Delft: Ikea Hotel under Golden Tulip label

Ikea Tulip Inn

The Delft Ikea shop is able to produce traffic congestions on the motorway on its own. To my knowledge it is the only shop with its own motorway junction here in The Netherlands.

Ikea has expanded the shop and will establish a center of excellence. That will serve as a pilot for new concepts and products and as training center for Ikea workers from all over the world. They need a hotel for all those students.

As a small aside: Approximately 25 years ago my wife bought curtains from the first Ikea shop in The Netherlands that they closed in the meantime. The same lady who then sold the curtains to my wife still works for Ikea, but now in Delft, and recently sold curtains to my wife for a friend’s baby room. Speaking of employee’s loyalty….

Contrary to Shell that operates its coworker/student hotel itself behind the facade of its head office here in The Hague, Ikea has outsourced management of the new hotel to the Golden Tulip Group.

Last week the groundbreaking ceremony was held. Usually that means in the low lands to drive a long pole into the ground that will form part of the building’s fundament.

The Ikea/Tulip Inn with 140 rooms is scheduled to open December 2008.

Happy Hotelier on WiWiH

After the recent Facebook unpleasantnesses I looked again at WiWiH (Who Is Who in Hospitality). [ed: I checked it in december 2015 and WiWih seems now also part of the Dead Travel Blog society].

Earlier I stayed away from it for the same reason as I stayed away from Hyves (the Dutch My Space alternative), Second Life, My Space, Twitter and other community sites only meant for school going kids….as I should have stayed away from Facebook…..which also originated from a bunch of school going kids….as WIWIH seemingly originates from Maastricht in The Netherlands and seems to have strong ties with the Hotel School of Maastricht.

Looking further into it, I found a professional site that started in March 2006 and still presents itself as being in Beta. It has over 12,000 members who are all related to the hospitality industry.

WiWiH offers its members the possibility to create a free WiWhH Blog or to syndicate their own Blog with WiWih which is a clever feature. However, the navigation of the WiWiH Blogs deserves a bit enhancement.

Guess what? Happy Hotelier is not the only one creating a syndicated Blog WIWIH Blogs | Happy Hotelier on WIWIH:

I found a couple of fellow travel bloggers and T-List members that have a syndicated Blog on WIWIH: [Update: I’ve ltaken away the links of WiWiH]

To name a few.

Facebook Fatigue, Fastpitch Networking the answer?

Unpleasantness again?

Hey, your account is temporarily unavailable due to site maintenance. It should be available again within a few hours. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Sometimes this is what I get if I try to connect with Facebook after some of my contacts on Facebook “did” something that cluttered my e-mail in box. Usually I find myself reacting only to one in ten e-mails, as each and every company out there seems to develop its own Facebook application.

Last week it was even worse….I got no unavailability message when I tried to log in. I simply weren’t getting access. Is it a glitch of my latest Firefox update maybe? No, I get the same result in IE. Is my IP blocked maybe? Possibly, as from another computer which uses another IP I get normal access. Very strange….Restarting my computer may have helped….Yes I do run anti virus software and anti trojan software and whatever…

The Banning policy of Facebook
This unpleasantness made me remember that an update on my post Happy Hotelier Banned from Facebook? was on the back burner.

I got some comments to that post.

Sean Scully a freelance writer in Philadelphia, USA, got the same treatment to his great annoyance. Unlike me he wasn’t re instated apparently.

The reverent Huffington post’s Ann Handley noticed Sean’s rant as as well as a similar rant from Harry Joiner of Marketing Headhunter who uploaded 4.600 contacts of his gmail addressbook (so invited by Facebook) with as a consequence a permanent ban without any warning.

You can find many similar rants between their comments.

When you Google on “Your account has been disabled by an administrator. Please contact disabled@facebook.com from your login email for more information” you get even more input on the subject from other Bloggers who got the same experience.

One of the funniest I think is this one: Faceless Book

So the conclusion is that you not only must not send the same text when you invite some friends. You also mustn’t invite too many friends at once.

Access denied to Facebook

The opposite of being banned by Facebook is being denied access to Facebook that many employees seem to encounter. The UK Telegraph names a few City Firms that ban employees from sites as Facebook: Credit Suisse and Dresdner Kleinwort , The Metropolitan Police, British Gas and Lloyds TSB.

According to the Blog Facebook Observer the latest news here is that many people in Iran are not able to get access to it.

Fatigue
Wisdump wrote about it.

Any human with the slightest sense of ratio will rather quickly be bored of (super)poking, foodfight and many similar applications. Sure, poking can be fun, but only for a rather short period of time.

I should have been warned for Facebook already: Esme at Pajama Entrepreneur did that in her post Why I’m not falling for the Facehook Hype…Curiously each of her posts has a button “share on Facebook”…

Esme pointed me to a post of Giga OM about Facebook Fatigue. His approach is this: If you want to connect you don’t want to attend a mega dance party where you cannot talk. Look in your mobile phone addresses: Those are the people you want to connect with. Whatever the people behind Facebook want to acchieve, ultimately they will find out that the hordes will move on from Facebook to another place where there are no masses already taking up all your time.

So, Why am I still on Facebook?
The reason is this: I managed to re establish an old contact with a distant cousin who I met 8 years ago when he lived in South Africa. Subsequently he moved to the UK and I lost contact, because I only had an e-mail address of him and several computers later I had lost it. Through Facebook we were able to re establish contact and he actually visited us traveling through The Netherlands and visiting various family members, because he is on the verge of going back to living in South Africa again. So that is a little plus for Facebook. I will hang in for some more time.

Is Fastpitch Networking an alternative?

Fastpitch

If you look at their features as compared to Facebook, LinkedIn and Xing, you might say “Yes”, but for the moment I fear I will stay away from another time consuming experience. What is your take?

Munich: The Charles, Rocco Forte's third German Hotel to open October 4, 2007

The Charles Hotel

From the Press Release:

The Rocco Forte Collection is delighted to announce that its Munich property will open on 4 October 2007. It will be called The Charles Hotel, in honor of Sir Rocco Forte’s father, renowned hotelier Lord Charles Forte.

The Charles Hotel is The Rocco Forte Collection’s third German property, joining Hotel de Rome in Berlin (which opened in October 2006) and Villa Kennedy in Frankfurt (which opened in March 2006), and confirms The Rocco Forte Collection as the key player in the luxury hotel market in Germany.

Located in the heart of the Bavarian city of Munich, guests of The Charles Hotel will be guaranteed a peaceful stay with great views over the area known as Lenbach Gärten (which lies on the edge of the Botanical Gardens). Ideal for business and leisure travelers, the hotel is within walking distance of the commercial district, popular shopping areas and entertainment facilities. It is also well located for transport links, being close to the city’s main train station, The Hauptbahnhof, with the Franz Josef Strauss airport lying just 28 km northeast of Munich.

A stylish new-build, The Charles Hotel is set to significantly raise the standard of visitor accommodation in Munich. The design has been overseen by The Rocco Forte Collection’s Director of Design, Olga Polizzi, and – as with all the other properties in the Collection – will have its own personality that reflects its location.

For example, there will be Bavarian limestone on the floors, ceramic artwork from Nymphenburg porcelain in the bathrooms and original paintings by Munich’s celebrated 19th century portrait artist Franz von Lenbach in the bedrooms, alongside works by contemporary artists living and working in and around Munich.

The eight-story, Euros 71.5 million hotel will have 132 40-square-meters rooms, nine Junior Suites (measuring 48 square meters each), 18 Master Suites (70 square meters) and a Presidential Suite (100 square meters). Located on the eighth floor, the stunning Presidential Suite boasts a large terrace with breathtaking views over the city and can be combined with a further three suites, creating an entire private floor of 455 square meters. Virtually all the rooms have views over the Botanical Gardens.

The hotel also comprises an Italian restaurant with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the Botanical Gardens, a terrace for outdoors dining in the summer months and a private dining room; a bar; seven conference rooms equipped with state-of-the-art technology and all benefiting from natural light; a ballroom accommodating up to 400 guests for a drinks reception; and a large spa with sauna, 15-meter swimming pool, five treatment rooms offering a range of wellness and beauty treatments and a gym with all the latest cardiovascular machinery.

Once in operation, The Charles Hotel will provide the same attention to detail, exceptional levels of comfort and personal service for which The Rocco Forte Collection has become so well known.

Perfect Escapes and The Suite Life Blog

The Suite Life

Perfect Escapes is a site with a collection of luxury hotels I can live with as afficianado. Today I found out they even have their own Blog called The Suite Life Blog which I have added to my T-List and L-List. Enjoy reading!

Update:

Either it is a hosting problem, or they really discontinued…links are not working…

Last edited by GJE on November 24, 2011 at 4:35 pm