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Whatever Happened to CityStay Hotels?

The last we heard from CityStay Hotels (not to be confused with a UK brand of a similar name) was almost a year ago in March 2008 when the "Coming Soon!" brand announced some new executive management and some plans to do 8-10 hotels.

However, in an economy where more and more hotels are pulling back from development and expansion, CityStay Hotels has gone quiet. Their website is still up and running (a good sign) and Miami is still listed as the planned flagship location. We emailed boy wonder hotelier Greg Tubeck about the status of CityStay but have not heard back from him. The good news though? Our email didn't get bounced back. The bad news still remains: No CityStay Hotels have opened since an initial announcement nearly four years ago.

Any clue on what's going on with CityStay Hotels? Keep us informed.

Hotel News Briefs / Hotel Sick / Lost Hotel Files / Beijing Hotels / 2008 Olympics Hotels / Hotel Booking Sites / → All Tags

Hotel News Briefs :: Hotel Sick Strikes Tourists in Italy

There's tons of hotel news flying around this week and we don't have time to give each and every story the love and attention it may deserve, so you will have to settle for some news briefs.

· Hotel Sick: 30 British tourists fell ill, and one died while staying at the Grand Hotel Gardone near Lake Garda in Italy. Everyone ate from the hotel's restaurant and a salmonella contamination is suspected. [Canadian Press]

· More Bad News for Beijing Hotels: The hotel industry in Beijing is not going to do as well as predicted. Some put the blame on strict visa policies. [NY Times]

· Booking Sites in Trouble Again: A small New Jersey town joins others in suing popular online hotel booking agencies, claiming they don't pay the full hotel tax demanded by the city. [Newsday]

· No New Hotel for the Javits Center: The Javits Center plan for an expansion which included a 1,200-room hotel along 11th Avenue at 35th Street can now be filed in the Lost Hotel Files. [NY Observer]

Eco-Hotels / Lost Hotel Files / Manhattan Hotels / → All Tags

Lost Hotel Files :: Whatever Happened to Greenhouse 26?

Starting in Spring 2008, you can wrap yourself in a certified organic towel, lay your head down on a certified organic mattress, breathe in the results of a geothermal heating and cooling system and sip an organic cocktail from an environmentally friendly roof garden, all from [New York's] first green boutique hotel.

This verbiage, posted on TreeHugger last year, sounds lovely, doesn't it? Except that the hotel, Greenhouse 26--like the Rick Nielsen/Hyatt Place project we postulated about earlier this week--doesn't exist, at least not anywhere that we can find it.

The project, to be located in Chelsea, was in the hands of developer Jack Ancona and designer Arpad Baksa, who hoped to earn LEED Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. It would have been the first New York hotel to use a geothermal heating and cooling system and the first hotel in the U.S. to use thermal breaks on room terraces as insulation from hot and cold air, TreeHugger said.

If you've got some details on what happened, let us know about it. Otherwise, this could be yet another case of a tree falling in the forest and no one being around to hear it.

[Photo: TreeHugger]

Hyatt Place / Cheap Trick / Celebrity Hotels / Lost Hotel Files / → All Tags

Lost Hotel Files: What Ever Happened to Cheap Trick-Hyatt Place Venture?

With so many celebrities developing hotels these days, you may not remember that a just under a year ago, Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen announced he and builder Brent Johnson were in talks to develop a guitar museum attached to a Hyatt Place Hotel in Rick's hometown of Rockford, IL.

"It's going to be garish, over the top, disgusting," Nielsen told the Rockford Register Star at the time. Following that appealing description, you may be shocked to learn what happened next.

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