Category: Coming Soon

El Blog de un Hotel: A Blog to Market a Hotel Under Construction!

El Blog de un Hotel 01
El Blog de un Hotel (A Hotel’s Blog)

My Blogger friend Albert Barra pointed me to El Blog de un Hotel ie A Hotel’s Blog. [ed: since the opening of the hotel the Blog has been discontinued and removed]

Not that I am able to read or write Spanish, but with the help of Google Translate (Beta) I can at least assume I know a bit about what El Blog de un Hotel is posting about.

I like the concept: The Hotel talks to the reader while being built and is meandering in its posts the same sort of way I am meandering myself in this Blog. It keeps its name and brand and location secret. It will be located in Spain and will open 365 days after the Blog started. As the Blog started September 25, 2007, the hotel will open in September 2008.

The last post shows us interesting Artist Impressions of the mystery hotel’s design like this:

El Blog de un Hotel 02

It features two clever ways of building traffic:

  1. If you Blog about me, I will give you a link back: So Bloggers link to me!
  2. If you guess me out, You may gain a freebie hotel night …..

Both may create their own buzz, or maybe even hype….

I will follow the developments with interest.

Last edit August 2009:
Alas the Hotel is the Madrid Eurostar, but it appears the blog has been wiped.

The landing page says: Translated via Google:

Blog of a Hotel

Hola a todos.
Hello everyone.

Como sabéis ya soy una realidad. As you know I’m already a reality. El pasado 9 de enero abrí mis puertas para empezar a recibir huéspedes. On January 9 I opened my door to start receiving guests. De momento todo va muy bien, pero estoy desbordado de trabajo: coordinando los montajes de las habitaciones, controlando la calidad de mis desayunos, poniendo a punto mi Well Health Club y dando una cálida bienvenida a todos los que ya han querido conocerme.
At the moment everything is going very well, but I am overwhelmed by work: coordinating the assembly of the rooms, checking the quality of my breakfast, my point being Well Health Club and giving a warm welcome to all who wanted to know.

Por todo ello, y lamentablemente, me será imposible seguir manteniendo activa esta bitácora . Therefore, unfortunately, I will be impossible to keep this blog active. Hemos compartido mucho juntos, he aprendido un montón de vuestros comentarios y espero que, a lo largo de este año vosotros también hayáis disfrutado con mis comentarios y descubriendo mis interioridades.
We shared a lot together, I learned a lot from your comments and hope that throughout this year you also you have enjoyed my comments and finding out my insides.

Ya se ha empezado a contactar a los ganadores de los diferentes premios, pero si estáis impacientes, podéis enviar un email a.
Has already begun to contact the winners of the awards, but if you’re impatient, you can send an email to email

Como dicen los humanos, esto no es un adiós sino un hasta pronto.
As the human, this is not a goodbye but a see you soon.

…It was a very nice and creative example of marketing via a blog… I am really surprised they simply threw away all the good work…

Dutch Design (20): Amstelveen: Citizen M and the Neighbourhood

Last Saturday the reverent Dutch Daily Newspaper

published a story about one of the future locations of a Citizen M Pod Hotel in Amstelveen, a suburb of, and connected with, Amsterdam. It gives more insight about the format of the Citizen M Pod Hotel concept.

It appears that the neighborhood, a middle to up class residential area, is contending the plans of Citizen M in court, as the building permit has been granted.

  • First there is an office building that has to be demolished to make place for the new hotel. I would say the building is not that disgusting, that it has to be demolished.
Citizen M Amstelveen
The building that will be demolished
Photo Maurice Boyer
  • They don’t like the design of the new building as it is not consistent with the architecture of the neighborhood. This is off course a very difficult discussion about “taste”
Citizen M Amstelveen Plan
  • Then they don’t like that the hotel will be located in a residential area. They fear too much traffic and too much parking problems, as no specific parking space is foreseen for the Hotel. The lawyer representing Citizen M claims that the guests will mainly arrive by international air transport and by taxi. I highly doubt that to be a truthful statement.
  • They fear it to become a by the hour rendez-vous Hotel and fear an influx of cheap backpackers tourism. The last argument is unlikely as the much cheaper hostel concept specifically caters for the backpackers.
  • They fear loss of privacy as guests will be able to look in their homes from the many windows. This is a bit strange argument if one knows the very Dutch habit of not closing the curtains when the sun sets, that many of our foreign guests find a rather peculiar typical Dutch habit.

It seems to take some time before the building permit will be finally granted….

Dutch Design (19): Third Pod Hotel Concept for Amsterdam Revealed: CitizenM

Early 2008 will see a third (the others being the Qbic and the Yotel) Pod Hotel, CitizenM Hotels, opening at the Amsterdam Schiphol Airport.

CitizenM Schiphol Airport Amsterdam

The 230 rooms (pods?) counting hotel is presently under construction.

Under the “Affordable Luxury” slogan:

CitizenM has partnered with internationally renowned architects Concrete, and European design giants Philips and Vitra to offer “affordable luxury for the people.” Rooms are friendly and functional and feature: a super king-size bed fitted with luxurious linen and pillows, a wall-to-wall window for plenty of natural light, a flat LCD television, Philips technology and ambient lighting, a rain shower and other luxurious amenities especially developed by a famous ‘nose’ (also responsible for creations of Commes des Garcons and Viktor and Rolf).

Citizen M Room

Inspired by accommodations on luxury yachts and private jets, citizenM built its own factory in order to realize its high quality hotel rooms. In its vision, no detail was left ignored: each room is 14 square meters – each of which has been carefully thought through to offer the height of functional design.

Their website is full of information. It even has a community building module. I would say this an industry example of how to announce your concept and/or hotel opening.

The one Amsterdam Schiphol Airport Hotel will be the first of many CitizenM hotels if they succeed tol roll out the concept as shown on this map of their plans:

CitizenM Map

The founders and executives of CitizenM are innovative visionaries, who have taken their well-rounded experience into realising CitizenM hotels. They are: Rattan Chadha (founder and former CEO of Mexx, director and partner of Oberoi Hotels & Resorts), Jan Wulf van Alkemade (hotel specialist), Tom Bas (former member of the board of directors of NH Hotels and Golden Tulip) and Michael Levie (former Executive and VP of Operations of various international hotel chains: Sonesta and NH Hotels). These are names to reckon with.

Here is the Video:

Blogged in the City is a Dutch language Blog about Hotels and E-commerce by Thomas Dieben who has a hotel background and is an E-commerce consultant who first picked up this news.

In the CitizenM Press release there is more information.

Delft: Ikea Hotel under Golden Tulip label

Ikea Tulip Inn

The Delft Ikea shop is able to produce traffic congestions on the motorway on its own. To my knowledge it is the only shop with its own motorway junction here in The Netherlands.

Ikea has expanded the shop and will establish a center of excellence. That will serve as a pilot for new concepts and products and as training center for Ikea workers from all over the world. They need a hotel for all those students.

As a small aside: Approximately 25 years ago my wife bought curtains from the first Ikea shop in The Netherlands that they closed in the meantime. The same lady who then sold the curtains to my wife still works for Ikea, but now in Delft, and recently sold curtains to my wife for a friend’s baby room. Speaking of employee’s loyalty….

Contrary to Shell that operates its coworker/student hotel itself behind the facade of its head office here in The Hague, Ikea has outsourced management of the new hotel to the Golden Tulip Group.

Last week the groundbreaking ceremony was held. Usually that means in the low lands to drive a long pole into the ground that will form part of the building’s fundament.

The Ikea/Tulip Inn with 140 rooms is scheduled to open December 2008.

Munich: The Charles, Rocco Forte's third German Hotel to open October 4, 2007

The Charles Hotel

From the Press Release:

The Rocco Forte Collection is delighted to announce that its Munich property will open on 4 October 2007. It will be called The Charles Hotel, in honor of Sir Rocco Forte’s father, renowned hotelier Lord Charles Forte.

The Charles Hotel is The Rocco Forte Collection’s third German property, joining Hotel de Rome in Berlin (which opened in October 2006) and Villa Kennedy in Frankfurt (which opened in March 2006), and confirms The Rocco Forte Collection as the key player in the luxury hotel market in Germany.

Located in the heart of the Bavarian city of Munich, guests of The Charles Hotel will be guaranteed a peaceful stay with great views over the area known as Lenbach Gärten (which lies on the edge of the Botanical Gardens). Ideal for business and leisure travelers, the hotel is within walking distance of the commercial district, popular shopping areas and entertainment facilities. It is also well located for transport links, being close to the city’s main train station, The Hauptbahnhof, with the Franz Josef Strauss airport lying just 28 km northeast of Munich.

A stylish new-build, The Charles Hotel is set to significantly raise the standard of visitor accommodation in Munich. The design has been overseen by The Rocco Forte Collection’s Director of Design, Olga Polizzi, and – as with all the other properties in the Collection – will have its own personality that reflects its location.

For example, there will be Bavarian limestone on the floors, ceramic artwork from Nymphenburg porcelain in the bathrooms and original paintings by Munich’s celebrated 19th century portrait artist Franz von Lenbach in the bedrooms, alongside works by contemporary artists living and working in and around Munich.

The eight-story, Euros 71.5 million hotel will have 132 40-square-meters rooms, nine Junior Suites (measuring 48 square meters each), 18 Master Suites (70 square meters) and a Presidential Suite (100 square meters). Located on the eighth floor, the stunning Presidential Suite boasts a large terrace with breathtaking views over the city and can be combined with a further three suites, creating an entire private floor of 455 square meters. Virtually all the rooms have views over the Botanical Gardens.

The hotel also comprises an Italian restaurant with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the Botanical Gardens, a terrace for outdoors dining in the summer months and a private dining room; a bar; seven conference rooms equipped with state-of-the-art technology and all benefiting from natural light; a ballroom accommodating up to 400 guests for a drinks reception; and a large spa with sauna, 15-meter swimming pool, five treatment rooms offering a range of wellness and beauty treatments and a gym with all the latest cardiovascular machinery.

Once in operation, The Charles Hotel will provide the same attention to detail, exceptional levels of comfort and personal service for which The Rocco Forte Collection has become so well known.