → All Tags
NYT Deems the Copley Square Hotel 'Perfectly Nice'
After some incredulity over how many Boston hotels have Copley in their names, the New York Times this weekend reviewed the revamped, historic Copley Square Hotel. “Until this year, C-Square was a historic but faded enterprise: not the kind of place to earn cool points with your teenager on a college visiting tour,” the Times writes.
But after $18 million in renovations, the hotel is once again ready for prime time — just as, ahem, some of us have been telling you all year.
Highlights: The bathroom’s wall featured “unusual reading material: the poem ‘Paul Revere’s Ride,’ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in cursive.” “Super-speedy” room service that arrived in less than 10 minutes (though unfortunately, fairly “tasteless”). “If your kid is graduating from Boston University, if you want to shop the Back Bay or if you’re just exploring for a few days, it would be hard to find a more central and convenient spot,” writes the NYT.
Tags: Holiday Cocktails / Holiday Hotels / Colorado Hotels / Hotel Bars / → All Tags
The Holidays Are Here, Let's Celebrate With Some Hotel Cocktail Cheer
You know how much we love our cocktails here at HotelChatter. We'll find any reason to celebrate with a cocktail and fortunately for us (but not for our liver), hotels feel the same way. We've slurped down Summer Cocktails and Halloween Cocktails and now we're ready for the main event, Holiday Cocktails. We'll be taking a look at these concoctions all season long. If you have a suggestion, don't hold out on us. (Photos, recipes and prices are helpful too!)
The weather outside is (nearly) frightful, but indulging in a warm cocktail is always delightful. The Summit at The Broadmoor is getting into a bone-warming state of mind their Hot Holiday Cider. With good reason, too – overnight temperatures in Colorado Springs have been dipping into the teens. Brr....
Tags: Hotel Brunch / Hotel Breakfasts / Thompson Hotels / Hollywood Hotels / → All Tags
The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel Gets Jazzed About Brunch
The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel has a long and checkered history that well pre-dates today’s celebrity tantrums and “Super Sweet 16” parties. As a way of hearkening back to that golden-hued heyday, the hotel has started offering a new ”Jazz Brunch” on Sundays from 11:00am-3:00pm.
Since the special brunch starts at $18 per person, it’s actually a pretty good deal, especially for a Thompson Hotel, and especially considering that overnight parking will run you around $30, and the standard rate for a stay at the hotel starts at $225 a night.
If you’re anything like us, you’re naturally dubious about any meal that is accompanied by live music. What is this, the shoe department of Nordstrom’s? But we checked up on it, and here’s the scoop.
Tags: Desert Retreats / All-Inclusive Resorts / Winter Getaway Hotels / → All Tags
Desert Chic for Cheap(er) at Borrego Ranch Resort & Spa
Okay. There are officially 31 days until Winter Solstice (a.k.a. the shortest day of the year) and we’re already going a little stir-crazy with the decrease in daylight and the plunging temperatures. The solution? Head to warmer locales, like Borrego Springs in the Southern California desert.
Sure, springtime may steal this remote desert destination’s tourist thunder with its insanely beautiful display of wildflowers at Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, but wintertime temps that hover around 70 degrees are what call our name. Right. About. Now. Besides, is there anything more spectacular than seeing the moon come up over the desert? Nah, not really.
Tags: Hotel Renovations / Marriott Hotels / Washington DC Hotels / → All Tags
Washington Marriott at Metro Center Gets Spiffed Up
In recent years, Washington DC's downtown has transformed into a destination you might actually want to hang out. Or at the very least, those safe-clean-friendly claims being made about it a few years ago are now much closer to being true! Think haute restaurants, quality theatre and galleries, and much, much more foot traffic. (There's even a trendier name for the 'hood: Penn Quarter.)
For Marriott's part, they've responded to the neighborhood's spiffier image with an $11 million renovation at the Washington Marriott at Metro Center, just in time to celebrate the hotel's 15-year anniversary. The 459-room hotel recently unveiled its new contemporary look and feel, which includes 32-inch plasma screen TVs, tech-friendly plug-in panels, and check-in self-serve kiosks. In the lobby, "semi-private seating nooks" give comfortable spaces for guests to work or mingle, particularly thanks to the free WiFi.
Tags: Sneak Peek / Hotel Openings / Manhattan Hotels / Ascend Collection / → All Tags
Rooms at The Distrikt Not As Funky as the Hotel's Name Suggests
One of our favorite milestones when tracking a new hotel opening is the release of photos. Not renderings, not collages, but full color pictures of the guestrooms we’re so eager to check into. Today The Distrikt Hotel reaches that milestone by posting photos on its Facebook page.
We’ve been dying for a glimpse inside the hotel since the funky collages on the website--while arty and cool--left us without a clue as to room design. Now The Distrikt delivers and we’re both relieved and disappointed.
Relieved that the neighborhood theme is not an OTT mish-mash as it could have been, but a little sad that the décor plays it so safe. For all its savvy marketing, The Distrikt looks pretty middle-of-the-road when it comes to design. The rooms look nice in these photos—but "nice" means a place your mom would be comfortable staying. (That is, if she isn’t scared off by the funky name.) And that’s just not what we were expecting here.
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