Category: Travel

Juxtaposed Religion: A Must Have for Every Hotelroom? (Dutch Design 36)


From time to time images of this bookshelf with the 7 books of the world’s most important religions came along on my computer. It is a habit in many European hotels to have a Bible available.

I believe it is about time with the world shrinking and shrinking by all the traveling we do, to have the 7 religion books side to side available in every hotel room to enable us travelers to take notice of all these religions and to create more respect for each other.

Quote from Swell Future:

5,084,000,000 people, 5,360 pages, 3,700 years, 243 countries, 7 books, 1 shelf. For the first time, the world’s most influential religious texts are brought together and presented on the same level, their coexistence acknowledged and celebrated. JUXTAPOSED: Religion is the first in the Juxtaposed series of curated bookshelves.

Juxtaposed is an idea from the Dutch – American designers couple Mike and Maaike

What would you say?

10 Questions For (18): Carl-Peter Echtermeijer of The New Vienna Ring Hotel and The Grand Hotel Wien

Happy to present a real hotelier to you. Ha, I should have known that asking him my 10 questions would create as answers: “The Ring, Grand Hotel Wien and The Ring”:-). The first photo shows him very proudly with the 2008 Tripadvisor award for The Ring.


Carl-Peter Echtermeijer with the 2008 Tripadvisor award

1) Who Are you?

I am currently Assistant General Manager of 2 luxury hotels in Vienna, the famous Grand Hotel Wien, part of Leading Hotels of the World and The Ring, Vienna’s Casual Luxury Hotel, a luxury design hotel we opened in 2007

2) What do you like about what you do?

I like working with people for our guests, I like the fact that hotel industry is like theater, every day and every situation is different, I like facing challenges, making things possible to our clients and guests, having an overall thinking-out-of-the-box  mentality.

3) What don’t you like about what you do?

This question took me a while to think about, I cannot tell you what I do not like, my personal opinion is that one should see this job as a hobby.

4) Please tell us all about your blog and your aims with it.

The blog we recently developed and implemented (The Ring Press) for our The Ring, Vienna’s Casual Luxury Hotel is meant to inform guests, journalists, actually the on-line community about who we are, what people think and wrote about us and with which partners we work. I personally see this blog as a very unique on-line marketing tool.

5) Your top 3 destination experiences you’ve ever stayed to date and why?

Thailand due to the spa experiences, France due to the excellent food and the French mentality, Holland due to the very open culture and off course Friesland.


Grand Hotel Wien with the Concierge and Bellboy in the cold

6) Your top 3 accommodations you’ve ever stayed to date and why?

Paris as I wanted to surprise my wife, Bratislava to experience this upcoming city, Garda lake as we (my family and myself) needed a summer break.

7) Your top 3 most memorable food experiences to date and why?

The famous Heuriger in Vienna and Austria, this is so typical and so nice. Google it and give it a try, our Japanese restaurant Unkai as it is indeed the best Japanese food in Vienna ..number 3 is yet to come

8) Your 3 worst destination/ accommodation /food experiences to date and why?

I only had a very bad food experience in Bratislava due to the fact that 1.) the food was terrible and 2.) we were definitely treated like foreigners..one does not expect that anymore

9) Can you offer the readers 3 travel/ food / accomodation / things to do tips about the city you are currently living in?

Do stay at one of Vienna’s trendy design hotels or at the recently opened Hotel Stadthalle (a bit of a green hotel focusing on green travel), visit the Heuriger restaurants and do plan culture, culture, culture ..also nightlife is great in Vienna. For dinner : our restaurant At Eigh at The Ring : aroma cuisine, new and spectacular.


The Ring Hotel with its new led Xmas lights

10) Any Question(s) you’d expected me to ask that you would like to answer?

No, I would have asked the same questions and I am so happy to have the opportunity to get presented in this blog. Thank you!

Thank you Carl-Peter!
First congratulations with the Tripadvisor Award! A great achievement! Secondly: I have been informed that your at eight Ring restaurant got a very high Gault Millau rating recently – you should update your Blog!

I started this presentation with a bit of teasing, but when I was new to the internet I think I would have reacted the same as Carl-Peter: “Don’t divulge too much of yourself: They can use it against you”.

I will be meeting Carl Peter soon and get a personal tour of this new Viennese Hotel The Ring. Looking forward to it. Stay tuned!

T+L Family 50 – 2008 – Travel + Leisure

50 of the best places to stay in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean thanks to the thousands of Travel + Leisure readers who took our annual poll. And because these spreads are fully loaded with golf courses and water parks, not to mention Disney character breakfasts everyone can find their fun.

T+L Family 50 | 2008 | Travel + Leisure

Travel Blog Camp 2008 (#tbc08 02): Photos

I’ve edited and uploaded my photos to Flickr. All in all I’m not very satisfied with the quality. I’ve certainly not shot enough (quality) as Heather from Heather on her travels suggested “to start a Travel Blogger’s society page”. Alas the light circumstances were far from ideal.. The first lesson for the next Travel Blog Camp: more light please – or should I bring more professional lighting?

The first photo is of Karen Bryan’s presentation.

The second photo is of Darren Cronian, who organized the event.

This is Matthew Cashmore of Lonely Planet, one of few who apparently tried multitasking by both listening intensely and Twittering away at the same time. I don’t know who the lady to the left of Mathew is….(added: Thanks to Matthews comment on Flickr (see below) the lady in question is his beloved Mrs Cashmore. Hi Catherine!)

From left to right standing: Unkown, Anthony and Tamara from Mr & Mrs Smith, Detlef Meyer of German Roundtrip and Kevin May of Travolution.

I’ve added here some photos from those I know.

I would like to ask my readers to comment on Flickr and give names and details to the faces, because here is lesson number two for the next edition:

  1. What happened with the name tags?
  2. At least it would be helpful if there is a list with thumbnail photos and names and web presences of those who attended, but Darren informed me that such could be a violation of UK privacy legislation… Can’t we ask the participants to waive this?
  3. Isn’t that what networking is about: Knowing who is who?

Travel Blog Camp 2008 (#tbc08 01)

Travel Blog Camp 2008

Just a short note with a few impressions:

Kudos for Darren for organizing it and for the speakers to get the room a bit heated up. There really were about 80 bloggers, industry reps and pr types. Location was excellent.

Roaming Tales has posted a nice summary.

I had hoped that my new Blackberry was a better instrument than it turned out to be and am probably regretting I didn’t choose for an Iphone. It was frozen during most of today. Now I have learned that the Blackberry variant of cntr alt delete is: Pull out your battery. This doesn’t necessarily means a Blackberry is a bad thing. I’m even able to freeze an Apple computer withing 5 minutes of using it.

All in all I arrived later than I anticipated and missed a speaker (Alex). But I missed a lot of what actually happened and was said anyway, because I tried to concentrate making some nice photos. Not sure how they turned out, because I rather process them at home on my own computer. So you’ll have to wait until probably Sunday when I will have some time to process them. And here, Kevin, speaks the Blogger who takes his time. A (photo) journalist would have put every effort in posting these photos today (err last night).

When after the speeches and debate I stepped outside with some fellow smokers and returned, more than 2/3rd of the people were gone already. That amazed me a bit. Haha especially Darren must have been worn out as he didn’t take me up on my offer to have another beer. Big question here: “Are the Dutch Better beer drinkers than the Brits?”

Today I took off to spend with DW. Tomorrow I will roam a bit over WTM. Anybody wanting to see me can DM me at Twitter | Happy Hotelier

CU soon