Tag: Hotel Bookshelves
View All TagsHotel Libraries / Literary Hotels / Taj Hotels / India Hotels / Hotel Bookshelves / Hotel Bibles / Hotel Korans / → All Tags
India's Taj Falaknuma Palace Might Just Be a Librarian's Double Rainbow
The newly opened Taj Falaknuma Palace in Hyderabad, India, has a lot of cool features, like it is one of the country's last remaining grand palaces, and it's built entirely of Italian marble and in the shape of a scorpion. But the geeks that we are, we're digging its expansive library.
The hotel carries more than 5,900 books in its Imperial Library. You'll find tomes on literature, history and religion. Though the standout is a rare collection of the holy Quran.
Hotel Hype / Manhattan Hotels / Hotel Openings / Hotel Bookshelves / → All Tags
The Mystery of The Gotham Hotel is Starting to Unfold
UPDATE: It could be opening as early as this week!
Last week we rounded up a bunch of new NYC Hotels that are opening later this year but there's one hotel that we missed--The Gotham Hotel. This is that mysterious hotel going up on E. 46th Street, whose identity we just discovered the other week.
As it turns out, the hotel not only has a temporary website but it even has some room photos up already! (Ahem, Waikiki Edition.)
There's not a whole lot going on here but we are loving the typeset logo and the books on the nightstand. (The hotel is named after the old Gotham Book Mart that used to be at this address.) And a tipster has written in saying that the hotel will have 66 guestrooms with four different room categories, starting at $225 a night. That's rather good!
For the Sake of Hotel Art / Hotel Bookshelves / Waikiki Hotels / Edition Hotels / Hotel Amenities / → All Tags
Books, iPads, and Surfboards Are Just a Few of the Waikiki Edition's Favorite Things
The brand-new Waikiki Edition Hotel officially opens on October 15 but lucky guests have been able to stay at the hotel during its soft-opening for the past two weeks. And while we've learned that the hotel has loaner iPads available for guests, we just found out the lobby also sports an old-school bookcase. Ok, it's a little savvier than a traditional bookcase.
A large, rotating bookcase divides the lobby space so it can be closed off to separate and define the Lobby Bar, which is hidden behind this secret passage as if tucked away in a castle. This bookcase will feature rotating art installations by local artists as well as curated collections of objects, books and memorabilia.
And are those iPads we see there on the shelves? Possibly. No, actually they are digital frames. But still, that's not all the lobby of the Waikiki Edition has to offer.
Hotel Hype / Hotel Construction / Manhattan Hotels / Hotel Bookshelves / → All Tags
The Scary Skinny Hotel on E. 46th Street Will Be Known as The Gotham
UPDATE 10.10.10: There is a website for The Gotham Hotel as well as an updated exterior shot below. Also, the Real Deal article was actually written in August so the hotel didn't quite make the "next month" deadline but keep sending in the tips if you've got 'em.
Nearly a year ago, we received some snapshots from a tipster of a scary skinny hotel going up on East 46th Street but we had no idea what hotel this was going to turn into. So we asked you dear readers for some help and got radio silence instead.
But now it looks like the hotel will open as The Gotham Hotel, a tribute to the old Gotham Book Mart that used to occupy the lot. Real Deal has the scoop on the skinny minnie:
According to the architect of the project, Damir Sehic of C3D Architecture, most of the furniture has been moved into the hotel and the restaurant on the first floor. Work on the hotel, developed by R+B Development (after Refik Radoncic and Jeffrey Bennett), may finish next month.
OpenThread / Hotel Bibles / Hotel Religion / Hotel Bookshelves / → All Tags
Should Hotels Ditch Bibles Once and For All?
The yin and yang of top-drawer reading material at the Shangri-La Sydney.
When we first enter a hotel room, we like to poke around and open drawers, checking out every tiny detail. But we were shocked to see a bible—and The Teaching of Buddha—when we flung open the nightstand drawer at the Shangri-La Sydney recently.
We shouldn't have been, of course. Bibles have been a mainstay of hotel rooms for at least a century. But aside from this encounter, we haven't actually seen one in eons. As hotels increasingly focus on providing geeked-up rooms with fancy light settings, glossy flatscreen TVs, and (more, please) free WiFi, they seem to be leaving the good old Gideons behind. But is this a good thing or not? Are hotels losing their religion, and does anyway care?
Hotel Bookshelves / Four Seasons Hotels / Interviews / Summer Reading / Alix Strauss / → All Tags
The New 'Beach Read' is Set at The Four Seasons New York
Looking for a good summer read to throw in your carry-on? The premise of this new book, out on June 8, is perfect for hotel geeks: Based Upon Availability chronicles the (mostly lonely) lives of a group of New Yorkers, who are all loosely connected by their stays at the Four Seasons New York. The hotel's manager is the book's main protagonist, but we get to see each character's story told through both her eyes and their own. Author and journalist Alix Strauss has traveled extensively over the course of her career and says she has "a love affair with hotels." Here, she shares some her favorites.
HotelChatter: What are the main things you look for in a hotel room?
Alix Strauss: I really love free internet. If you're spending up to $300 or even $600 a night, the internet should absolutely be free. I love that the Andaz Hotels have the free in-room minibar. And I like forward-thinking hotels like The Liberty Hotel in Boston. I like a hotel that makes me feel pampered.
Hotel Bookshelves / Hotel Amenities / Hotel News / Manhattan Hotels / → All Tags
The Algonquin Now Offering Guests Both Kindles and Sony Readers
As a longtime literary haven, the Algonquin was early on the hotel loan-a-Kindle trend, and now they’re stepping their bookishness up yet another notch. Guests at the Algonquin can choose between a Kindle or a Sony reader to use during their stay (free of charge.)
But that's not all. Guests will have even more books to choose from as the hotel has struck a new partnership with the Harper Perennial imprint.
Harper Perennial will provide a fresh batch new titles and classics to the hotel each month. Upcoming titles available include The Secret Lives of People in Love by Simon Van Booy, and Oscar Wilde’s The Model Millionaire.
Hotel Books / Hotel Bookshelves / Hotel Amenities / Rosewood Resorts / Mexico Hotels / → All Tags
Las Ventanas Has a New Batch of 'Hot Type' Books for Anti-Kindle Guests
Sick of toting heavy hardcover books in your shrinking carry-on allowance? Not quite keen on the Kindle? If you’re heading to Los Cabos for spring break, you can leave all the books and e-readers at home—as long as you’re willing to drop some major cash on a room at Las Ventanas.
The resort’s Hot Type program not only makes books available for guests to read poolside, they bring you the freshest titles possible—books six weeks to six months away from hitting Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Hotel Bookshelves / Libraries / Doubletree Hotels / Chicago Hotels / → All Tags
theWit's Library Gets People Talking, More Than Reading
The lobby of theWit buzzes with businessmen chatting, workers scurrying about and people wandering in and out, but head to the second floor of the hotel and you'll find some peace in the library.
But it's not a library per se. Yes, the table in the middle of the room has small stacks of oversized coffee-table books on everything from fashion to architecture to music that you can peruse. (The most popular one among library visitors is Frank Lloyd Wright Complete Works, Vol. 3: 1943-1959.) But it's more about the atmosphere.
Hotel Bookshelves / Hotel Amenities / Rosewood Resorts / Mexico Hotels - / → All Tags
Read Next Year's Hot Books Today at Las Ventanas in Mexico
We’ve been following the Hotel Bookshelves craze for awhile now, and for good reason. We’re fans of anything that lightens our carry-on load, so books in our room or lobby are welcome. We like to leaf through those big, sexy art books that hotels like the Cooper Square and the Greenwich Hotel in New York stock bedside, and occasionally we might reacquaint ourselves with a classic while we wait for room service.
But the best thing about the books available for guests at Las Ventanas al Paraíso in Los Cabos, Mexico is the fact that you can read them before anyone back home. As we mentioned when the resort first introduced its Hot Type Menu, an arrangement with top publishing houses means that the Las Ventanas library features books six weeks to six months before their official publication date.
Miami Hotel Mambo / Hotel Events / Hotel Bookshelves / → All Tags
Miami's Epic Encourages Guests to Read With Wine
Plenty of hotels are pushing books onto guests these days, adding in-room libraries, Kindles or Sony eReaders to their list of amenities. We’re quite fond of reading by the fire or the pool at hotels but book club events, which are also on the rise, sound a little, well, earnest. Unless, of course, wine is involved.
Perhaps that’s why Miami’s Epic Hotel was smart enough to combine their ongoing literary series with their daily guest wine-hour program—and special room rates that make hitting the books totally worth it.
Interviews / Gregory Peck / Hotel Openings / Hotel Opening Rates / Hotel Bookshelves / San Francisco Hotels / → All Tags
The Crescent Hotel San Francisco Will Open October 21
Here at HotelChatter, we're so jaded about new hotel projects and predicted opening dates which never come to fruition, that we actually forgot about the plans for a Crescent Hotel San Francisco from hotelier Gregory Peck, the man behind Crescent Beverly Hills and the infamous Cooper Square Hotel. But we're very happy to report that the hotel will be opening on October 21 and rooms for that night are open for a very affordable rate of $105 a night.
Located a block north of Union Square, on Stockton and Stutter, this used to be the Allison Hotel, a long-term, SRO hotel that Peck and his partner, Mark Henderson, completely gutted and renovated from top to bottom. But he says that they "consciously maintained" the original architecture of the building which is 100-years-old.
It's a typical look for San Francisco but we've given it a modern twist.
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