Category: Hoteliers

European Parliament Voting Days

Celebrity Hotelier voting for European Parliament in Dutch Parliament

Voting Selfie Celebrity Hotelier voting for European Parliament in Dutch Parliament

European Parliament Voting Days

Yesterday we had European Parliament Election Day in The Netherlands. The elections are held on several days in all the countries forming the European Communions. Sunday is the last voting day and somewhere Sunday night we will know who will be chosen as one of the very well paid European Parliamentarians.

Why would I share with you that this Celebrity Hotelier voted in the European Parliament election?

I’ll tell you:

  1. When voting a couple of years ago you were only allowed to vote in the voting locale in your direct neighborhood. If you wanted to vote elsewhere, you had to apply for a special permit to do so. Nowadays, as The Hague Counsel decided in it wisdom you don’t have to vote in a voting locale in your neighborhood anymore, it is fun to seek out a more colorful voting locale than a classroom in a school in the neighborhood. I found out Dutch Parliament has its own voting locale so I choose that one.
  2. Actually only as a retired hotelier I’m getting used to an Apple Smartphone. Until recently I was entirely satisfied with my Blackberry. As a new Apple user I cannot forego on the recent hype of selfies. Since I have my IPhone I’m making more and more of them, boring at least my family and maybe also my other readers. Jus tell me. However a voting selfie was subject of a recent court case here in The Netherlands: There were those that contended that selfies should be forbidden in the voting locales as people could be pressed to sell their votes and use the selfie as a proof of their voting. In addition it would be harmful for the peoples privacy…..Note only the second photo (the mirror one seems to be a true selfie.
  3. I thought it would be nice to enhance my presence as a Celebrity Hotelier on the web. A Celebrity Hotelier voting in a (relatively) place of celebrity….LOL

Shocking: Booking.com attempts to Hijack Dot Hotels gTLD

ICANN Logo

Booking.com Seems the Sole Candidate to become a .hotels Registrar

A twitter friend pointed me to a French site Tendance Hotellerie that found out Booking.com is the sole candidate to distribute the dot.hotels top level domain when ICANN signs off on Booking.com’s application.

If that will be the case, it is clear to me that other hotels or hotel chains will not be able to obtain any .hotels extension anymore, because I simply doubt that when Booking.com B.V. gets the registrant status It will grant any hotel chain a .hotels extension.

This seems not in line with the aims of ICANN with the new TLD’s to offer the users more choice, more competition and to make the internet more transparent.

Here is the application of Booking.com B.V.

Even from the application it is clear that Booking.com wants to control this whole TLD:

Given the fact that the Applicant is a hotel reservation agent, it has a vested interest in giving its visitors and clients a clear and predictable naming scheme in the .hotels gTLD. Since visitors and clients are mainly looking for hotel
reservations on the basis of their geographic destination, the Applicant may
indeed develop plans in order to register domain names that exclusively contain
geographic names (country names, city names, names of regions, etc.).
However, if such domain names will be registered, the Applicant will do so
considering the following confines:
(i) these domain names will be exclusively registered in the name of the
Applicant ⁄ Registry Operator, and not in the name of a third party that is not controlled by the Applicant ⁄ Registry Operator, unless agreed upon otherwise with the authority competent for giving its consent in accordance with
Specification 5 of the Registry Agreement;
(ii) where consents are required prior to the registration and use of a domain
name referred to and in accordance with Specification 5 of the Registry
Agreement, the Applicant will obtain such consents before actually registering,
delegating and using these domain names…..

It is clear for instance  hilton.hotels will be registered by booking.com B.V. and not be available for Hilton to register….

Objections?

Yes! As an independent hotel owner I object and I will file an objection.

ICANN-(ICANN)-on-Twitter-2012-10-01-17-15-35

By coincidence ICAN’s Twitter account @ICANN mentioned a link to file objections today.

Objections can be filed on several grounds. Here is a Icann Brochure that makes it a bit more clear.

How could SOPA affect the Independent Hotelier?

Sopa Infographic
SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act. Currently US Congress and Senate are considering this act together with the The Protect IP Act with hearings and all for enactment.

I’m an independent Hotelier based in Europe. So I only have a slight understanding of all of their implications and ramifications, but I understand Internet giants like Google and Facebook are (among others) heavily lobbying against these two bills. Why would that be? When enacted copyright holders can via very simple measures (a writ to a hosting company) have bad websites cut off from the Internet. Furthermore financial institutions like banks and credit card companies could by the same sort of simple measure to be forced to cut off the bad guys from their income.

Now Google is noteworthy for scraping copyrighted material like photos from everybody’s website and regurgitating same for the “better of search results”. FaceBook does it in a slightly different way: It lets its members publish copyrighted material.

Can I now simply force Google to delete any photo material of my hotel I have the copyright to? Can I force their ISP to cut them off? Can I force their banks to cut their financial resources?

Take this one step further: Online Travel Agents do sometimes scrape copyrighted material. Tripadvisor may do it. Groupon like sites may do it.

Can I as an independent Hotelier force all these power houses from the Internet?

I know, I’m just dreaming of a more organic Internet that is not dominated by search giants or OTA’s, but sometimes it is nice to dream off.

My 2 cents. And your’s?

Celebrity Hotelier and the Long Tail

Long Tail
I might misunderstand the term, but in marketing and distribution the term Long Tail is frequently used to give the small independent entrepreneur or the small independent blogger like me hope to be able to earn a piece of the huge internet cake.

Chris Anderson is usually attributed the term Long Tail.

The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of “hits” (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.

But there is this very old post that stems from before Chris’ article.

Celebrity Hotelier
Almost two years ago I used the term “Celebrity Hotelier” in a post here to see if I could crank my visibility up. It was a success. Soon afterward I got confirmation from various sides that Google (Big Bro) picked me up as a Celebrity Hotelier. Big Bro even granted me frist page result for the search term Hotelier.

Even today it seems to work after several overhauls of Big Bro’s algorithm:
I’m still ranking as number 1 (and number 2) on page 1 for the term Celebrity Hotelier.

And position 4 or 5 on page 1 for the term Hotelier:
Hotelier ranking number 4 or 5 on the search result

Quite possible I’m not able to circumvent the local search result algorithm of Big Bro, and that the conclusion is different from different parts of the world, would love to receive some feedback here.

Can Long mean Long time ago as well?
I got an e-mail today:

hi there.

this will sound very odd…

I am an architecture student in London. Last year I did a student design project set in Naples, which included a fictional character under the title ‘hotelier’. I needed an face for the character, so i typed ‘hotelier’ into google and found your picture.

I then did a pen drawing of the photograph for coherence of presentation… which I thought I would pass on!

The very photo of the earlier post worked into a drawing. Thanks Mate!

I know I may have stretched the term Long Tail a bit, but I found it funny this all came back after such a long time, especially in internet metrics where all seems focussed on here and now only…and may help defend my position.

In addition I also note that a Stumble by my blogging friend Barbara Weibel (@holeinthedonut) of A Hole in the Donut bears some influence on Big Bro as well.

Nativity Secrets of Hotel Sonne

Father Helmut in the middle checking out the terrace in front of the porch to the courtyard

Courtyard of Hotel Sonne in Offenburg, GermanyThe courtyard with private parking space and the breakfast room at your left.
Here it is clear that the old part of the building is really old.


Nativity in the wood


Roman style Nativity


Close up of another Nativity


The three Kings


For the less religious there is the showcase with a persiflage of the hoteliers family

You may know that I’ve frequently visited Hotel Sonne in Offenburg, Germany. The hotel is operated by Gabi and her husband Horst. However the father and mother of Gabi, Helmut and Brigitte, who must be well in their 80ies still help their daughter out almost every day. The same family operating this hotel already for over 150 years.

In my prior review I’ve just showed one photo. Here I have some more, also to point you to their little secret: One forebear of Brigitte loved to collect little wooden figures and loved to make showpieces of them, mostly with Nativity as subject. Time permitting Brigitte will love to show them to you. They occupy a couple of their hotel rooms, but soon they will disappear as the hotel rooms will be refurbished in due course and be added to their inventory.