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Tags: Hotel Lust / Greece Hotels / Luxury Hotels / Sweet Suites / Leading Hotels of the World / → All Tags
The $34,000 Suite at Greece's Zeus-Worthy Grand Resort
Is that the theme to Chariots of Fire we hear swelling in the background? In an earlier edition of Hotel Lust, our preoccupation with the upcoming Olympics led us to track down a sprawling resort outside of Vancouver, this year's host city. Paying homage to the sporting event, this week we're heading to Greece, where the games originated.
In our search for Athens' best, we found a hotel whose name does the advertising for it: Grand Resort Lagonissi. Most of its rooms have names that hint to some of the sweeping views you'll be privy to as a guest: "Panoramic Resident Suite," "Vista Suite," and so on.
Even among these impressive surroundings—marble fixtures, sea views, private balconies—there's one that trumps the rest: the $34,000 per night Royal Villa, one of the most expensive of its kind the world over.
Tags: Hotel Deals / Leading Hotels of the World / Luxury Hotels / Valentine's Day Hotels / → All Tags
Have a Luxe Valentine's Day For Less, With This Leading Hotels Deal
Who says you can’t spend Valentine’s Day in a luxury hotel on a Venetian island? Not us! We know it’s not even Thanksgiving yet, but our minds are already in February, thanks to a new promotion from Leading Hotels of the World.
Their Save the Date deal is designed to encourage early-bird reservations (LHW are so not fans of this pesky last-minute booking trend), and if you can commit to early 2010 dates now, there are deals to be had at more than 70 Leading Hotels around the world.
Romance, too, if you go with the San Clemente Palace Hotel & Resort in Venice. Once a monastery, the hotel takes up an entire private island (you arrive via motorboat from Piazza San Marco).
Last year, the property won the LHW “Guest Recognition Award of Excellence” and was named the best European hotel in the LHW stable. Those are solid credentials but if it’s not enough to make you swoon, perhaps the price will: with the Save the Date promo you can secure a room here for just 230 euros a night (around $343 USD). And, yes, that includes Valentine’s Day, which is still available.
Tags: Deal Or No Deal / Leading Hotels of the World / Paris Hotels / Hotel Deals / Luxury Hotels / → All Tags
Here's Your Chance to Stay at the Ritz Paris For Slightly Less Than Normal
It used to be something of a tradition for Londoners to hop on the Eurostar for a quicky weekend in Paris – especially when it came to winter romance. But it obviously isn’t going so well at the moment, thanks to the insanely strong euro: Eurostar is currently bombarding London with ads, and Parisian hotels seeing to be flinging out special offers by the day.
Anyway, if you can bear the dreadful exchange rate, there are deals to be had. This week the Leading Hotels of the World group have jumped on the bandwagon, offering up to 30% off – which, when you’re talking hotels like the Ritz or the Crillon, is a pretty big deal.
With the Leading in Paris offer, starting rates are down to €590 at the Hotel Le Bristol, €550 at the Ritz, €530 at the Hotel de Crillon and €589 at the Hotel Fouquet’s Barrière. Slightly cheaper are the Hotel Lancaster from €370, or the Hotel Raphael from €365 (the Raphael will also chuck in breakfast and a special “welcome gift).
Tags: Hotel Contests / Leading Hotels of the World / → All Tags
Leading Hotels of the World Wants To Support Your 'Quest of a Lifetime'
The Liberty Hotel, Boston.
If you've stayed at any hotel belonging to the Leading Hotels of the World group in the past two years, and enjoyed it, then the news today is good: you've got a chance to win another Leading Hotels stay. They've got a competition running with the grand name of Quest of a Lifetime and Americans and Canadians who've stayed in a Leading Hotel recently are all eligible to enter.
Entry involves writing a short 150-word essay on your "extraordinary travel experience" while staying at a Leading Hotel. The judging criteria include creativity, originality and how well your story fits the "quest" theme. Entries close on November 20, 2009 and during December, the top ten stories will be online for readers to vote on. And if you've had a ton of interesting experiences, then you can enter up to five different stories.
Tags: Cubicle Dreamin' / Rome Hotels / Leading Hotels of the World / → All Tags
When In Rome, Go All Out With Italian Sweets
Cubicle Dreamin' is a feature in which we ask the hotel mavens to take some time out of their busy work day, surf the Internet, and tell us what hotel they wish they could beam themselves to right that very second--all on the slave driving companies dime, of course. Oh, like these people aren't surfing aimlessly anyway--at least now their purposeless clicking will be cobbled together into useful hotel stories--we hope. Have a destination hotel you are just dying to leave your cube for? Send the story our way.
In this episode, Hotel Maven Amanda K visits Rome...in her mind. Enjoy.
There are two reasons I want to stay in the Hotel Lord Byron in Rome, and they're both from the one paragraph of a recent Age review:
Life in the hotel centres around the library and lounge, a beautifully furnished space full of interesting, well-thumbed hardcover books, flowers, bowls of Italian sweets and fabulous framed family photos.
I'm sold by the time I know about the piles of books and the Italian sweets, but apparently there is plenty more in this grand hotel to tempt me. It's elegant, but not too stuffy; glamorous, but not arrogant. It's a five-star place that belongs to the Leading Small Hotels of the World collection, and I like the fact that it's small and tucked into a quiet (but still central) corner of Rome.
I could settle on a Junior Suite at €560 ($730) a night (the full version of the Suite is €735 ($960) a night) and I'd definitely need a booking in the Sapori del Lord Byron restaurant – apparently it's got a French chef but the food is definitely Italian-style and delicious. And I'd need to finish my evening at the hotel's Il Salotto wine bar because they say the pianist there can play anything you request. But hey, I was already satisfied just with the books and the sweets.
Tags: Leading Hotels of the World / Hotel Deals / Thailand Hotels / Thailand Resorts / → All Tags
A Thailand Deal That Caters to Shopaholic Beach Bums
With the state of emergency lifted and mid-April's unrest easing, it's time to start looking at Thailand again. And one of the things we love about it is that it can be a shopping paradise as well as an R&R-on-the-beach vacation destination.
We got tipped off about a clever "joint venture" hotel deal, put together by the Sukhothai Bangkok and the Rayavadee resort in Krabi. They've picked up on our shopping and beach combo desires and put together a five-night deal including two nights in the city at Sukhothai and three nights on the beach at Rayavadee. The package includes all kinds of extras like breakfast, a dinner at each location, shopping coupons in the city and a massage at the beach, transfers to both Bangkok and Krabi airports, and – in Bangkok only – free WiFi (once you get to the beach you should be keeping your laptop packed away).
The deal comes up to 86,900 Baht ($2,400) for a double for the entire five nights and inclusions. That's not bad considering both the Sukhothai and Rayavadee belong to the Leading Hotels of the World group and sound like above average places to stay.
Tags: Cubicle Dreamin' / Austria Hotels / Leading Hotels of the World / → All Tags
Channeling Julie Andrews in Austria
Cubicle Dreamin' is a feature in which we ask the hotel mavens to take some time out of their busy work day, surf the Internet, and tell us what hotel they wish they could beam themselves to right that very second--all on the slave driving companies dime, of course. Oh, like these people aren't surfing aimlessly anyway--at least now their purposeless clicking will be cobbled together into useful hotel stories--we hope. Have a destination hotel you are just dying to leave your cube for? Send the story our way.
In this episode, Hotel Maven Katie K visits Austria...in her mind. Enjoy.
The recent teases of springy weather have me in a Julie Andrews sort of mood. (I’ll tell you one thing: If my neighborhood had more — er, any — grassy hills, I would spend a lot less time blogging, and a lot more time running around singing about how, you know, alive it all is.) But rather than fantasizing about my frolics on faux hills, I’d rather let my mind drift straight to the source — specifically, the Hotel Schloss Fuschl in Austria.
Tags: Leading Hotels of the World / Hotel Deals / Mexico Hotels / Reader Reviews / → All Tags
LHW's $19.28 Promotion a Success for One Guest
Remember the disaster that was the Leading Hotels of the World's $19.28 Promotion where they offered a few lucky hotel guests rooms for $19.28 a night in honor of their 80th anniversary? Of course you do! It was an epic fail. But fortunately, the organization got their act together and the second try went off without a hitch.
We just got a real-time report from one of the guests who managed to snag a room at the Paraiso De La Bonita Resort in Mexico. Reader Dan writes:
I'm actually in the hotel's transportation right now going back to the airport. The stay was awesome.... The final bill with my food and the transfers arranged with the hotel was $3,179 pesos, which works out to around $240USD which is still a bargain considering the cheapest room on a discounted rate is $600 a night with tax.
Awesome. That photo above is from his stay. Check out more of his real-time reports and photos here.
Tags: Leading Hotels of the World / Venice Hotels / New Years Eve 2009 Hotels / → All Tags
Some Leading Hotels More Leading Than Others
We've got a special place in our hearts for any hotel that takes up a whole island, which gives the San Clemente Palace Hotel & Resort in Venice an unfair advantage when we talk about it. It's a ten-minute motorboat ride from Piazza San Marco and apparently it's not only the sexy hotel-on-an-island thing that's making guests happy.
In fact, San Clemente has also just won the Leading Hotels of the World "Guest Recognition Award of Excellence" for 2008, as well as being voted the best hotel in Europe from the group (out of a total of 250 hotels) and the second best hotel in the world.
Since they've got a New Year's Eve package going that sounds like a good time to try it out--the two-night New Year's Eve deal includes dinner and dancing, casino entry and breakfast for €1,276 ($1,600) for the two nights. Not cheap, but you get your own island, remember? No sharing with thousands of gondola-hunting tourists--we think it could be worth it.
Tags: Leading Hotels of the World / Hotel Promotions / Hotel Sad / → All Tags
Not Everyone Got a $19.28 Hotel Room from the LHW Promotion
The Leading Hotels of the World $19.28 promotion finally worked for realz last week and we had several readers send in their successful bids for $19.28 rooms. Which was awesome.
But sadly, not everyone got their requests fulfilled. LHW only had a limited amount of rooms available for the promotion. A reader sent in the rejection letter that she received yesterday:
Thank you for participating in The Leading Hotels of the World's 80th anniversary USD 19.28 Sale. We are sorry to inform you that we were unable to fulfill your travel request.
We appreciate your support and interest in our brand, and hope to bring you more celebratory offers in the future. As previously promised, all personal information obtained from you with regard to this promotion will be removed from our database. Should you wish to receive updates and news from The Leading Hotels of the World, please feel free to sign up for our e-newsletter at www.lhw.com.
Our reader had selected three hotels--The Wheatleigh, The Hay-Adams and The Chateau Bonne Entente. Sad. Another HC commenter also got rejected and had these last words for LHW: "Just got my rejection email from Leading Hotels of the World. Let us never speak of this promotion again."
Tags: Hotel Hype / Jamaica Hotels / Spring Break Hotels / Leading Hotels of the World / → All Tags
Jamaica's Solís The Palmyra Will Open in March
Where: Montego Bay , Jamaica
For Spring Breakers and exhausted 9 to 5-ers looking for a chill beach vacay this coming winter, 16 acres of Caribbean waterfront will sound pretty darn good. And the humungous Solis The Palmyra in Jamaica, poised to open in March, looks like it might be able to deliver.
Perched on the shores of Montego Bay, the hotel has three towers, courtyards, and ocean views out of every room; a ballroom, event lawn, and gazebo for weddings; two pools, beachside cabanas, and tons of adventure gear for the using. There's also a 30,000 square foot spa, designed by award-winning spa designer Susan Harmsworth.
Guests will get preferential treatment at the nearby award-winning golf courses. And be sure to wear your bathing suit under your clothes on your flight into Montego Bay: the hotel is only 15 minutes from the airport.
Tags: Leading Hotels of the World / Hotel News / Hotel Deals / → All Tags
Leading Hotels of the World May Have Finally Pulled Off the $19.28 Promo
Alright, it's looking like Leading Hotels of the World has actually pulled it off, folks. Our hearts have been warmed on this chilly autumn day by three -- count 'em, three -- success stories from last week's do-over of the Leading Hotels of the World $19.28 promotion.
In case you missed our breathless coverage of the original ordeal, Leading Hotels of the World attempted to have an anniversary sale on October 1st that didn't work out so well. They released a limited amount of rooms online (for 80 minutes only) for a rate of $19.28, their overloaded servers collapsed and everyone was pissed they had to wake up so early to have their dreams of cheap-o hotel rooms crushed -- including many of you.
After apologizing and going back to the drawing board, LHW did the whole thing over again -- this time at an hour that was reasonable enough for us to liveblog it -- and, dare we say, it looks like they've pulled it off.
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