Category: UK

Air Suite: Suite in a Jet

Air Suite 2
Suite in a jet
Air Suite

Thanks to This is Londen Co UK we know that Jet Airways launches private suites in its jets commuting between GB and India:

Passengers prepared to pay out just over £4,000 for a trip to Delhi will get to relax in their own 26 sq foot private room, separated from the rest of the cabin with colonial-style sliding doors.

And at £1200 cheaper than a first class ticket with British Airways, it is a luxury service that the airline – dubbed the “Orient Express of the Skies” – is confident will prove popular with customers.

Each of Jet Airways’ Boeing 777-300ER aircraft will have eight of the luxury suites and the first flight takes off from Heathrow on May 5.

Reviewing restaurants becoming dangerously costly?

The Northern Ireland newspaper Irish News -I must say I don’t like their policy of hiding their news behind a mandatory subscription- published a restaurant review back in 2000 by a renowned restaurant critic Caroline Workman.

The review criticized the quality of food and drink, the staff and the smoky atmosphere of the restaurant. On a scale of 1-5 the restaurant got a 1.

The owner of the Goodfellas Italian restaurant on Kennedy Way, Ciarnan Convery, had claimed the article was a “hatchet job” and sued the paper.

A jury found the review defamatory. The paper has to pay the restaurant owner £25,000 plus court costs. The paper lodged appeal.

Unfortunately I am unable to find the actual review.

Various papers claim this verdict a threat to the Freedom of Speech principle. Among them Maeve Kennedy in the Guardian in Critics bite back after restaurant reviewer sued for calling chicken too sweet

But it must be said that critics can be venomous when one sees some of the quotes:

“The worst meal I’ve ever eaten. Not by a small margin. I mean the worst! The most unrelievedly awful! You don’t need to be an atomic physicist to grill steaks. They arrived so raw you could have drowned swimming in the blood.”
Michael Winner, the Sunday Times, on Bibendum in Chelsea, London

“The taste and texture of the pease pudding reminded me of occasions when I have accidentally inhaled while emptying the Dyson.”
Giles Coren, the Times, on Court Restaurant at the British Museum in Bloomsbury, London

Interesting case to follow. During the 2006 hot month of July here in The Hague a restaurant had a problem with a critic who wanted to have desert on the terrace where she had her meal. The restaurant owner had to close the terrace at 9.30 PM pursuant to rules of the City. The critic refused to take the desert inside the restaurant and didn’t give points for the desert (while points for deserts count considerably for the overall points awarded). The restaurant claimed it to be unfair, but the paper in question did not redress which seemed not fair to me.

Fawlty Towers refurbished and reopened by Sybil

Sybil in Austin 1100 reopens Fawlty Towers

A Devon hotel, Hotel Gleneagles in Torquay, which inspired the legendary TV comedy series Fawlty Towers has been officially re-opened by one of the show’s stars.

Prunella Scales (who played Sybil Fawlty) has officially re-opened Hotel Gleneagles after arriving in a replica of the red Austin 1100 car, which, in one of the series’ most famous scenes in 1975, Basil gave a good hiding with a branch when it conked out and wouldn’t restart.

The reopening followed a major refurbishment. The hotel was recently bought by local businessmen Brian Shone and Terry Taylor. They have spent £1 million on refurbishing the facilities, and Prunella Scales was guest of honour at the official relaunch on 18th September 2006.

Fawlty Towers was based on the Gleneagles, where John Cleese stayed with other members of the Monty Python team in the early ’70s. Cleese, who of course played Basil Fawlty, based the character on the owner of the hotel, Donald Sinclair, who he described as “the most wonderfully rude man I have ever met.”

Mr Sinclair, who died in 1981, is said to have thrown Eric Idle’s suitcase out of the window “in case it contained a bomb” and complained about Terry Gilliam’s table manners.

Looking back, the real Sybil, Beatrice Sinclair, agrees her husband was not good with the guests. “Not really, he was a commander in the Royal Navy and he liked to have the last word. I don’t think he ever really enjoyed the hotel life.”

The Gleneagles was not the location where the series was filmed. That was done in Thames Valley. The hotel shown in the series was the Woodburn Grange Country Club in Buckinghamshire, but that burned down in 1991.

Fawlty Towers

By comparing the two photo’s you can see that Prunella didn’t age at all!

Only 12 episodes were made of Fawlty Towers, and they were first aired on BBC1 more than 30 years ago.

But the legend of Basil and Sybil lives on…

With thanks to: »BBC

The Hoxton Urban Lodge: One day til opening

Thanks to Hotelchatter and The Observer I came across this new 205 rooms Urban Lodge that will open 1st September, 2006.Opening promotions included rooms for just an amazing one (1) UK pound per night – sold out off course, but the Hoxton site promises more similar promotions for the near future. Normal rates start at UK pound 59 and become higher the nearer to the night of your choice you make your reservation.

The “Pret a Dormir” has been created by the take away sandwich (Pret A Porter) mogul Sinclair Beecham. The breakfast included in the roomrate is a nice “Pret” sandwich.

The Observer:

Everywhere you look in Beecham’s hotel there are no-nonsense feel-good touches: the internet is free, so is the coffee and the mineral water in the bedrooms, and the Pret breakfast left on a hook outside each morning. Instead of a ruinous minibar, you buy wine, champagne, beer and snacks at the reception desk for normal shop prices.

But all this is window-dressing next to the really revolutionary idea: a room pricing system borrowed from the budget airlines….

There’s no denying you get a lot of room for your money. The mattresses are by Hypnos (‘same as at the Metropolitan’, says Beecham), the towels thick and fluffy (‘same as Claridge’s’) and the lighting soft and discreet (‘done by same company as the Schrager hotels’). The TVs are flat screen and swivel so you can watch in bed, the bathrooms small but swanky, with huge shower heads and full-length mirrors.

The corridors on each of the six floors are lit with different coloured lights and there’s lots of exposed metal, giving a slightly unwelcome echo of Beecham’s previous business. The decor isn’t exactly exciting and the lobby’s industrial design – polished concrete floor, exposed bricks, dark wood – is getting slightly passe in this cutting-edge part of London. But let’s be frank: for the money, and compared with Britain’s other mid-range hotels, it’s jaw-droppingly good.

Anti Cool: Ian Schrager again on a new tack

Ian Schrager

I am not sure whether now 60 years young New Yorker Ian Schrager is into yachts and yachting, but I do know for sure that Philippe Starck is (as is the other famous hotel creator Anouska Hempel, or Lady Weinberg). Ian has created a couple of hotels together with Philippe Starck. Hence the title.

In any case Schrager is a man of theater and renewing concepts and slogans.

In the seventies and eighties he creates renowned nightclubs, studio 54 and Palladium, where the rich and famous repose themselves. There the DJ phenomenon is born.

Then he changes tack and starts in hotels:

In 1984:

  • He opens Morgans in New York city, “Home away from Home”,
  • He sets up the Ian Schrager Hotel Group, now known as the Morgans Hotel Group.

I think Morgans was the first “Boutique” hotel.

Then, together with Philippe Starck,:

  • Royalton, NYC, “Hotel as Theater” that at the same time put Philippe Starck on the map as a hotel designer,
  • Hudson, NYC, “Hotel as Lifestyle”,
  • Sanderson, London, “Lavish Urban Spa”,
  • Sint Martenslane, London, “Urban Resort Reinvented”,
  • Mondrian, West Hollywood (LA), “Sophisticated modern Urban Resort” and
  • Delano South Beach, Miami, “Casual Chic Urban Resort”

In the middle of 2005 Schrager resigns a as CEO of Morgans Hotel Group, but remains tied with is as a consultant with a lucrative consulting contract (use of a luxurious private jet, a luxurious car, a luxurious secretary and free stays at the (then) 9 hotels of the group) and as a shareholder(?). The group comes in a financial dip due to 9/11 and the fact that mega hotel consortia start fighting themselves into the market for the hip and famous guests. Up to and including 2005 Morgans Hotel Group reports heavy loses. The first six-month period of 2006 after a financial reorganization with an IPO the results improve. The involvement of Schrager after the financial reorganization is not entirely clear.

However, recently, through his new Ian Schrager Company, and again on a new tack, Ian Schrager avails of one of the newest design hotels which recently was opened in New York city: Gramercy Park Hotel.

Gramercy 01

Now not the tight chic and sometimes contrary of Philippe Starck, but the “Anti Cool”, “Bohemian Eclectic” of Julian Schnabel, painter, sculptor, film director and musician. According to Schrager it became time for something else then the many times copied and now obsolete “Boutique Hotel”, “home Away From home”, “hip” etc.. Well, if you look well to the copper nails of the chair he is seated on, the style has something of Garcia’s Costes, L’Hotel and LeMeridien Des Indes….the style en vogue between roughly 1850 and 1890….a style which, here in the Netherlands, we simply call “Eclectic”…..

Moreover he now is heavily involved in developing very luxuriously apartments. One project is being developped next to the Gramercy park hotel. The owners of the very luxurious and expensive apartments can, if they want, use the hotel facilities. A phenomenon that we see also at other larger hotels.

When I listened to the his voice in an interview about his condo developments, I inadvertently have to think of The Godfather…

Funny to see Ian undergo the reverse development, from nightclub owner to hotelier to property tycoon, when it is usually the other way around: a property tycoon getting involved in the hotel business.

Last edited December 16, 2016