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HotelChatter's Summer Reading for Hotel Geeks
HotelChatter contributor AndrewC is bringing life back to your summer reading book list. Though beach reading season is steadily winding down, keep an eye out for his reviews; he rounds up the tomes worth picking up in lieu of your typical Harlequin or grizzled detective story. Do you have your own travel reading suggestions? Comment below or e-mail us.
It's not too often that you find something besides a bible and phone book in the nightstand drawer at your hotel, but until the late 90s every Hilton Hotel included the book Be My Guest, Conrad Hilton's autobiography. That's how we "found" our copy during our stay at the Hilton in East Brunswick, NJ awhile back.
Tags: Music Hotels / Ace Hotels / Hotel Books / Hotel Swag / → All Tags
Ace Hotels Publishes a Guide To Sonic Youth's Hotspots
Ace Hotels, always excited over collaboration to produce their own goodies, is at it again with a new guidebook to Seattle, Portland, and New York City featuring the favorite spots from members of Sonic Youth.
Only 3,000 of the guides were printed, which are being given for FREE to guests at any of the Ace Hotels — except for Palm Springs, for some reason — as well as at chosen record stores in the same cities. Wondering where to find Kim Gorden in Seattle? You might want to check any of three favorite restaurants: Flying Fish, Wild Ginger and Kingfish Cafe.
Although Sonic Youth recently performed in New York to promote their new album, "The Eternal," they'll be playing over in Seattle on July 25 and Portland on July 28, so it's probably best if you have this guide in hand for them to sign backstage. Because how cool would that be? Way cooler than just another signed album cover, we think.
[Photo: Ace Hotels]
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Epic Hotel's 'Virtual Nightstand' Does Not Seem Particularly Epic
Huh. Yeah. So we got excited about Amazon Kindles at the Algonquin. And yes, we even got excited enough to put down our poolside go-to literature (Us Weekly, let's be real with each other here) when we heard about the sunshine-friendly Sony Readers offered by the Gansevoort. But for some reason we're not quite as excited about the "EPIC Page-Turner" program that's being heavily touted by Miami's new (and highly-praised!) Epic Hotel and Residences.
Here's the deal: the hotel offers up Sony Digital Readers "on a complimentary basis to Club Level guests and those spending their day lounging at the hotel’s 16th floor pool deck." Which is cool — and the readers are loaded with one complimentary book only. You are allowed to request other titles to read during your stay for the cost of the eBook — "plus a nominal download fee that EPIC will donate to the Early Learning Coalition of Miami-Dade/Monroe." Which is nice. We can't hate on charity.
Tags: Summer Reading / Hotel Books / Four Seasons / Isadore Sharp / → All Tags
HotelChatter's Summer Reading for Hotel Geeks
Summer is officially here and while the weather on the East Coast has taken its sweet old time warming up, there's still no better way for us hotel nerds to celebrate the hot days and long nights other than with a Summer Reading List of Hotel Books.
Once a week, we will review a book about hotels — whether it be fiction, non-fiction, historical, auto-biographical or even just a cool coffee table book with incredible photos. These could be the perfect books to kick back with while laying poolside, or while working the late-night shift at the front desk or while entertaining friends with your high-falutin' aspiring hotelier schemes.
First up, one for those aforementioned aspiring hoteliers: Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy by Isadore Sharp.
Tags: Hotel Books / Design Hotels / → All Tags
Design Hotels Overloads Our Coffee Table With Their 'Yearbook'
Another day, another hotel interiors coffee table book. Newest on the bookshelf is one from the recently re-branded Design Hotels; it is simply their "Yearbook," documenting 170 member hotels of their group in glossy style.
Available in black or white, we're guessing to help best contrast other colorful hotel books out there, the Yearbook is a weighty 476 pages, ringing in at a similarly hefty price of 44 Euro ($58.80). To spare you the need of lugging one of these babies home from the bookstore, we'll let you in on a few of the eccentric properties featured: Limes Hotel in Brisbane, New Majestic in Singapore, Azucar in Veracruz, East Hotel Hamburg, Goldman 25Hours in Frankfurt, the Hospes Maricel on Mallorca, and the Alila Villas Hadahaa on an atoll in the Maldives.
It may be nothing more than a glorified catalog, but there is a definite winning argument for owning this type of book: it makes you look cultured and well-traveled, and its very presence makes your bookshelf appear eccentric. Since we admit to having shallow moments where these things matter, you'll be catching this on our Christmas (in July) list.
[Photos: Design Hotels]
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Poetry Corner To Open at London's Goring Hotel
We still remember last March when London’s Andaz hotel took the fabulous step of inviting a Reader in Residence to sit in his pyjamas for two weeks and read to needy guests.
Now normally, we don’t like copycats, but because it was such a good idea, and the reader isn’t in residence anymore, we’ll let this one slide and learn to love it. Also, it’s not really copying, although we suspect they might have been inspired by Andaz.
The exceedingly posh Goring Hotel – it’s just round the corner from Buckingham Palace, and the Queen Mother used to pop round for tea in her day – will be having poetry readings every night during April.
Poems will be read at 7pm sharp in the newly refurbished bar by members of staff and “surprise guests." We’ll be popping along in the hope of seeing regular guest Maggie Thatcher reading some Amy Winehouse lyric....
Tags: Hotel History / San Franciso Hotels / Hotel Books / → All Tags
San Fran's Palace Gets Its Own Book; Deal with Proactiv Not Far Off
It's not just Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson and Diddy who are pimpin and whoring themselves out in the name of cross-branding. Big name hotels are capitalizing on the infamy and notoriety of their digs. The Palm's Las Vegas and several other hotels did it with reality TV, and now San Francisco's Palace Hotel is exploiting itself literally with a new book celebrating the hotel's history and grandeur.
Tags: Travelodge Hotels / Hotel Books / Hotel Sex / → All Tags
Travelodge Releases Annual List of Most-Discarded Books in Hotel Rooms
You have to feel sorta bad for the unfortunate dude who leaves behind both The Kama Sutra for Dummies and How to be a Gentleman in Seven Days at a Travelodge. (So many unanswered questions!)
Leave it to Travelodge Hotels to monitor -- and report -- such activity (and, ahem, leave it to us to poke fun at it).
Indeed, the U.K. budget chain just released its annual list of books abandoned in hotel rooms at 336 properties, and while this year's 7,000 discarded titles were mostly autobiographies (John Prescott's memoir tops the list), chick lit, and thrillers, a healthy sprinkling of sex manuals also made the list, like The Best 50 Love Making Positions for the Over 50s.
Travelodge even goes so far as to apply a little Psych 101 musing to the findings: Cardiff and London hotel guests are more likely to discard cash-saving books, perhaps revealing despair at the wallet-damaging cost of city life, while do-gooder Cornwell guests leave behind titles with a spiritual bent.
That's interesting and all, but wethinks Travelodge might stick to what they do best -- offering bizarro perks, incubating nude sleepwalkers, and launching recycled hotels.
Tags: Hotel Design / Hotel Books / Cool Hunter / → All Tags
The Cool Hunter Releases Hotel Room Book, Makes Us Drool
Move Over Herbert Ypma's Hip Hotels and the requisite Helmut Newton tome, The Cool Hunter's new World's Coolest Hotel Rooms book is headed for coffee tables in-the-know.
Released in early June but just now making it onto local bookshelves, this first foray into print from everyone's favorite glossy trend-hunting blog is a stunner.
Slathered with ultra-colorful large images of rooms from the predictable (Buenos Aires' Hotel Home and Playa del Carmen's Básico) to the surprising (Hyatt Regency), the book is a hotel maven's wet dream.
It even goes so far as to provide in-depth room descriptions and "relevant cultural goings-on" around the destination. One hotel probably not in the book? The fugliest Days Inn ever.
Tags: Jimmy Buffett / Hotel Books / Pet-Friendly Hotels / Manhattan Hotels / → All Tags
Jimmy Buffett's New Kids Book is About a Pig-Friendly Carlyle Hotel
Parrotheads-in-Training and their Parrothead Parents listen up: Your hero Jimmy Buffett has just released a new book, called Swine Not?, about a family who lives with a pet pig inside the Carlyle Hotel. And the story was actually inspired by a family who once lived in the hotel with their pet pig.
Bloomberg writes:
When the McBrides move to Manhattan, Rumpy takes surreptitious walks on the hotel roof, wears a dog suit to Central Park, outwits the villainous chef of the hotel restaurant and provides narration for half the book (the other half being told by the family's soccer-loving son, Barley). The feel-good plot nominally revolves around Rumpy's quest to find her brother in New York, though really it's just an excuse for Buffett to offer his laid-back commentary on life through the eyes of the pig and the boy (whose voices as narrators are exactly the same).
So through Rumpy the pig, Buffett is telling his own experiences with New York in this fish (pig) out of water tale which is aimed for tweens.
In real life, the Carlyle is pet-friendly. Dogs are welcome so long as they are under 25 pounds (would Tank make it?) and a $50 fee is required. here is a $50 per night fee. Canine guests (under 25 lbs.) The dogs do get pet beds, food bowls, treats and Fiji water.
But the Carlyle may want to tighten up their pet policy going forward. We have a feeling a lot of pigs will try and check-in here.
Tags: Colin Cowie / Tips / Hotel Books / Tipping / → All Tags
Hotel Book Reviews: Hotel Tips From Party Planner Colin Cowie
Colin Cowie's main jobs are as a celebrity wedding designer and a luxe party planner but he's also the proprietor behind the CBar in Greece inside the Belvedere Hotel so he knows a few things about the hospitality business.
We got a copy of his book Colin Cowie Chic: The Guide to Life As It Should Be and we are a little tickled to see a section on travel and staying hotels.
Colin's #1 thing as soon as he's checked into his hotel? Change into exercise clothes for a quick workout that includes some push-ups, sit-ups and stretches.
If he has more time, he'll do some cardio. His reasoning is valid--after being on an airplane for a while you want to get those vital organs jump-started.
Our first thing we do when we check into a hotel? Check the internet connection. God, we're such geeks!
Tags: Concierges / Celebrity Scoop / Hotel Books / Four Seasons Hotels / Hotel News / → All Tags
The Four Seasons Concierges Who Tried To Tell All ...
You might remember that we were already a little uneasy about the book deal given to the two former concierges from the Four Seasons Chicago. And it turns out we were right to think this wasn't really the way concierges should go.
We've now heard that the book deal has been canceled because the concierges signed confidentiality agreements when they worked at the Four Seasons.
The concierges say the publisher, Random House, knew all along about these agreements, and that attorneys had agreed they didn't apply to the content of the book--but in the eleventh hour, following a complaint from Four Seasons, Random House decided not to release the book.
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