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Intercontinental's Next London Hotel: Way Better Than We Thought
When it was announced this weekend that Intercontinental were opening up a second hotel in London, we weren’t too excited.
For one, we’re not the biggest fans of the Park Lane branch - totally lacking in fizz, if you ask us. For another, the location they’ve chosen - Queen Anne’s Chambers in Westminster is a place we used to pass most days on our way to work, and it always seemed like more of a commuter ratrun than somewhere you’d actually want to stay. Also, it’s next door to police HQ New Scotland Yard, and that made us feel a bit queasy too.
But to give it a fair hearing, we popped over to see the building site today – and we take it all back. Intercontinental Westminster has the potential to be a fabulous hotel.
For a start, it’s not as small as it looks from the façade in the picture here. Because that’s just the front façade. The hotel’s actually going to take up four buildings, across three streets. Yup, three: Broadway, where the entrance will be, along a block of Tothill Street and down Dean Farrar Street round the back. Think of it as a triangle shape, with all the space in the middle belonging to the hotel as well. It sounds fantastic.
Tags: Thompson Hotels / Hotel Industry News / Stephen Brandman / Chicago Hotels / Hotel News / → All Tags
On December 1st, The Hotel Sax Chicago Will Be Thompsonized
Room 1433 at Hotel Sax Chicago.
We received a couple of tips lately that there was something brewing with Thompson Hotels and usually when more than one tip comes in, we know something's up. But today we have confirmation that indeed The Hotel Sax in Chicago, best known for its RockBand studio and where we recently shacked up the other week, is turning into a Thompson Hotel.
The conversion will officially happen on December 1st and while the hotel was recently renovated a few years ago, we fully expect the place to get "Thompsonized."
Tags: Hotel Openings / Hotel Parties / Sol Kerzner / Morocco Hotels / Hotel News / → All Tags
Morocco's New Mazagan Beach Resort Opens With a Bang
Where: 2 4000 El Jadida , Morocco
Fireworks. Fire eaters. Snake charmers—just another night for Lindsay Lohan. (And, no, those are not euphemisms.) If yesterday’s report of LiLo’s alleged tryst with Gerard Butler got your heart racing and you want to follow suit, here’s a little more info on where the action went down.
The Mazagan Beach Resort is located in El Jadida, Morocco, about 55 miles southwest of Casablanca. So, yeah, romance is built right into the sand dunes. And there’s a lot of ’em here: the resort sits on a 4.3 mile beach and you can see the ocean from many of the 500 5-star rooms and suites.
The best way to picture the sprawl of Mazagan? Just think of one of owner Sol Kerzner’s other celeb-magnet properties, such as Atlantis in the Bahamas. The mega-resort includes an 18-hole golf course, a spa offering traditional Moroccan treatments, three kids’ clubs, 11 restaurants and bars, the Mazagan casino, and the Sanctuary Night Club, which promises parties “New York style.” Oh yeah, and there’s a huge conference center if you think you can talk your boss into a corporate retreat in the vein of the OTT Mazagan opening party. (The economy’s looking up, right?)
Tags: Twilight Hotels / Kimpton Hotels / Seattle Hotels / Hotel Contests / Hotel News / Kristen Stewart / Robert Pattinson / → All Tags
Hotel Monaco Seattle is Hosting 'Twilight' Look-a-Like Contest
We live in the Pacific Northwest, so we can say in complete confidence that Edward and Bella mania is at full-tilt levels of bat sh*t crazy. You can buy a replica of the heart-shaped crystal charm Edward gives to Bella, dine on mushroom ravioli at Bella Italia and even visit the Forks Community Hospital where Dr. Cullen works.
We’ve even heard that some hotels in Port Angeles, Forks and La Push on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula (the center of "Twilight" activity) are whoring out rundown motel rooms at $150 and up – because they can take the tourism bucks and run.
We love these coastal towns for a daytrip or an afternoon of waves, but they’re kinda depressing. Then again, that's absolutely perfect for a vampire series.
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The Five Best Hotels for the 2009 Macy's Thanksgiving Parade
Yes, once again it's time for our annual list of Best Hotels For Watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. This is our fourth installment and while last year's choices and anything in the vicinity of Times Square still holds true, we decided to do away with the old and bring in some new choices. And it looks like the Macy's Day parade will be trying something new itself on November 26th.
This year the parade will go down 7th Avenue instead of the old Broadway. The start will still kick off at 77th and Central Park West.
Sadly, the cast of Glee will not be performing at the parade, a lame decision on Macy's and NBC's part but there's still plenty of traditional fun to be had. However, you may miss out on all of it if you don't book soon. As we said last year, the early bird totally gets the good, crunchy, still warm part of the stuffing here.
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Swine Flu Hotel Closes After 40 People Become Ill
Earlier this year when swine flu first erupted, 280 people were quarantined at the MetroPark Hotel in Hong Kong, we lightly dubbed it a Swine Flu Hotel. But now we have a real Swine Flu Hotel.
Hotel Sinaia, a resort in the mountains of Sinaia, Romania, has been closed after 40 Romainian and foreign law students attending a conference caught the dreaded H1N1 virus.
Health state secretary Adrian Streinu-Cercel says 40 people were hospitalized Sunday in Bucharest, suffering from medium to severe forms of the flu.
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No More Weekdays at The Water Club (Again)
Just in case you weren’t convinced that the cool weather is here to stay in the Northeast, here’s a big hint by way of Atlantic City: The Water Club at the Borgata is closing up shop on weeknights. And if you think you’ve heard this song before, you’re not going crazy: the Water Club also closed rooms midweek back in March, when business was slow, re-opening for the summer party season in May.
Guests wishing to stay at the property Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays can be accommodated at big brother, the Borgata, and it doesn’t look like all weekdays will be blackouts. When we checked out the online reservation system, we noticed that the week of November 15 is showing up as available, from $209 a night. Also, you can crash at the Water Club for just $159 a night tomorrow night.
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The Greenbrier Resort Might Be Back On its Feet After All
It’s been a little while since we checked in on the owners-swinging Greenbrier in West Virginia. We’ll spare you the saga from this summer (click here for a quick summary) but we were encouraged to hear the iconic resort is on its feet enough to have opened a brand-new steakhouse, Prime 44 West.
Designed by C2 Limited Design Associates, Prime 44 West replaces Greenbrier’s “outdated dining venue” with a restaurant that honors basketball legend and West Virginia native, Jerry West. Not to mention, C2 Limited is also designing Greenbrier’s new, $25-million, 50,000-square-foot casino and entertainment venue, set to debut next April with coffee, wine, sushi, ten retail shops, and a nightly 8 p.m. good-luck Champagne toast.
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The Distrikt Hotel: Where ‘Late Fall’ Means Winter
Get out your Hotel Opening Date Tracking Sheet, friends, because it’s time for a little update on Manhattan’s Distrikt Hotel. We’re dying to see this place: the NYC-neighborhood theme is one of the most interesting we’ve heard of all year, and we can’t wait to see which floors—each named after a different part of the city—will become the most sought after. (It seems apt that the Financial District is on the lowest floor, and Harlem on the highest, no?)
Alas, it looks like we’ll have to wait a few more weeks. While the hotel’s website is still promising an opening in “late fall,” and a press rep for the Distrikt told us the doors would open on November 15th, we’ve since heard that the big day would be pushed back to December 1st.
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Travelocity Now Offering Hotel Guests a Price Guarantee
The economy may not be feeling back to its old self, but there is more good news for hotel guests looking to get a better deal.
Travelocity announced today that it would not only eliminate change and cancel fees for hotels and vacation packages and offer guests a special $50 discount for travel but that it would also offer a price guarantee, something that other online travel booking sites have yet to do.
A price guarantee is a common feature found on hotel's websites which allow guests who find a lower room rate elsewhere to receive that lower rate instead of whatever the hotel is offering. It's a nifty little way for guests to sort of negotiate with hotels to get a better rate. For hotels, it keeps guests booking directly through their site, rather than with a third-party booking site, with whom they usually have to split a sort of commission.
Tags: Hotel Restaurants / Chicago Hotels / Hotel News / → All Tags
Chicago's New Hotel Restaurants Become Culinary Hot Spots
If you want to check out Chicago's hottest restaurants, you'll have to to go a hotel. Whether it's the cool atmosphere or the delish food, hotel restaurants have become the big trend around town. We'll give you three of the best new hotel restaurants in Chicago:
Pelago in Raffaello Hotel
This Italian restaurant adds seafood to the mix with dishes like from-scratch ravioli filled with Dover sole and caviar. It also offers an affordable yet yummy lunch menu of dishes like tagliolini with organic spinach, crab meat and roasted garlic. But whichever meal you choose, you know it'll be good since Chef Mauro Mafrici snagged a Michelin star at his former Tribeca restaurant Lo Scalco. But the atmosphere is just as much of a draw, with porcelain chandeliers dangling above white chairs and tablecloths and aquamarine damask banquettes.
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Did a Practice Session in the Hotel Ballroom Cause Tampa Bay to Lose the Game?
The weather in London isn’t quite on a par with the weather in Florida, as the poor Tampa Bay Buccaneers found out to their cost this weekend. According to the St Petersburg Times, the Bucs had to practice for their NFL Wembley gig against the New England Patriots in the ballroom at the Intercontinental Park Lane because it was too wet to hit the turf at Wembley itself.
NFL officials did offer them a room at Wembley to practice in, but they stuck to the ballroom – which holds up to 750 people, and, according to the hotel website, features “natural daylight through floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Park Lane and the Royal Parks”. Perhaps they were hoping for a little more grace on the pitch, too.
It didn’t work, unfortunately – the Pats thrashed them 35-7. Still, it’s not every day you get to exercise within spitting distance of Buckingham Palace is it, chaps? That’s something to tell the kids. Maybe.
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