Category: Awards

Wow! Our Guests do Appreciate us!

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We use Hoteliers.com, which is not a traditional OTA that charges commissions, but a site that offers what the traditional OTAs offer, but for a moderate annual service fee. If you make your reservation via the website of Haagsche Suites, it actually goes via their website. Together with maintaining availability in one place, it helps us tremendously to prevent overbooking.

Hoteliers.com has announced that they will be giving awards for the first time in 6 categories that their own guest reviews monitor:

Best Over all
1. In de Duinen, Callantsoog
2. B&B Fort Amsterdam, Amsterdam
3. Haagsche Suites, Den Haag
4. Misc Eatdrinksleep, Amsterdam
5. Parkhotel Horst, Horst

Beste Service
1. In de Duinen, Callantsoog
2. Misc Eatdrinksleep, Amsterdam
3. Asgard Hotel, Groningen
4. Haagsche Suites
5. B&B Fort Amsterdam

Best Location
1. Hotel Torenzicht, Amsterdam
2. Het Roode Lopen, Ermelo
3. The Dylan Amsterdam
4. Bilderberg Landgoed de Wilmersberg, de Lutte (Twente)
5. B&B Fort Amsterdam

Best value for money
1. B&B la Festa, Amsterdam
2. Holland Hotel liauckama State, Sexbierum (Friesland)
3. Hotel Manna, Nijmegen
4. Holland Hotel ?t Anker, Mierlo (Noord Brabant)
5. Misc Eatdrinksleep

Best comfort
1. Haagsche Suites
2. Texel Suites
3. B&B Fort Amsterdam
4. Misc Eatdrinksleep
5. Dorint Hotel Amsterdam Airport

Cleanest
1. B&B Fort Amsterdam
2. Haagsche Suites
3. B&B van Ostade, Amsterdam
4. Hotel Fita, Amsterdam
5. Herberg de Hondsrug, Eext (Drenthe)

It wasn’t until a fellow twittering hotel ( @CarltonTheHague thank you!) in the Hague congratulated us for the many nominations and reading about it on the Dutch Hospitality News site Horeca Entree who recently also decided to start with a Twitter presence as @HorecaEntree, until it finally registered in my mind.. busy as I was with guests..

Congratulations for all the fellow nominees, especially In de Duinen, Callantsoog and B&B Fort Amsterdam! I know what hard work goes with it!

I would like to thank all our guests for their support and taking the time to fill out the review forms. Also I would like to thank the very nice and always helpful people at Hoteliers.com for their continuous support and good work. Hm thinking about it, it is about time Hoteliers.com do establish their own Twitter presence:-)

In Action at the 2009 Dutch Bloggies Awards Gala

Happy Hotelier in Action at 2009 Dutch Bloggies Awards

The guy, Roelof de Vries of 360 Foto, who took the amazing dizzying 360 Degree shots from which I took this cutting was standing next to me when I was taking photos of the 2009 Dutch Bloggies Awards Gala.
Probably I was standing in his way while wondering about him using his tripod, until I saw the result over at the Dutch Bloggies site.

I had a special interest to go and see the Awards, because it was only 5 minutes away from where I live and work in The Hague. It was sponsored by The Hague. But most importantly my significant other blog Chair blog had made it into the final 5 from which the jury choose the winning blog in the category Art, Culture and Entertainment blogs of the Dutch Bloggies. I must admit this nerd was a bit excited albeit skeptical.

Here is the complete Awards List at Dutch Bloggies. I do hope they complete the short lists of all categories.

The Winner NRCNext.NL of the over all award choose this photo as their award portrait.

NRCNEXT NL Wins 2009 Dutch Bloggies over all Award

And my direct competitor and winner in the category Art, Culture and Entertainment blogs, Mick! choose several among which:
Mick!

I’ve given priority to uploading my photo stream and have now to run to do some hotel duties before I can flesh out my observations.

In the meantime do head overt to my Flickr set 2009 Dutch Bloggies Awards in The Hague and please do help me people tag those Dutch Blogging Nerds.

More to follow!

Hot Michelin Star and Hotel Newbe: Niven Kunz

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The new 2010 Michelin Guide has been published and this is Niven Kunz of Restaurant Niven in Rijswijk, a suburb of The Hague. Probably he is the youngest Dutch chef awarded with a Michelin Star, or does he only look very young? Anyway, he’s now also a hotelier with 2 rooms. Congratulations Niven with your star and welcome as fellow hotelier.

I took this bit dreamy portrait photo last week when he was showing off at the 2010 Food festival in The Hague which was very well organized.

You can congratulate him on Twitter as Niven Kunz

Proud 2010 Gault Millau Hotelier

Gault Millau 2010 sticker for Haagsche Suites

Yesterday, as the first of the 5 or 6 prestigious restaurant guides in The Netherlands, the Dutch version of the Gault Millau Guide presented its 2010 awards and 2010 guide with the best 500 and something Restaurants and best 220 Hotels of The Netherlands here around the corner in The Hague. I’m a bit sad I had to miss the ceremony…so near by.

Today I received the sticker proving the Gault Millau editors deem Haagsche Suites worthy to belong to the best 220 Dutch Hotels in their guide. Thank you Gault Millau for the quick service, that even beats the new listings on your own website 🙂

Gault Millau started in France as a restaurant guide in 1969. It was founded by two restaurant critics, Henri Gault (1929-2000) and Christian Millau. The French site is a mere window for their paper guide.

Yesterday the Belgian and Luxemburg Branche of Gault Millau also presented its 2010 Guide and awards.

I grabbed the following from the Misset Horeca Site:

Plaese note the best restaurant has been awarded 20 points out of 20 which is remarkable in the Gault Millau history. At the same time our Belgian neighbors awarded a Dutchman, Roger van Damme the Chef of the year award for his Antwerp based lunches only restaurant.

Gault Millau’s top 13 Restaurants of The Netherlands:

Points Restaurant City
20 Oud Sluis Sluis
19,5 Inter Scaldes Kruiningen
19,5 Beluga Maastricht
19,5 De Librije Zwolle
19 De Leest Vaassen
18 La Rive Amstel Hotel Amsterdam
18 Chalet Royal Den Bosch
18 De Lindenhof Giethoorn
18 De Bokkedoorns Overveen
18 Parkheuvel Rotterdam
18 De Zwethheul Schipluiden
18 De Leuf Ubachsberg
18 ‘t Brouwerskolkje Overveen



gaultmillau 2010 logo
Two of those top restaurants, Parkheuvel and De Zwetheul are easy to reach for a dinner when staying in Haagsche Suites.

Two other Restaurants Calla’s and Seinpost who also earned good points are even nearer to Haagsche Suites. Seinpost has the best wine food combining sommelier of 2010.

Austria, Italy, Germany and Switzerland each have their own Gault Millau guides.The US and the UK have their Gayot guides. Gayot was a friend of Gault and Millau and they published joint guides until a schism in 2000.

Gault Millau is said to be the guide of the food purists more than the Guide Michelin….

Nominated for the Dutch Bloggies with Two Blogs!

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Because I’m writing my blogs in the English Language – the Dutch Bloggies site is entirely in the Dutch Language – and only about 7% of the readers of Happy Hotelier originate from the Netherlands, I never anticipated any ranking in the Dutch Bloggies Award.

So you can imagine that I’m quite amazed (and a bit proud) the Dutch Bloggies jury has deemed it worthy to nominate not only this blog, but also my significant other blog Chair Blog among 300 blogs for the public voting round of the Dutch Bloggies Award.

As of the moment of publishing this there are only 11 more hours before the public voting round of this week closes and 20 of the 300 nominated blogs will enter the final round.

If you like you can vote here.

Time permitting I will be covering the Award Ceremony as that will take place in The Hague, The Hague being an official Sponsor of the venue.