Category: Hotels

Renovation of Wilhelmina Hotel and Beach Hotel Duinheuvel in Domburg almost ready

By coincidence we stayed at the Wilhelmina Hotel in Domburg, province of Zeeland, on May 5, 2005, which is Dutch Liberation Day. It was celebrated as a holiday (once every 5 years it is a holiday, as it is already some time ago that we were liberated….ever heard of the stingy Dutch?). Consequently the adjacent Beach Hotel Duinheuvel where family of us stayed, was entirely booked, but there was a room available in Wilhelmina Hotel. However, it was possible to have a sumptuous breakfast together in the Gallery of Beach Hotel Duinheuvel.

Ontbijt in de Gallerie

Such breakfast is an experience as all guests are draped around a very expensive piano and all sorts of paintings look upon your fresh eggs. The artwork exposed is for sale.

We actually bought a nice bronze of a dancing lady as a present for our dancing daughter who was going to graduate from the Rotterdam Dancing Academy. (How happy a hotelier can be ;-)).

We stayed in one of the renovated Wilhelmina rooms. Very clean, wooden floors, all amenities available and a pleasant atmosphere.

One of the owners is the third generation of the family that operated Wilhelmina Hotel.

Together with his partner, the one who mainly operates the Art Gallery, he bought the Beach Hotel Duinheuvel a couple of years ago. Wilhelmina has been renovated in 2004 and now the renovation of Duinheuvel is almost ready.

I loved the location just two steps over a dune from the beach. The Coasters heading to and from Antwerp sail so close to the coast there, that you can almost touch them.

Service is friendly and very professional.

Lloyd Hotel Amsterdam: No water? No Stars!

There used to be a unified Dutch, Belgian and Luxembourg hotel classification system under the name Benelux Hotelclassification.

As of January 1, 2003 The Dutch started with their own Dutch Hotel classification system.

According to the Telegraaf of April 6, 2005 Lloyd Hotel Amsterdam gets a month from the Dutch Hotel Classification Authority to provide all rooms with warm and hot water taps. If it does not comply, it will get no star rating at all. Worse even, it will not be allowed to advertise itself as a hotel (!?), as the Dutch Hotel Cassification Authority has usurpated the word “Hotel” as being only available for those complying with their basic classification. In 13 of its total of 116 rooms there are no water taps at all. Lloyd Hotels has a rather refreshing and new approach to the classification system under its motto: Sleep and dine from one to five stars! Only a couple of years ago everybody deemed it normal to wash ones hand outside the room……

Berlin: Propeller Island City Lodge

Propeller Island City Lodge

Another quirky hotel is the Propeller Island City Lodge:

It has 45 rooms, all by different artists.

The comment to the photo here is:

A room with a slanted floor which makes grandma’s bed seem to fly. The wardrobe comes out of the wall, but the table has got to stay put! In the rustic bathroom of natural stone you will find eggplant-colored slate.

Art Hotel Rotterdam

In May 2005 The Art Hotel Rotterdam is anticipated to open. It will also provide apartments as temporary housing for expats.

Carlton Ambassador in The Hague

The Carlton Ambassador celebrated the 10th anniversary of operating in its present format.

In 2004 Mr J. Schoon published a small history (ISBN 90-9018992-0) of the Ambassador. Already in the 19nd century the hotel was set up and operated by Mrs Geertruida Vos, a daughter of the owner of the then famous hotel “Zalm” (Salmon) in Gouda – yes Gouda is one of the cheese centers of Holland – which hotel Salmon was one of the first hotels in the Netherlands.

Mrs Vos was very successful and therefor her nickname became “Goudvosje” (“little Gold Fox”).

Until 1973 the property was operated uninterruptedly as a hotel by the same family, lately under a great grandson of Goudvosje, Mr Anton Krulder.

Between 1973 and 1994 Mr Krulder let the property to an institute that housed former psychiatric patients. In 1994 he sold the property to Hotel Management International that operated 4 Carlton hotels in The Netherlands.

After a thorough renovation of 15 months, the Carlton Ambassador reopened as fifth Dutch Carlton Hotel on March 10, 1995.