Category: Hoteliers

Preparing for the Travel Bloggers Summit in Berlin: Nothing Zen Part 5

ITB BERLIN 2008 TIPS FROM THE T-LIST

The Event

I am looking forward to the opportunity: On March 5 and 6, 2008 I will be meeting a couple of fellow Travel Bloggers (T-Listers) at a Travel bloggers Summit at ITB Berlin (International Travel Boerse (or Fair), Berlin.

More about the Summit itself later. For now a link to the Blog that has been launched to keep the community informed: ITB 2008 Tips From The T-List

Nothing Zen
In December 2006 I started my Zen series as a sort of status report about how the Internet is developing to help you with planning and booking a trip. Nothing better than to report about your own travel preparations to see how advanced or not the Internet is with respect to DIY Travel.

My 5 Areas of Interest
As I said earlier traveling is about 4 distinctive areas of interest, but actually there are 5 (I now have added as nr 2: “Where to stay in B?”, because that is also the main focus of this blog). Here is the list:

  1. How to travel from A to B? Like: by plane, train, car or by boat? (I hate buses).
  2. Where to stay in B?
  3. How is B looking? Maps, pictures and descriptions (what you usually look for in a paper guide)
  4. How are the people of B?
  5. Things to do in B? Bars, restaurants, theaters, musea, scenic parts

1) How to travel from The Hague to Berlin?
Well this one is simple this time. First, as a hotelier, it is always difficult to plan well ahead of time as there are always last minute guests and/or last minute changes of guests. I have a decent car. The trip to Berlin is 703 km according to my Tom Tom. Main part of the trip is over German motorways without speed limits, so I can burn the rubber a bit. I also like to tour around a bit by car at destinations, because it gives me a better feel of the geography. I have a laptop and some camera gear to take with me which would be a lot of weight for an airplane and last, but not least I like to smoke which is not allowed anymore in planes and trains. Finally, with the very low level of service at airports (I always feel like being in a lorry of pigs heading to the slaughterhouse) and in airplanes and all the delays, there is not so much time to gain when you travel up to 700/800 km. So I decided to go by car.

More to follow, because I hit the “Publish Button” far too early this time:-)

And p.s.: Happy Leap Day!

Buenos Aires – Real Small and Luxury Boutique Hotels

General
This post has been on my back burner for quite some time.

The reason i have revived it is that Buenos Aires is moving up on my wish list to visit. Also I realise there is nothing wrong with ongoing work on posts once published.

Originally I copied and pasted an article that Ian Mount wrote for the Wall Street Journal under the title The SoHo of Buenos Aires – How hip, deal-seeking tourists are transforming a once-sleepy area- dated October 14, 2006.

Why copy a complete article? Because WSJ is notorious for moving around their content and hiding it behind all sorts of barriers. Chance that if you see it once you will never be able to find it back, let it be point your reader to the original article.

Then I stripped it because my main area of interest is the real small Luxury Buenos Aires Hotels and in particular the people behind them.

Finally co author Willem on Dutch Blog Weekendhotel gave some ideas in a post since he spent a couple of weeks in Buenos Aires in 2007.

So in line with my New Year’s Resolution to press the “publish button” more often, I post this and also tag it as WIP (for work in progress) to remind myself that it is a work in progress that occasionally needs some attention

Buenos Aires

For the past three years, Buenos Aires has quietly attracted the attention of international travelers looking for a cool but cheap destination as Europe became prohibitively expensive. Buenos Aires offers some of the old-world chic of Paris or London at a fraction of the cost.

This tourist influx is prompting a new movement to open up the city’s fringe neighborhoods, with a wave of new boutique hotels, Argentine-fusion restaurants and stores featuring cutting-edge work by local designers. Much of this is concentrated in the once-quiet middle class neighborhood of Palermo — far from touristy areas such as Recoleta and Microcentro.

A glut of former grand houses on Palermo’s cobblestone streets is attracting investors — both local and foreign — who are transforming them into stylish hotels that can involve less risk and less capital than bigger projects. Across the city, there are about 20 of these designer hotels — a cross between a cozy bed-and-breakfast and a high-end hotel with all the perks — . These intimate hotels can command relatively high rates, anywhere from $80 to $140, because travelers are willing to pay for an experience that feels more authentic. Many are in Palermo, while others are in the gritty, antique-filled neighborhood of San Telmo and in Las Canitas, known for its upscale restaurants and apartments.

The small hotel movement dovetails with changes in Argentine tourism. When the country’s industries were undergoing large-scale privatization during the Menem presidency in the 1990s, 70%-80% of visitors were business travelers who stayed at chain hotels, says Juan Luis Paredes, a senior hotel, tourism and leisure consultant at Horwath. Overall, average hotel occupancy rose from 41% in 2002 to 72% three years later, according to an annual HotelBenchmark Survey by consulting group Deloitte. Daily room rates increased by more than 30% over that time.

20 Boutique Hotels

So there are about 20 Super Boutique Hotels in Buenos Aires, 8 of which I will describe here:

Krista
The French-style mansion in the neighborhood of Palermo was once the family home and practice of Dr. Raúl Matera, a private doctor to former President Juan Perón. It had become a derelict building.

In 2004, two locals gutted the house and turned it into a 10-room hotel, called Krista, filling it with art nouveau furniture and serving croissants in the room where patients once had their temperature taken. “I never thought of running a hotel,” says co-owner Cristina Marsden, a 34-year-old former marketing executive. “But when the dollar rose against the peso and the city filled with foreigners, I saw the advantage.”

1555 Malabia House
The first-built of the boutiques is 1555 Malabia House, is a converted convent in Palermo; rates start at $105.

Soho All Suites
The minimalist Soho All Suites offers longer-term stays, with rates from $120. It is located not far from 1555 Malabia House.

Home
UK record producer Tom Rixton and Argentine PR Director Patricia O’Shea got the idea for Home when they got married in 2002 and found out there were hardly hotels suitable to receive their wedding guests.

Patricia says that since they opened the hotel in December 2005, competition in the area has been heating up. She suspects some aspiring hoteliers of sending spies to check out her operation, which features antique French wallpaper and a 3,000-square-foot garden. The tipoff, she says, is when locals come for just one night, ask a lot of questions about how she runs the business and then check out with a suitcase full of the hotel’s “Do Not Disturb” signs and laundry bags: “I can spot them from a mile away.”

Bobo
Price hikes are one of several problems for travelers. At Bobo, an 85-year-old mansion in one of the most upscale areas in Palermo, prices start at $100, up from $80 when it opened in 2004. Hotel manager Belen Albertelli says the reason for the rise was an increase in overhead due to the country’s 10-12% annual inflation.

The Cocker
For hoteliers, not all new projects are guaranteed to go up without a hitch. Two years ago, English couple Ian Spink and Aidan Pass bought and began to renovate a 3,500-square-foot, three-floor apartment in a old San Telmo building. Soon after, they say a neighbor threatened legal action to halt the conversion of a roof terrace into a room. Other building residents objected to problems caused by the construction crew.

The couple’s $125,000 investment is now a five-room hotel. It is named after their dog. On the wall behind the reception desk, Mr. Pass has painted a black-and-white, Guernica-like mural of men grappling and fighting — a symbol, he says, of the fraught construction experience. In the top left, a women peacefully sits cross-legged. “She symbolizes the future,” says Mr. Spink.

Mansion Dandy Royal
Via Hotels of the Rich and Famous:
The Mansion Dandi Royal Offers A Full Spectrum Of Amenities – Elevators, Laundry Service, Swimming Pool, Jacuzzi, Gym, Solarium, 2 Exquisite Indoor Patios, Computer Room, Meeting Room, 2 Spacious Elegant Salons With Superb 1925 Original Wooden Floors For All Sorts Of Events, Excellent Sound Systems, 2 Stages For Shows And Rehearsals. -mansion Dandi Royal Has An Excellent Staff Always Willing To Indulge And Cater To Its Guests,who Also Have The Possibility Of Taking Private Or Group Tango Lessons At The Dandi Academy. -the Hotel Has 15 Rooms On 5 Floors.

Design Suites
I had spotted Design Suites already inJune 2006. When I now look at their site I have the strong impression that the place is really well designed, but lacks the personal note.

More to follow with updates and grateful for any suggestions from my readers.

Hoteliers William and Olga


Olga and her Brother Rocco Forte

This post, mainly about Olga, has been on the backburner for quite some time, as I had misplaced an interview with Olga Polizzi on my computer, but found it back recently.

The interview is by Locum’s managing director James Alexander and Locum’s non-executive director Tony Hodges for Locum Destination Review, a publication of Locum Consulting. It appears the interview can stil be easily found at Locum’s website under the title Olga Polizzi, an eye for individuality.

I’ll start with Olga

Olga Polizzi is a hotel investor, a hotel designer and a hotel proprietor: A real Hotelier.

She is the daughter of famous hotelier Lord Forte. She was married to Count Alessandro Polizzi, an Italian marquess who died in a racing-car accident in 1980, leaving her to bring up her two daughters – then six and four -on her own. For 16 years she was responsible for building and design within his eponymous chain that I remember as Trusthouse Forte long before Granada raided it. More recently, Olga has been a co-investor and again responsible for design in the mini-chain being driven by her brother, Sir Rocco Forte. Finally, she is a hotel proprietor of Hotel Tresanton in St Mawes, Cornwall.

The William part

of this post is William Shawcross, according to his Profile born 28 May 1946 in Sussex, raised at Eton and Oxford. Son of Baron Shawcross. Married to Olga Polizzi, his third wife and her second husband. According to his own website William Shawcross

is an internationally renowned writer and broadcaster. As well as being the author of several highly acclaimed books on subjects as wide-ranging as the Shah of Iran and Rupert Murdoch, he appears regularly on television and radio. His articles have appeared in leading newspapers and journals throughout the world.

His profile, basically by Ed Vulliamy and published Sunday July 13, 2003 in The Observer notes:

William the conqueror (which heading inspired me to the title of this post)

As a radical young writer, he took on the US establishment over Vietnam. Now he counts American hawks as friends and has been appointed biographer to the Queen Mother. What will he do with the House of Windsor’s secrets?……

Marriage to Olga Polizzi, Shawcross’s partner in the ownership and management of the Hotel Tresanton, gave Shawcross the surroundings he needed to both ‘gaze at the sea’ and pen his treatment for last year’s BBC series Queen and Country. It was three years in the making and denounced as ‘sycophantic and fawning’ to the Crown, but it became the collateral for his forthcoming book.

The marriage put the couple at the epicentre of Establishment entertaining: Prince Charles and Shawcross’s old friend Camilla Parker Bowles (her father was a friend of Sir Hartley) are regular guests.

And it enabled the author of Sideshow to attain what he says, as a supposed joke, is his aim in life: to be ‘a Basil Fawlty to my wife – one who writes a bit’.

From the Locum interview

I noted some interesting thoughts of Olga:

She likes:

  • Individuality,

    because the hotelier wants to distinguish the hotel from the one next door and make it more popular. And then the guest comes in and sees something different and likes it.

  • Service:

    Service is 70 per cent of it, really. Service is incredibly important, how you are greeted, hot water, is it friendly?, telephone calls ….’ Despite the new sophistication of the seasoned traveller, ‘we are still the same humans we always were … mainly we want comfort, good food, good service … you’re just playing around with the elements a bit.’

  • Comfy Design:

    I like going somewhere really brilliant and new … I’ll notice the door handles … but most people, you ask them what colour the room was and they won’t remember … it’s just a feeling, it’s everything in its right place, everything really comfortable.

  • Sound Economics:

    We are quite careful and budget-conscious. I can’t bear it when I see something like Sandy Lane where they’ve spent £80 million on it. We’re in there to make money and cannot spend that sort of money.

  • Her first own hotel: The Tresanto

    When I first opened it, the accountant down there said “You can”t make money on a hotel in Cornwall”, but I said “I haven’t put all this effort and money in not to make money, we’re going to make money”. Actually, we are doing incredibly well. This is my fourth year …. I broke even from the first year …

She dislikes:

  • “The Designer Hotel”

    The Designer hotel – a designer hotel doesn’t look at comfort … it’s so often done too cheaply, everything breaks, you take a shower and the water pours out into the room, all the little things that drive you completely mad … design is not for its own sake.

  • Establishing her own brand. Not so much in her own words but in the interviewers’ finale:

    She admits that she is in demand. Practically every day I get someone writing to me. What colour paint is this in the room? Where did you get this bedspread or this material? Where do you get your handles, your basins, your baths? It’s extraordinary … someone came the other day and they’ve called their house Tresanton, she trills. Yet down in the family’s gift and fashion boutique in St Mawes – ONDA – for all the well-cut clothes and Tresanton iconography on towels and lavender sachets, and the £50 umbrella and £5 soap, there is no sense that Olga Polizzi is taking her potential brand strengths seriously enough. She should. She is a talented individual with a rare eye and a fine business brain. And she has something that ordinary mortals understandably envy. In all innocence, she defines this something simply and memorably when discussing good food and good design. It’s true of both, design and food. There is a connection. It’s good taste at the end of the day. Precisely so, Mrs Polizzi. Now why not share your taste with a wider audience? Heroes make good brand stories, but so do heroines.

A Telegraph article In Pollizi Custody describes her next project: The acquisition of the Grade I-listed Endsleigh House on Dartmoor and refurbishment into a five star hotel.

In another Telegraph interview aptly titled Perfection is her Forte

  • “I’m completely obsessive-compulsive. I can never talk to anybody if a crooked painting catches my eye. And I tell myself, ‘Olga, do shut up,’ but I can’t help it. When I used to go to other hotels with my daughters [Alexandra, 33, and Charlotte, 31], I would be straightening all the furniture and they would say, ‘Ma, this isn’t your hotel.’ “

Wow! What a designer!

Update:

I found the photo at another worthwhile interview with her last year over at the Artisans of Leisure Travel Blog

Nato Top: 5 * Hotel and Town Groan under Security Measures

Nato Noorwijk Huis ter Duin
Huis ter Duin in Noorwijk changed into a fort

Today and tomorrow 27 ministers of defense meet “informally” in Noorwijk, just a couple of miles North East from The Hague.

According to the Nato site they will

discuss the way ahead for NATO’s operations and Alliance transformation.

The ministers will discuss ways to ensure that the NATO-led operations in Afghanistan and Kosovo remain correctly configured and properly resourced.They will also consider NATO’s role in Afghanistan as part of the wider efforts of the international community to support the development of national security, governance and development in Afghanistan.

They will also address the continued transformation of NATO’s defense capabilities and how best to continue ensuring the availability of forces and capabilities for the Alliance’s operations and for the NATO Response Force.

In the informal meeting of the NATO-Russia Council, the 27 Ministers will address civil and military activities, as well as cooperation in Afghanistan and in the framework of NATO’s counter terrorism operation in the Mediterranean, Active Endeavor.

Nato Noorwijk Huis ter Duin 02
Photo Pim Ras

In order to make the meeting as secure as possible luxurious Grand Hotel Huis ter Duin has been fenced off from the outside world and looks like a military fort. Its premises and the complete town of Noordwijk have been declared temporary military zone. Without due form of process anybody can be searched and moved away from the area. A Dutch Marine minesweeper is anchored in front of the seashore located hotel and secures the seaside. Airplanes heading for Schiphol Amsterdam Airport have to make a detour as the area is declared a no flight zone as well and Noordwijk is just located in one of the frequently used approaches for the airport.

I am not sure the Huis ter Duin Hotelier is really very happy with this prestigious venue.

Istanbul and the art of booking a hotel online: Nothing Zen! Part 4

Istanbul: View of the Golden Horn.
A Turk singer and three Derwish
dancers preparing for a video shoot

I just returned from a week’s trip to Istanbul with a group of 26 and a lot of information to share with you.

Trip and organization

First I would like to address the actual travel details.

We flew with KLM (a flight shared with KLM’s partner NW) directly from Amsterdam Schiphol Airport to Istanbul Attaturk Airport without any delay.The fact that KLM is now a subsidiary of Air France apparently did something good to KLM: Flying in time. Flight attendants who behave much more gracious and hospitable and even the food simple, but better than I remember from years ago, when I used to fly business class and decided not to fly KLM anymore due to exorbitant rates, very unfriendly flight attendants, and horrible food and had handed my frequent flier card in. Kudos for KLM!

The trip was partly booked through a Travel Agent No Beach. They also did a wonderful job in getting the group transferred by private couch from and to the airport, provided two nice guides fro some sightseeing, fully bilingual in Turkish and Dutch (to be more precise: one was speaking with a Flemish tongue, the Belgian version of Dutch). They organized some intermediate transport by coach and ferry to a nice restaurant at the Asian side of the Bosphorus and finally the transfer back to the airport. They made the hotel reservations solved some issues arising from an an overbooked hotel. All in all very conveniently organized. Once more the experience convinced me that for a group you should rely on an experienced travel agent and not on your own time consuming Internet rummaging and the hassle of negotiating with hotels you don’t know. Kudos for No Beach!

Hotels
As the frequent reader may remember from the two previous posts in this series, Part 1 in January and Part 2 in April, we had arrived at a shortlist of a couple of hotels:

It turned out that part of the group stayed a couple of days in Lady Diana and I would suggest that as the hotel to stay in when you like to be in the old center and in the walking vicinity of several of Istanbul’s highlights, several good restaurants and in the vicinity of a very easy cross city tram by which you can avoid the car congestions you will face when taking a taxi (apart from the fact that almost every taxi driver tries to make enormous detours to jinn up his bill).

I myself stayed in The Celal Sultan Hotel fro the whole week. The owner lives in Belgium (hence the Dutch spoken) and the hotel has being decorated by a Belgian interior decorator. This is a very nice hotel, very nice staff, good service and good amenities, a cozy lounge and two nice roof terraces with view on the Aya Sophia, but we stayed in a standard room which is more the size of a room in a Pod Hotel than of a decent hotel room, which is a bit too much if you are used to 75 sqm suites in your own hotel. Their superior rooms have the usual 4 star size and are acceptable.

The main reason for my verdict in favor of the Lady Diana is that their roof terrace is much more spacious and spectacular than that of the Celal Sultan with a far better view over the city, the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara with the possibility to have breakfast on the roof. The Celal website is the best of the three. It gives good photo impressions of its interior, but is scarce in giving rates and prices. They should upload newer photo’s of their renovated roof terraces. At least the rack rates I saw announced in the lounge of the Ceal Sultan are higher than the rack rates of the Lady Diana published on their website. As everything in Istanbul one should negotiate the best rates.

Kybele Front
The Kybele Hotel Front view with owner in red and rosa

The Kybele Hotel is just located between the two others and is also a very nice place for a drink, a lunch or a diner. It has a street terrace and a nice and cosy inner court terrace, without view, and is probably the cheapest of the three. I did not actually see their rooms, but I like the owner who decorated the hotel with thousands of small Turkish lamps (which he sells off course) and who, when we were looking at an Europa Cup football match between Istanbul’s Fenerbace and AC Milan, wore an AC Milan shirt, but was very satisfied that Fenerbace won 1-0 against AC Milan, the 2006 Europa Cup winner.