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.
· Hillary's Hotel Dilemma: TMZ is reporting that Hillary staffers are trying to unload all the hotel rooms they booked in Denver, in hopes their boss was going to be the Democratic presidential nominee.
· Ed Scheetz Still Making Money: Ex-CEO of Morgans Hotel Group, Ed Scheetz may have resigned from his post after a girl was found dead of a drug OD in his Vegas apartment but he's still making money. He just sold his Greenwich Village apartment for $8.7 million, reports The Real Deal. He bought it in 2006 for $6.7 million.
· Cosmo Hotel Did Rip-Off the Magazine?: Jenna discovered a link which positioned the upcoming Cosmo Hotel as the perfect place for Cosmo readers. Hearst lawsuit starting to make some sense. But not much.
· Layover Nation Contest: Y'all must be crazy not to enter this contest. There's no purchase required. All you have to do is submit a layover suggestion for Michael Kinsley when he takes his world trip in September. It's so easy to do we're gonna stop talking now. ENTER HERE.
Despite a serious scandal last summer which found his 23-year-old girlfriend dead in his condo in Las Vegas and the inevitable step-down from Morgans Hotel Group, life is still good for Ed Scheetz.
How good? He was able to buy a new apartment in Soho, a penthouse, for $10 million. The Observer reports:
Old listings show that the place has a total of 6,189 square feet of indoor and outdoor space, beamed 13-foot ceilings, a wine cooler, a steam room and a Jacuzzi tub. There's also space for a large Jacuzzi tub on the roof terrace.
So while his tastes for high design might remain, let's hope his tastes for high living has been scaled back.
Meanwhile, another tipster let us know that Scheetz has not changed/updated his profile info on the ASmallWorld.net, "a private online community" aka networking site. He's still listed himself as the CEO of Morgans and has a picture (above) of him in one of the hotels. Oops.
A hotel worker at the Clift Hotel in San Francisco was arrested yesterday morning on suspicion of sexually assaulting a female hotel guest. The San Francisco Chronicle reports:
Police arrested Christian Rojas at the lobby of the hotel on Geary Street at 5 a.m. Officials said Rojas had used a key card assigned to him to enter the room, assaulted the victim, 39, and then left.
Suddenly, those women-only floors found in India with security guards seem like a really good idea.
In other news, disgraced ex-CEO Ed Scheetz tried to offer hush money to the family of the young girl who died in his Las Vegas apartment last summer.
The New York Times also checked out another NYC hotel in their Sunday edition yesterday, The Royalton Hotel which received a brand-new look recently.
Interestingly, most of the article is about the recent woes of Morgans Hotel Group (the Royalton's managment company) and its former CEO Ed Scheetz whose "girlfriend" ODed in his Las Vegas condo.
The Times says the Royalton which was stripped of the original Philippe Starck interior, has lost the glamorous crowd it once attracted in its heyday of the 1990s. And it remains to be seen whether the hotel's new look will indeed be a new life for the hotel:
On a recent Saturday night, the Royalton's lobby was about half full. Some of those perched on the leather sofas said that they preferred the new design, which they found cozy; others, like Paul Carpenter, an investment banker from London, said they missed the flair of the Starck lobby.
Meanwhile, Ed Scheetz's troubled personal life is only half of the woes for Morgans Hotel Group. With the purchase of the Hard Rock Las Vegas as well as with the expansion of the Mondrian brand and other new hotels, the hotel firm is "operating with crazy leverage" said one analyst.
What that ultimately will mean for you hotel guests for the time being is really high room rates. For example, the new rooms at the Royalton start at $500 a night.
The death of Michelle Lynn Hatchel, whose body was found by former Morgans CEO Ed Scheetz in his Las Vegas condo, has raised some questions about just what happened between this 23-year-old girl and the hotel exec.
The Channel 8 I-Team in Las Vegas has uncovered the police report filed for the incident. The report had previously not been found or released much to the dismay of Hatchel's family.
In it, the report doesn't reveal too much but does give Scheetz's side of the story:
Scheetz says Hatchel went to the Pure nightclub and returned to the condo about at about 3 a.m. on the 29th. Scheetz says Hatchel "appeared to be fine" when he left for work. But when he returned home at 8 p.m. that night, Scheetz says he immediately placed the call to 911.
The coroner determined that Hatchel died of an overdose of oxycodone combined with cocaine and the police report notes a "white powdery substance" was found near her purse.
So the police report doesn't clear up much about the duo's relationship and doesn't even shine light on the text messages Hatchel sent to her friends. But for now, even though this case has gathered national media attention, Scheetz has still not commented on the incident.
Things do not look good for former Morgans Hotel Group CEO Ed Scheetz, whose girlfriend was found dead in his Las Vegas condo nearly two months ago.
The NY Post reports that the cellphone belonging to Michelle Lynn Hatchel was recovered and on it were text messages she sent to friends about how unhappy and scared she was with Scheetz, who she had only recently met.
"I can't believe how much coke he does, all the time, all day long," Hatchel wrote, adding, "He keeps leaving me to talk to a girl he dated."
Hatchel does not identify the man in the message, which was sent to a friend named Gina at 11:56 the night before she died.
In a message sent a few minutes earlier, at 10:36 to a friend named "Miko," Hatchel wrote: "Things are really bad. Ed has been so mean to me."
The girl he dated could be the "angry ex-girlfriend" that was reported by ABC News.
Meanwhile, Scheetz who is supposedly in the middle of a divorce and reportedly has three kids, was probably forced to step down not just because a girl showed up dead in his bed but because the incident would have severely impacted the Morgans application for a gaming license at The Hard Rock Hotel.
Turns out the gaming board doesn't look fondly on hoteliers with drug and women problems. And with MHG opening up both a Mondrian and a Delano in Las Vegas by 2010, there is no room for mistakes.
Yet there must be someone who's very good at damage control inside MHG. Scheetz resigned on Sept. 20th, a full week before Hatchel's death was reported (nearly a month after she died) and according to the LV Business Press the application for a gaming license shouldn't be slowed down at all. Just business as usual in Vegas.
The other week we found out that Morgans Hotel Group's former CEO Ed Scheetz most likely stepped down from his post to deal with the aftermath of his girlfriend's fatal drug overdose, which happened inside his Las Vegas condo.
But what appeared to be an open and shut case is not quite over. The family of the 24-year-old woman, Michelle Hatchel, is demanding answers, according to ABC News.
[She] called and text-messaged friends to say she was scared and hiding in a closet after the man's angry ex-girlfriend showed up, her family says. "She told them she was afraid,'' her grandmother, Helen Barker, told ABC News. By night, she was dead.
Scheetz discovered her dead body that night and promptly called 911. The Clark County Coroner's office stated the cause of death as an "acute'' overdose of cocaine and the painkiller oxycodone.
Scheetz also referred to Hatchel in a 911 call as his girlfriend but he had only met her in NYC a few days before. Meanwhile, Hatchel's family is trying to retrace her final hours with Scheetz, who still has not personally spoken to them, as well as try and find her cellphone. Sad....
While things seem to be looking up for hotelier Jason Pomeranc, whose Six Columbus hotel finally opened today, other hoteliers may not be faring so well.
· Developer king Rick Caruso had bought the abandoned Miramar project near Santa Barbara earlier this year after the property spent years languishing under others owners--Ian Schrager, then Ty "Beanie Baby" Warner. But Caurso's hit a few road bumps as well. Apparently, he wanted to create new roads leading to the property but was promptly shut down by the neighbors. It doesn't look like Miramar will ever open.
· Meanwhile former Morgans Hotel Group CEO Ed Scheetz, who stepped down a few weeks ago for personal reasons, has a lot more on his mind than we thought. Turn out his girlfriend died from a drug overdose in Las Vegas on August 29th. The overdose of 24-year-old Michelle Lynn Hatchel has been ruled as accidental and Scheetz is not being investigated.
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by juliana
We've made note of the extremely bad year that the 
While things seem to be looking up for hotelier 
