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Tags: Australia Hotels / Mercure Hotels / Eco-Hotels / Hotel Conferences / → All Tags

Mercure Hotels Down Under Love the Environment

Hotels know that some guests are starting to prefer eco-friendly hotels, but the Mercure Hotels chain in Australia have decided that this particularly applies to business guests, and have launched a "carbon-neutral conferencing" option as part of the Mercure Meetings range of services.

That means that if you attend a conference being held at a Mercure Hotel in Australia, you can sit through the presentations with an easy conscience: because part of the conference package involves the hotel paying up for the full value of carbon offsets to emissions produced by the conference.

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Tags: Hotel Industry News / Hilton Hotels / Hotel Conferences / → All Tags

AH&LA Fall 2007 Conference Starts This Friday

We interrupt your regularly schedule hotel entertainment programming to sneak in a little hotel industry news.

On November 9th, the AH&LA 2007 Fall Conference kicks off in New York City at the Javits Center. For you non-hotel geeks, AH&LA stands for American Hotel and Lodging Association and the conference is being held with the International Hotel/Motel & Restaurant Show.

So tons of NYC hotels are going to busy with hotel, motel and restaurant execs from all over. For instance, the welcome reception is being held Friday night from 5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. at the Waldorf-Astoria. That's followed by a CEO dinner at the Mandarin Oriental.

Throughout the conference there will be tons of hotel seminars. But Saturday will be a big day when the conference has its CEO leadership panel and the U.S. Lodging Industry Summit Panel, with a keynote luncheon given by Mary Matalin and James Carville titled "All's Fair in Love and Politics."

Interestingly enough on the schedule for AH&LA is a dinner tribute on Nov. 13th for Stephen F. Bollenbach, the former co-chairman and CEO of Hilton Hotels who was replaced this week by Christopher Nasetta of Host Hotels after the Blackstone group officially acquired the hotel chain. Don't worry it was nothing evil as Bollenbach announced last summer he would step down at the end of this year.

If any of you hotel industry folks are attending the show and see/hear/know of anything worth letting fellow hotel geeks know about, drop us a line. Photos most appreciated too.

Related Stories:
· AH&LA Conference 2007 [Official Site]
· Hilton Gets Sold! [HotelChatter]