We got curious when fashionable Aussie blogger Karen Cheng said that the Accor Hotels people were sending her to stay at the "brand new" Grand Hotel by Sofitel on Spencer Street in Melbourne--we didn't think it was new. But a quick investigation soon found that in some ways, it is a bit new: it's just joined the exclusive MGallery hotel collection.
As far as we can figure out, the whole MGallery thing is meant to be a fancy version of the Mercure brand, hence the "M". To kick off the collection Accor have chosen eight hotels from their Sofitel and Grand Hotel Mercure chains to become MGallery hotels, and the Grand in Melbourne is one of them. Get it? So it's new, but not new.
People don't normally mention Motel 6 and "sleek design" in the same sentence. After all, the chain is known as the prototypical bare-bones roadside motel, with every material and piece of furniture in one seemingly the cheapest available in order to keep the nightly room rate below the competition's.
French parent company Accor is trying to change all that though, with "a modern, European boutique-style flair" according to the official press release.
Spin or no spin, the new room design, dubbed the Phoenix design, does sound like a major improvement:
The room includes ambient lighting, wood-effect flooring rather than carpet, and a 32-inch flat-screen TV. The flat screen TV is displayed on the entertainment unit which conceals the door-less wardrobe behind it, thus combining two needs into one unit.
Also included on the entertainment unit is a cubby for personal items and a multi-media panel allowing guests to plug in their mp3 players, CD players and laptop computers - this feature allows guests to listen to their favorite tunes or use the flat-screen TV as their computer monitor while enjoying Wi-Fi internet access in their room. The room also features pedestal beds with a new taupe-colored coverlet and pillow-top platform mattress.
And of course that WiFi will be free, despite a room rate that is 1/10 or less of the hotels charging you for access.
Construction will begin on the first prototype "in the latter half of 2008." The new prototype will then be available to franchisees starting summer 2009.
After the jump, see what a Motel 6 bedspread currently looks like.
Easter's coming early this year, and in Sydney as well as hunting for chocolate Easter eggs or greeting the Easter bilby (the Australian animal version of the Easter bunny), they'll be celebrating the Darling Harbour Hoopla Festival as well.
Hoopla is a circus and acrobatic festival that will see performers juggling, busking, abseiling and doing aerial stunts and slapstick comedy routines at many locations around the Darling Harbour precinct, all for free, and it sounds like a good laugh and a lot of fun.
Forget any visions of unspoiled hill tribe regions in the far north: the 150-room Pullman Sapa Resort and the 200-room Pullman Lao Cai Hotel are on the way. Heavily touristed Ha Long Bay will get its first international hotel: Novotel Ha Long Bay, opening this summer.
Two new Mercure brand hotels will open in Hanoi, scheduled for 2009 and 2010--the first Mercure hotels in the country. More Novotels are on the way, including one in the beach resort area of Nha Trang.
Surprisingly, there were no high-end Sofitel hotels in the announcement, despite a lack of choices for luxury travelers and a booming export economy attracting plenty of foreign business travelers. Vietnam attracted 4.2 million foreign visitors in 2007, an annual increase of over 17 percent.
Still these will probably not be the last of the announcements: Accor opened an office in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) on Wednesday.
Accor North America and its French-style Sofitel Hotels have signed a new landmark agreement with Community Energy, Inc. to purchase clean, renewable wind energy to power all nine of its U.S. Sofitel locations.
This new eco-friendly agreement gives Sofitel Hotels the distinction of being the first hotel chain to be an EPA Green Power Partner.
The Financial Times reports that Accor Hotels will be upgrading its Sofitel Hotel brand to accommodate more luxury and business travellers.
Gilles Pélisson, chief executive of Accor, is hoping to tap into the luxury brand market first. Afterall Accor is French and so is Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Hermes, and Cartier, all luxury exports. Using these fashion brands as models, Accor will bring a new structure to the Sofitel brand.
Mr Pélisson believes that some less inspiring venues have compromised the brand's image. Accor plans to hive off 35 such hotels into a new chain aimed mainly at business travellers, where they will trade under the Pullman name, a brand from the golden age of luxury train travel that the French company is resuscitating.
Particularly atmospheric properties will be dubbed Sofitel Legends, while boutique-style venues will bear the name So by Sofitel.
If this means that more Sofitels will look like the Sofitel Los Angeles (above), then we can't wait. But of course, such upmarket changes will be reflected in room rates which will increase about $60 in the next few years. Let's just hope they can put some money into spell-checking for their blogs.
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by amandak
