Category: Luxury

Food Blogs: Chocolate and Zucchini

Chocolate and Zucchini

I believe hoteliers without interest in food and beverage do not exist. However my problem this month is there is happening so much in Dutch (language) food and restaurant world, that I will never be able to translate any or all fast and efficient enough:

  • Dutch Gault Millau “guide” released, now in glossy format,
  • Dutch Annual “Lekker” released,
  • Dutch annual Special Bite paper issue released,

and

  • Dutch “Guide Michelin” to be released very soon,
  • New Dutch sites and lists sprouting up and still to be analysed…

Only the site of Special Bite giving some interesting information in the English Language, but no summaries of their paper guide…

Therefore I share with you a totally different piece of information I stumbled upon: Chocolate and Zucchini, a Blog by a 27 year young Parisian born lady, Clotilde Dusoulier, who started this blog already in 2003, long before the Big rush of Blogs in 2005 and 2006. She lives in Paris after having worked for two years in the San Francisco area.

Look for yourself here at Chocolate and Zucchini.

Colleague Hotel

A nice title from Travel Daily News for a unique hotel style staff accommodation and leisure facility complex that was opened by employees of InterContinental Hotels Abu Dhabi. By the end of the year 600 employees of the group, approximately 50 nationalities, will be housed in a luxury that is close to the standards of the Abu Dhabi Hotels in the group.

Less luxurious, the Royal Dutch Shell Group plc head office here in the Hague operates a hotel style facility that they prudently call “management trainee accommodation”

Bill Gates: more of a Hotelier

The Canadian based Four Seasons Hotels Inc. that manages 73 Luxury Hotels in 30 countries is under a bid that values the company at a US $ 3,7 bio, from a Saudi Prince, Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud, currently according to Forbes the world’s eight richest person, through his Kingdom Hotels International, who teams up in this bid with the world’s first richest person, Bill Gates through his Cascade Investment LLC. They had already a 30% stake together for a number of years and will extent their interest to 90%, while the company’s founder, Isadore Sharp (75) will keep 10% of the shares.

Kingdom Hotels International took over another Luxury Canadian hotel group, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts which then was combined with the Raffles group already in January 2006 with a total transaction value of US $ 5,5 bio.

Maximilian in Prague

Maxiilian

Recently Hotel Maximilian opened after a renovation led by Eva Jiricna Architects who is based in London.

Its building goes back to the roaring twenties and was redone in the early days after the transition from communism and now again in 2006 to make it more of a design hotel.

70 standard / superior rooms, 1 suite equipped with a glasspartition- bathroom with a Philippe Starck-bathtub and shower. All rooms are with 15 cm diameter rainfall showerheads, ……and so on… to be concluded with: The rooms are sound proofed and mostly situated facing the courtyard.

I wonder how soundproof if necessary to mention this on the website?

Last edited by GJE on December 3, 2011 at 11:32 pm

From Sacher to Andreas Augustin of Famous Hotels

Frequently Vienna is our travel destination: Be it to visit family or to show Dutch friends around this charming city. Hence my more than average attention for Vienna and now some attention for Andreas Augustin who was born in Vienna in 1956 and recently paid some attention to one of my favourite grand old ladies of Hotellerie:

Sacher Top Terrace

I am sure you don’t recognise it: No wrong! Not Istanbul, but a view from a recently added and very modern rooftop terrace of the Sacher Hotel in Vienna.

Also I believe to know something Andreas doesn’t know: A couple of years ago it was possible to have a dining party at the Naturhistorisches Museum of which you just can see the green roof dome over the green roof of the Opera. Part of the dining party was a very romantic guided tour over the roof of the museum at which you then couldn’t see yet the Sacher Roof, because it wasn’t built yet. There were rumours in Vienna that the new floor Sacher added was a bit (to?) high…

Now About Andreas:
Andreas Augustin
‘I would like to leave this world
a comprehensive and reliable library
of the history of hospitality.’

He studied hotel management at the Hotel Management College at the Castle of Klesheim, Salzburg. Instead of pursuing a hotel career, he followed his life-long desire to write. He became a journalist and at 25 became the editor of his own publication, a Salzburg city magazine.

The following years as magazine reporter, newspaper columnist, radio host and international correspondent led to extensive journeys to the Orient and Far East. In 1986 he took up residence for three years at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore to study and to write about the region and the hotels of South East Asia. It was there that he developed the series of books “The Most Famous Hotels in the World”, possessed by the idea to set new standards in the field of historic research and hotel publications.

With a wonderful team of writers, historians, researchers and photographers he is building the library of hospitality. The Most Famous Hotels in the World – today with almost 400 select member hotels – has built a major value driver and creator, recognized as the leading archives of historic hotels, thus representing a major source of information to build the future of hospitality.

As President of the associated Club of The Friends of The Most Famous Hotels in the World Andreas Augustin also takes care of its members from all over the world.

His company’s website Famous Hotels will be relaunched on 28th November 2006. In the past I visited it already some times and found there a lot of useful information about the world’s most famous hotels.