In a meeting today in Beverly Hills Ian Schrager and J.W. Marriott, Jr. will introduce the name Edition for their earlier announced venture. They will announce signed development deals with the first properties being opened in 2010. They have reached agreements with developers for the first nine of what eventually could be more than 100 Edition hotels in markets around the globe. Under the agreements, Edition hotels are now planned for Paris, Madrid, Costa Rica, Miami, Washington, Chicago and Scottsdale, Ariz. Two hotels are planned for Los Angeles.
They are in advanced discussions involving 20 more hotels with as many as 30 agreements in prime locations expected by the end of 2008.
Six months ago, they anticipated having only five projects announced by the end 2007, essentially half of what has actually been signed.
The hotels will have an average size of 150-200 rooms. Not exactly what I would call a Boutique Hotel Brand.
World-renowned architects and designers will be recruited to create one-of-a-kind buildings spanning the complete range of project types, from new construction, to conversions, to dramatic renovations. Mr. Schrager will be leading the Edition venture on concept, design, marketing, branding and food and beverage. Marriott will be overseeing the development process, and will operate the properties.
Very cleverly Mr. Marriott devoted a post to it on his Marriott on the Move Blog from which I pinched the photo.
Quite funny Mr. Marriott picked this photo where he has his eyes open and Mr Schrager not so much.
There I learned that actually the meeting was on January 29, 2008.
Wow! What a view from your room on the Eiffel Tower!
From the roof of the Leipzig Gallery of Contemporary Art the one room (one suite) Hotel Everland has moved to the roof of the Paris Palais de Tokyo where it will receive guests for an overnight stay and museum visitors during the day until the end of 2008.
In an interview with the Australian News Com Swiss artists Sabina Lang who with Daniel Baumann forms the duo “L/B” that created the artsy Hotel concept, commented:
“It’s what we thought of as an ideal hotel room,” Ms Lang said as she watched a giant crane being prepared to winch the prefabricated green unit up from the back of a truck.
Hotel Everland, originally conceived for Expo 2002, has already spent 18 months at the Gallery for Contemporary Art in Leipzig. But the view from the Palais de Tokyo, incorporating the Paris skyline and the Eiffel Tower, is of a different kind from the east German tower block guests saw there.
“You shouldn’t need a television,” Ms Lang said.
She said it was important for the work to be an actual hotel as well as a part of the museum. Guests pay Euro 333.- (currently $526.86) a night during the week and Euro 444.- (currently $702.48) at weekends, a comparable rate to other hotels in the chic 16th arrondissement, with charges used to cover running costs.
Guests book online at the Hotel Everland site but stay only for the night after closure of the museum. During the day, the room can be inspected by museum visitors.
Reservations, which opened at the start of October, have been brisk and the first two months are already booked out. But the two artists have not been tempted to change trades and abandon art for the hospitality industry.
“It’s absurd to have a one-room hotel and it’s never going to be a success as a business plan,” Ms Lang said. “We just like to play around with the idea of exclusivity and luxury.”
Dinner?
On September 17 there will be another Epicurean happening: The US $ 30,000.- pp Dinner of the Chefs. A gastronomic experience, bringing together 38 Michelin stars (16 three stars donated chefs) in the Palais de Versaille.
On arrival at the airport in Paris, the sixty guests will be shuttled in their own limousine to their luxury hotel, where they will stay for the night of September 17.
Madame Giscard d’Estaing herself is to host the venue.
Philippe Model will decorate the venue.
A special Chopin recital will be performed in the Pavillon Français by the esteemed pianist Princess Caroline Murat- Haffner and by another young virtuoso Jack Liebeck, from the Purcell School of Music in London.
The dinner will take place in the banquet hall of Le Grand Trianon, Louis XIV’s private rooms, and will count fifteen courses, served by sixteen of the world’s most renowned Chefs. Each will be explaining their own creations, giving a unique insight into the gastronomic processes from source to table.
The net profit of this special event will be donated to the Fondation pour l’Enfance (child Foundation), which aims to combat child abuse.
Or the October 8, 2007 Black and White Ball?
If the dinner is a bit to expensive for you, you can opt for a Euro 1,200.- invitation for the Black & White Ball in the Orangerie of Palais de Versailles, celebrating the 15th International Evening for Children and the 30th anniversary of the same Fondation pour l’Enfance (Child Foundation) and also hosted by madame Giscard d’Estaing.
I wasn’t aware it is almost completely new, at least for The Netherlands, as it appears it was available earlier in the USA, in Taiwan and in France: The Heineken 5 Liter DraughtKeg.
We hosted a party last Monday and someone took a cooled Heineken 5 L DraughtKeg with him and installed it. I noted the recent transport didn’t create any frothy problem when using it.
Installation was so easy and natural that it seemed the 5 L DraughtKeg was there already for ages…(off course similar systems are already on the market for ages). Not so: The guy who brought the keg is an early adapter.
Today, after having used 7/8 of the 5 liter keg on Monday, I took it out of the fridge and had another couple of nice draught beers.
What is it?
It is a mini disposable double walled beer keg. The assumption it being double walled appeared to be wrong after I had seen a video where they sawed the keg through.
It is pressurized and comes complete with an easy to install tap. Just tap the keg and draw up to 20 glasses of crisp draught beer.
And with Heineken’s patented Intelligent Pressure System, you can be sure every glass, from first to last will be perfect.
Getting Started:
It comes with a very simple plastic tap mechanism in a blister pack on top of it and picture instructions showing how to use it.
Chill the keg for at least 10 hours in your fridge.
Remove the tap components from the blister pack on top of the keg.
Remove the green plastic closing cap from the top of the keg.
Snap the ring on top of the keg.
Place the mini tap in the center of the ring.
Details:
After first use the beer stays fresh for 30 days when stored in the fridge.
You can take off the tap and re apply it.
You can store it on its site in the fridge.
No froth forming as with the traditional large keg in a tap installation.
Some foaming during the initial pour is normal. It should settle down after that. For best results, the beer should be cooled for at least 10 hours at 2-5 degrees Centigrade (40-45 degrees Fahrenheit). Do not store at temperatures above 35 degrees Centigrade (95 degrees Fahrenheit). Do not shake the keg before usage. Make sure your glasses are rinsed and cool.
Some considerations
There have been miniature beer kegs around for years, but thus far the tap mechanisms were horrible in use and you would hardly ever get the (at least in The Netherlands required) two fingers froth on your beer.
Apparently Taiwan served as a test market and the first 1,000 kegs imported were sold within two weeks (source Nation Multimedia).
Heineken introduced the Beertender in 2004 together with Krupps. Later Philips followed with a similar system in cooperation with Inbev. It sold tremendously, but the disadvantage was that chilling the beer in the beertender took a long time and storing a half used keg was only possible inside the beertender. So I take it that the introduction of this new 5L DraughtKeg will eat the market of this Beertender.
Dutch seafront bars are already complaining that the they sell less beer because of the 5L DraughtKeg (you have 3 to 4 hours of really nice cool beer after taking it from your fridge). The real reason is off course they charge horrible for a glass of draught beer.
Most important consideration: It is much handier than slaving with crates with bottles.
Most important question: Is it sustainable? Heineken claims it is recyclable….
Sources
More on Heineken Com
More multimedia about the DraughtKeg: Party Heineken
More on the USA introduction at Free Republic
DraughtKeg on YouTube:
On YouTube I found this instructive video about how to install the DraughtKeg. I do not exactly know which language it is, can somebody help me out?:
How to use it
This video hilariously addresses the old problems the DraughKeg solves:
What frothy problems it solves
Two Dutchmen hilariously addresses the sustainability problem: What to do with a shed of used DraughtKegs?
What to do with the empty DraughtKeg
It seems the last one is produced by Heineken itself.
The funny thing is that in order to see video on the Heineken site (Yuck a site entirely in Flash) you have to give some proof of your age whereas no such thing is asked by YouTube…..
We are taking a couple of days off after five months of 7/7 and 24/24 service to our dear guests. Destination: French Riviera. Just a couple of days on the board of a private swimming pool or a beach. Late breakfast, rest, lunch on the beach, rest, read a book, rest, small dinner, maybe some sightseeing, maybe some boating.
We put our plans for a trip to Copenhagen on the back burner as May, June and July gave us mediocre weather after an unusually hot April.
Where to stay?
First: where not to stay:
Not in Don Cesar, Cap d’ Antibes
We have stayed a couple of times at 4 star Hotel Don Cesar. Nicely located on Cap d’Antibes and near to one of our favorite beaches. However, the last time we stayed there, it proved more and more worn out. It doesn’t particularly look inviting to go back. This observation seems in line with those of Tripavisor reviews.
[Update: after a refurbishment the hotel is now know as Hotel Vogue] Nor in Domaine Cocagne, Cagne sur Mer Domaine Cocagne originated from a camping with some holiday apartments. It has Dutch owners and was not so long ago thoroughly and very nicely refurbished under guidance of a well known Dutch Designer, Jan des Bouvries: It has good location, a nice restaurant, nice beds and clean and almost white interior. However the guests that frequent there do not fit with the quietness and rest we are looking for. Especially since I had breakfast there with the pleasure of looking out over the swimming pool with a couple of ladies in a string only already loudly occupying their day beds (afraid as they were the beds would be gone for the day) while their figures would only be flattered by a bathing suit (even a bikini would have looked gross)….This view didn’t go well with the excellent shambled (pardon: scrambled) eggs I had for breakfast. In addition the owner made it very rudely clear to a couple of dear Gay friends of us who planned a stay for 2 or 3 months in the hotel, that he didn’t like gay people. Thirdly we noted a very high alcohol consumption of several hotel guests. These issues make me think twice to go there ever again. Hm they even have no reviews on Tripadvisor for this hotel.
True to my own principle I started browsing some trusted sites with hand picked accommodations.
Hotels of the Rich and Famous is easy navigable. Its map is excellent and combined with its listed properties it is quick and easy navigable. Certainly not so cluttered as some other sites. It comes up with: Chateau Eza in Eze (between Beaulieu and Monaco. Definitely a possibility as it is close to Bealieu where we like to visit friends one day and very close to Chateau de La Chèvre d’Or where a dinner or lunch has been on my wish list for quite some time already. It appears Chateau Eza is a Stein Group Hotel which operated the Dylan (formerly Blakes and now up for sale by owner Apollo Group) and The College Hotel, both in Amsterdam. I also didn’t know yet that Chateau de La Chèvre d’Or is a hotel as well. Alas it looks much more stuffy than Eza.
I very much appreciate the fact that the Kiwi collection gives the urls of all their featured hotels, notwithstanding they do not have maps available on their site
Les Rosees[not in their collection anymore (Les Rosees (own site))
Chic retreats could use maps on its site or give the urls of the property. However Lulu herself recently promised me to do the urls soon (she recently had asked the member hotels to provide them, but did get only one reply).
XO Private Collection just sent me an invitation by e-mail to join their XO Private Insider. I thought for a moment “Wow am I privileged”, but I now see you can click on it from its Main Page. I still do wonder from where the invitation came. I like the fact that they provide all info in a write up and simply link through to the website of the accommodation itself. It has (in addition to Eza and Cap d’Estel):
Hotel du Castellet in an old glass factory north of Bandol near Toulon, too far away for our present plans, but worthwhile to remember,
Domaine des Andeols North of Apt, an Alain Ducasse property, too far away but also to remember
The luxury culture flash presentations are really nice to get good impressions of the properties and I would say a better impression than any video as yet could give
A fellow hotel blogger, Hotel Blogs 2.0, suggested:
Mas Artigny in St Paul de Vence [ed: Noted closed permanently in 2017], or
Another travel blogger in the know, Blog on Travel, suggested go to Clos des Arts from the SLH portfolio in Colle Sur Loup.
Then a very good friend of us mentioned Hotel Welcome in Villefranche sur mer. Oh I like that location: It is the second Bay west from Monaco and has a lot of shipping movements as it is frequented by mega yachts and by large cruising vessels who can anchor for free during a couple of hours or waiting until their berth in Nice is free to proceed or are seeking a nice location for a hop of for a stroll or a lunch ashore.
The Verdict:
I have split our stay over two hotels: Bastide Mathieu and Hotel Welcome.
Stay tuned for my reviews.
At least for future visits I can rely on this post which will help to save some time…
