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Starwood Announces St. Regis Bermuda, Opening...In Four Years

| June 30, 2009 at 5:12 PM | 0 Comments


Hamilton, Bermuda

Don't get too excited; you've gotta wait four years for this (but, on the bright side, maybe the economy will have recovered by then and you can actually afford to go here): Starwood has announced plans for The St. Regis Bermuda, to be "located in the heart of downtown Hamilton." Apparently, this is going to be the first major luxury hotel to open in downtown Hamilton in more than 50 years.

The hotel will have 140 guest rooms and suites, 80 residences, a spa, two restaurants, a wine bar, library, and a rooftop conservatory (ooooh!). And guests (also residents) will have exclusive access to the St. Regis Beach Club, which is close by, "where they can unwind amidst sparkling pink sand beaches, breathtaking ocean views, lush landscapes and luxury amenities including a salt-water infinity-edge pool, private serviced cabanas, indoor recreation room and signature spa services."

They're looking to make the place ideal for destination weddings and whatnot, with tons o' event space and a giant ballroom plus a courtyard.

All well and good, but it's not opening 'til 2013. Let's wait out the W South Beach (opening at the end of the week!) and then we can start looking toward 2013 and the likes of Bermuda, shall we?

[Photo: Robyn2175]

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Starwood and Marriott Introduce 'Telepresence' Systems

| June 30, 2009 at 9:31 AM | 0 Comments

Ha! We don't know if this is a coincidence or what, but both Starwood and Marriott announced today that they'll be introducing hi-tech "telepresence" systems in many of their hotels. Both hotel giants are promising these teleconferencing systems in select rooms (within select hotels) that give business travelers an "in-person meeting experience."

Telepresence, according to the Hotel Check-In blog, involves "multiple, 65-inch HD monitors that show life-size images" — and the AT&T versions of these Matrix-y things are going into big city Marriotts. Per Hotel Check-In:

Marriott agreed to install AT&T's Telepresence systems in 25 hotels across the globe in cities such as New York, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Hong Kong, Shanghai, Frankfurt and London. The systems will go into a mix of Marriott, J.W. Marriott and Renaissance hotels. Marriott expects some will be up and running by late October.

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O Canada, Starwood is Offering Up to 40% Off in Honor of Thee

| June 29, 2009 at 9:37 AM | 0 Comments


Le Royal Meridien King Edward, Toronto

No dogging on Canada. If it weren't for Canada, you wouldn't have the opportunity to score the discounts and deals we're about to share with you. So hold off the O Canada jokes for a hot minute (or at least til the end of the month).

In honor of Canada Day, Starwood Hotels across the great nation to the north are celebrating by offering a hot chunk of discounts. The sale is for a limited time only, though, and it ends on Canada Day (July 1st) so get over there and check out the rates ASAP.

We found the Le Meridien King Edward for a night in August priced at 129 CAD (about $111 USD) and Vancouver's Westin Grand was running as low as 160 CAD. Also, the Westin Resort in Whistler was down to an awesome 129 CAD as well. But: the Canada Day sale is only valid for stays through September 30th, so don't think you'll be scoring a cheapo ski vacay (also, that Westin is undergoing some renovations until December, so maybe it's not such an awesome deal after all).

You've got about 40 hours left to book. Go here.

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Starwood Takes Over Hawaii with Eleven Properties

Go To The Hotel's Web Site Where: 2259 Kalakaua Ave. [map], Honolulu, HI, United States, 96815

| June 26, 2009 at 4:32 PM | 0 Comments

It's not quite a dozen, but eleven hotels is still a lot, even if they are spread over four islands. At a private lunch yesterday, we were treated to an overview of Starwood’s Hawaii properties, and their plans for the future.

Starwood Hotels seems to be taking over the tropical archipelago with four properties on Oahu, three on Maui, and four on Kauai. With that many choices, Starwood thinks there will be something for everyone. And after taking a look at the properties, we kind of think they’re right.

Among the chain’s many properties is the flagship Royal Hawaiian, with its signature pink façade. The hotel was built in 1927 by a cruise ship company, and has been welcoming visitors to the sands of Waikiki Beach ever since. However, you can get an even better view of famous Diamond Head just down the road at the 30th-story restaurant, Twist at Hanohano, at Starwood’s Sheraton Waikiki.

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Westin's Heavenly Bed Gets the Greatest Birthday Cake Ever

| June 19, 2009 at 11:39 AM | 1 Comment

Westin Hotels' famed Heavenly Bed is celebrating its 10th birthday this year. Natch, when one celebrates a birthday, one gets a cake — and, apparently, when you're a bed that has slept with as many people as the Heavenly, the cake you get is the Greatest Cake of All Time, Ever.

And who do we know who creates the Greatest Cakes of All Time, Ever? The dude from Ace of Cakes, of course. Er, Food Network star Duff Goldman of Charm City Cakes, that is.

Westin commissioned him to make this three-foot-long Heavenly Bed, which reportedly suffered some high drama/trauma (great for TV!) in the form of a large crack in the cake due to NYC's incessant pouring rain.

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Can We Go Ahead and Officially Call Denizen 'Dunzo' Now?

| June 15, 2009 at 1:30 PM | 1 Comment

Big surprise here: the Washington Post did a big ol' rundown of the Starwood-Hilton legal battle over Denizen and there is no evidence that the Denizen brand is anything but, well, dead. If you're just tuning in, the Cliffs Notes go like this: a couple Starwood employees who helped develop the W Hotels brand left S-wood to develop a similar brand for Hilton called Denizen, and those execs allegedly stole a bunch of W trade secrets in the process — now Starwood is suing Hilton for corporate espionage and it's a huge mess.

Now, several weeks after the media frenzy and initial wave of tongue-wagging that surrounded the scandal when the news broke, the smoke has cleared a little bit and Washington Post was able to sort of tell the story without any crazy legal terms from top to bottom.

Some interesting tidbits: Ross Klein's (the former Starwood-turned-Hilton-exec who is sort of at the forefront of all this) attorney, said "Starwood's complaint is in large part an exaggerated and one-sided recitation of the facts." Apparenly, Klein's thinkin' that once all the facts are out on the table, it will look like he "acted in good faith." Okay.

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The New 'Aloft Experience' Site is Kind of Awesome

| June 8, 2009 at 11:28 AM | 1 Comment

Aloft recently explanded their website, launching a totally new section called The Aloft Experience — and the most important thing we have to say here is this: the music on the site is stellar. There is a little music player rolling through a playlist that includes Duran Duran, Jem and Sarah Bareilles. And you know how much we love us some decent hotel website music.

The new "microsite" is pretty sweet; the official purpose of the new offshoot is:

It showcases a range of interactive features, including a guided insider’s tour of the hotel, maps and city guides for each location which engage visitors through a series of original, branded games that bring the Aloft Hotels experience to life.

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Hilton and Starwood to Settle Denizen Dispute Out of Court?

| June 5, 2009 at 3:45 PM | 2 Comments

Unsurprisingly, reports are coming in that Hilton is doing what they can to settle their dispute (otherwise known as The Great Denizen Disaster) with Starwood out of court — because, obviously, they're trying to keep the damage to their already-pretty-soiled reputation to a minimum.

In more official words, Travel Daily News printed:

Hilton Hotels is seeking a negotiated settlement in its corporate espionage case with Starwood rather than seeing the legal spat battle between two of the industry’s fiercest competitors aired in public, thereby avoiding further humiliation of its botched entry into the lifestyle hotel sector.

Uh, in cased you missed all these shenanigans (watch the drama unfold here): Starwood filed a complaint in federal court in New York claiming two former Starwood executives hired by Hilton — Ross Klein and Amar Lalvani — had stolen information about the W hotel brand to develop Hilton's Denizen luxury-lifestyle hotel concept. It was a pretty clear case of corporate espionage, and last we heard, all development of Denizen was suspended until things could get moving with this legal battle.

Um, just a guess, but this could mean Denizen is probably dunzo, right? Maybe the biggest priorities for Hilton are just minimizing and repairing the damage to the company's reputation and moving on?

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Aloft, Element and Four Points Introduce 'Digital Newsstands'

| May 27, 2009 at 11:36 AM | 0 Comments

Whoa. Sweet. Just when we thought Amazon Kindles topped the list of awesome tech offerings for word nerds and news junkies, we hear about this: Starwood announced this week that they've entered into a partnership with Zinio (a company that digitally publishes print magazine titles) to offer a "Digital Newsstand" for free to guests in Aloft, Element, and Four Points by Sheraton hotel properties.

According to a press release:

The digital newsstand, which will be accessible in Starwood's guest rooms and lobby kiosks, will offer participating titles including: Caribbean Travel & Life, Destination Weddings & Honeymoons, Field & Stream, Golf Fitness Magazine, Kiteboarding, Macworld, mental_floss, Outside, Outside's GO, PC World, Saveur, Ski Magazine, Skiing, Spa Magazine, U.S. News & World Report, Wakeboarding and Working Mother. Also, Starwood will be the first hotel company to offer VIVmag, the first interactive digital women's luxury-lifestyle magazine, conceived and designed exclusively to be read digitally.

To access the digital newsstand during your stay, you click through from the internet portal page (on your laptop in your room or on a lobby kiosk) "to the private-label newsstand where free single issues will be featured," pick the magazine you want to read, register for Zinio, and read mags to your heart's content.

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The Five Best Awesomely-Cheesy W Hotel Taglines

| May 13, 2009 at 2:07 PM | 12 Comments

Somewhere in this world, it is someone's job to come up with creative, catchy and varied taglines to describe and promote different hotels within the same chain. And on hotel websites across the Internet, these sparkling marketing copy gems are on display to accompany pretty pictures and hotel descriptions, lending a bit of pizazz and style — but our favorite taglines, by far, are found on the W Hotels website.

Come along with us on this international tour, guided solely by awesomely-cheesy W Hotels taglines, won't you?

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Use Your Starwood Points to Get In On Some Jonas Brothers Action

| May 12, 2009 at 3:08 PM | 0 Comments

Oh, goodness. Well, nobody seems to be rollin' around in beds of cash quite like the tween dreams The Jonas Brothers, who are to the recession what cockroaches are to the apocalypse. The Atlantis cashed in on the tweeny empire by hosting a whole JoBro getaway last year (now they've moved onto other big fish, i.e. Miss Miley) and hotels around the nation get a lovely little bit of pappy exposure when the stars are snapped going in and out of hotel lobbies.

And now Starwood wants in on some of this action: they've been named "Proud Sponsor" of the Jonas Brothers 2009 summer concert tour. Yes, oh yes. Tweens everywhere will be tugging at Daddy's shirtsleeves, begging to stay at a W on their next family vacay. Or we think that's the idea, at least.

But there are perks here: the company's loyalty program, Starwood Preferred Guest, is giving members to opportunity to use their Starpoints to bid (yes, bid) on VIP packages for the JoBro concerts this summer.

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No W For Downtown NYC Until 2010

Go To The Hotel's Web Site Where: 123 Washington Street [map], New York, NY, United States, 10036

| April 29, 2009 at 3:13 PM | 2 Comments

Oh, New York City. You have so many visitors and so many hotels and so many opportunities and so much wonder and merriment and oh, so, so, so many hotel delays.

The latest in hotel delay news today comes to us by way of an eagle-eyed tipster, who noticed the opening date of the W New York Downtown had quietly changed on the hotel's website from "Summer 2009" to the vague "2010," which is particularly upsetting because it is now the only W property on the coming-soon-from-Starwood roster without a concrete opening date posted. You know, kind of like being the only kid in the high school graduating class who has "Undecided" listed as his college of choice on graduation day. Sad.

We knew the W Residences in the same FiDi building have not been without their own set of issues; namely, most good views from the condos remain blocked by a close-enough-to-touch building next-door, which is supposed to be razed sooner rather than later but who knows. Still, the hotel was expected to open on time this summer — alas, it appears, not so much.