Category: 101 Happy Hotelier

All you may want to know about Happy Hotelier and his blog

Let Chaos Inspire you – Grab a Sneak Preview

Regular readers know I publish on the side at Trendhunter, a cool community that scores the net in search of everything trendy.

Actually if you are really curious to know into what direction fashion, style, architecture, design, hotels, marketing, advertizing and many more topics are moving: Trendhunter offers you a daily one stop opportunity to remain up to date.

Like me, you could consider to become a free member and enjoy the thrill of a hyper trendy and creative community.

Being part of that community enables me to share with you a sneak preview of a very interesting upcoming book by the chief of the tribe, Jeremy Gutsche, Exploiting Chaos.

Jeremy is becoming one of the trend gurus by his own of this era. More than 30,000 members of the community contribute he skillfully knitted together contribute trends to the TrendHunter site. Like no one else Jeremy has his finger on the pulse of the crowds, or the tribes like Seth Godin likes to call us. He offers great insight and a chance to reflect on the near future.

DID YOU KNOW THAT Hewlett-Packard, Disney, Hyatt, MTV, CNN, Microsoft, Burger King, and GE all started during periods of economic recession? Periods of uncertainty fuel tremendous opportunity, but they also reshuffle the deck and change the rules of the game. That’s where EXPLOITING CHAOS comes in…

Read in the Sneak Preview about the fast changes that affect big companies and how small entrepreneurs were and will be able to thrive on new ideas.

The book will be available in the bookstores from September 1, 2009.

You can now download a 45 page Sneak Preview for free!

Cruise Europe in a Qrooz (Dutch Design 45)

qrooz-3
Qrooz 01 against the background of Dutch architect Ben van Berkel’s Rotterdam “Swan Bridge”.

In my youth I have extensively traveled the many canals, rivers and lakes of The Netherlands with a 1890 built barge that my dad had converted in a moving house boat in 1960. Many people did that in the 50ies and 60ies with barges that were put out of commission and were not scrapped by generous scrapping subsidies, because road traffic became more fashionable in those years than transport over water. As a student we even hauled motor yachts from the Mediterranean through France and Germany to The Netherlands. I say a moving house boat, because it it moved more like a crab than it sailed. Comfort was Spartan. Only cold water and no shower. In the first years even no heating. But we had a lot of fun wit it. I learned from it that The Netherlands can be best viewed from its waters.

Vrouw-Holle

In 2001 we sold the barge, named Vrouw Holle, to an Englishman who after an extensive renovation is now underway with it somewhere in Europe.

Haagsch-Schuim

Later on with friends and with my current small fast motorboat Haagsch Schuim I have traveled much longer distances.

I must admit I sometimes do envy the current owner of Vrouw Holle and dream of having my own sailing house again. Never necessary to be in one place for long. Always possible to adapt your neighborhood to your mood. Do you want to be fashionable? Moor in Amsterdam, London, Paris or in Berlin all cities that are navigable. Do you want peacel? Seek a mooring place somewhere in a remote place like one of Finland’s 1000 lakes. Much more freedom on the water than when camping on land. And rather than carrying around all sort of stuff to your second home, caravan or yacht, you have your home with you: Ideal!

The same dream did 5 Dutchman*) set out to develop the Qrooz which is a combination of a house a boat and a lounge.

qrooz 2
One of the 5: Dutch industrial designer Huibert Groenendijk who also designed the Roterdam watertaxi:

Groenendijk-4tek

Although he probably wants to forget about it, Huibert also designed a motor yacht version of the Rotterdam Watertaxi:

V-Tesse

The V Tesse or the Blu V-Tesse that sadly disappeared from the market.

Qrooz-1

Back to the Qrooz, a design that seems to work as 2 Qroozes have been launched till today and number one has cruised the European waters extensively already.

It has an enormous living space. It comes in Mini, Large and XL sizes and the prices range from Euro 464,000.- onward. (yes you probably have to sell your house to afford it:-)

*) The 5 are:
Arno Schuurs: Initiative
Huibert Groenendijk: Initial design
Peter Bosgraaf: Naval Design
Casper Helldorfer: Building
Sander Doves: Partner

I Blog – Five Years Already!


I was too busy to notice it myself, but my first blog post dates back to June 5, 2004.

Rather than looking back in detail, which might be a bit boring, I’ve decided to finally complete the English translation and enhancement of my first ever power point presentation.

Ifitt had asked me for a presentation in Dutch for their Dutch day of Enter09, their annual conference. The 2009 edition was held in Amsterdam in January, 2009. The brief was to tell something about the do’s and don’ts by a blogging hotelier. Look for yourself:-)

Am curious to have your reactions:-)

Wanna Become a Celebrity Hotelier?

The Happy "Celebrity Hotelier"
The Happy "Celebrity Hotelier"

3 ways of becoming a Celebrity Hotelier

  1. You have celebrities who become hoteliers – think Robert de Niro or Bill Gates-,
  2. You have hoteliers who become celebrities – think Andre Balazs or Paris Hilton (provided she can be considered a hotelier at all), and
  3. You have Incognito Hoteliers who host celebrities.

Thus far I belong to the third category.

Am I a celebrity Hotelier?

Recently @Jill Love; of Buy Cruises commented she would fancy me in a Smoking (Tuxedo if you whish, but Smoking is the French term that we use in here in the Netherlands as well), after I had confessed online that I’m a (cigarette) Smoking Hotelier.

Somewhere in my tweets with her I mentioned that I had to look after celebs in the hotel. Her comment inspired me to make this self portrait, when I had to attend a formal venue in Smoking (or Tuxedo if you wish) recently.

If Google says so

Then, totally by accident, I searched Google Images for Celebrity owned Hotels and Celebrity Hotelier and Celebrity Hoteliers and found my own face between the first images that came up and found other photos I published on this blog also showing between the first search results. Even photos that have nothing to do with these search terms.

It made me ask myself: “Do you wanna be a Celebrity Hotelier?”.

My answer to this question is: “No, not necessarily, I’m perfectly happy to remain an Incognito Hotelier catering celebrities, but it could be very well in the interest of Haagsche Suites to become a Celebrity Hotelier in order to attract even more celebrities and other fine guests.”

Testing my case

One and another made me put together this little SEO experiment to see whether it is possible to make Google believe that I’m a Celebrity Hotelier and make it a self fulfilling prophecy 🙂

PS: Today I repeated the search and my own face disappeared from the image search results, but still various and sometimes totally off topic photos from this blog are appearing high in the search results. We will see what happens.

Update May 26

The experiment seems to work: After some 6 hours Google had picked it up and upped my ranking for several search terms. The ranking differs per Google server (as usual). Now I’m uploading some well tagged photos to Flickr. See what will happen! It may be too much 🙂

My oh so Hurt Ego

Hurt, but not so badly
Hurt, but not so badly

A late – sure, he would insist on the “late”! – Baby Boomer Friend threw a party. He had invited Johnny and the Gangsters of Love to do a gig.

Johnny and the Gangsters of Love Jumping Around
Johnny and the Gangsters of Love Jumping Around

There we were with the whole bunch of Baby Boomers standing on the street in front of my friend’s house, when Johnny and the Gangsters of Love came around the corner in their 60ies Pontiac Bonville, installed the sound and started rocking and rolling from and on the Pontiac.

If you watch their trailer footage, you’ll understand why your’s truly got so excited that he started to Rock and Roll with – who else than – Dancegirl, Daughter # 2. He tried to throw her in a proper 360 degrees backward head over swing over his hip, lost his equilibrium and fell flat on his face. Not only that. As Dancegirl was just in the 180 degrees position of her swing, she also fell flat on her shoulder and face.

Luckily, apart from some bruises, scratches and blue spots, nothing serious happened.

But to realize you have to stop doing 360ies while rocking and rolling because your getting too old, hurts your ego! It HURTS deeply!