Best of hospitality in the news – part 2 – 19 September 2016
A persnickety spy for luxury hotels
On a recent Wednesday evening, Ann, a fifty-three-year-old securities lawyer who lives in Manhattan, checked into Room 310 at a swanky hotel in midtown. (Average nightly rate: four hundred and twenty-eight dollars.) She dropped her purse in the corner and headed straight for the bathroom, where she gripped the sides of the toilet and peered inside. “It checks out,” she said. Back in the room, she sat down on the bed and ran her hands across the dark-gray velvet headboard, which complemented the light-gray velvet comforter. She leaned back slowly on four large, white pillows and bounced up and down a few times. “Firm, but not crazy-firm.” This seemed to satisfy her. Getting up, she stood by the side of the bed, then dropped to her hands and knees. She lifted the sheets and looked under the mattress. “Is that a hair?” she asked, extracting one from the underside of the mattress. She whipped out a notepad and started scribbling.
Ann is a hotel inspector.
Read full story at ‘New Yorker’
New hotel brands eye UAE presence
The UAE has room for new hotel brands, even as companies well established in the market add more hotels, according to industry experts at The Hotel Show. Dubai alone has around 100,000 hotel rooms and is expected to add 10,000 by the end of this year. Nikki Beach Hotels and W Hotels and Resorts are some of the new entrants to the market.
Read full story at gulfnews.com
Inside Donald Trump’s New Washington, D.C. Hotel
Sitting at a the long marble bar at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., a woman on a plush Royal blue bar stools shared a thought with her date.
Read full story at ‘Time’ magazine
Other report at ‘Independent’
Hotel innovator Barry Sternlicht returns to take on Airbnb – Founder of Starwood and W chain finds unique room for improvement
More than a decade after leaving the hotel business, Barry Sternlicht is making a comeback. And, in doing so, the man regarded as one of the industry’s visionaries believes he has a blueprint for today’s hoteliers as they are squeezed by digital upstarts such as Airbnb and Expedia.
Read full story at ‘Financial Times’
You can rent an entire home on Airbnb for the price of a hotel room in the US
Great deal, right? A report released this week finds that renting an entire home on Airbnb costs about the same as a single hotel room in the home-sharing site’s 20 biggest US markets. On average, the daily rate for an Airbnb rental was $160.47 compared to $163.90 for a hotel room. In many of those cities—especially expensive ones like New York and San Francisco—Airbnb is also significantly cheaper.
Read full story at ‘Quartz’
Sweden’s famous Ice Hotel will now have hand-carved ice rooms that stay frozen all year
Sweden’s famous Ice Hotel — the one that started the ice hotel trend — will soon start keeping one of its wings frozen all year round. And oddly enough, it’ll get help from the sun to make it possible.
Read full story at ‘Business Insider UK’