Best of hospitality in the news – part 5 – 29 September 2016
Tink Labs raises $125M to put its free-to-use smartphone in more hotel rooms worldwide
If you travel a lot, or even just a little, you’ll be sick of roaming bills, or frustrated by the inconvenience of the cheaper alternative: buying a local SIM and switching it with your regular one. Hong Kong-based Tink Labs believes it has a better solution, a designated mobile device in your hotel room that you can use for free, and it has raised a whopping $125 million to expand its idea to cover more hotels worldwide.
Read full story at techcrunch.com
Trump’s New Lifestyle Hotel Brand Shares a Name With a Budget Car for Millennials
Earlier this year, Trump Hotels announced it would launch a new brand in “response to the massive growth of the technology-centric ‘we-economy,’” and last night, the company finally gave it a proper name. Not to be confused with the Millennial-focused Scion brand of cars from Toyota that will no longer exist as of 2017, Trump Hotels’ new lifestyle brand is just that: Scion.
Read full story at skift.com
Petals arranged on the bed in a penis shape, a clairvoyant and permission to bring a hamster: The weirdest requests from hotel guests revealed
One guest at a hotel in Whitby requested a ‘genuinely haunted’ bedroom – Another asked if he could bring his own mattress to use during his stay – Further unusual examples include a fridge just for butter, and a wig
Read full story at Daily Mail
Why the New Four Seasons Downtown NYC Hotel Is a Big Deal
Hint: It’s closer to Brooklyn. Maybe we’re biased, since Condé Nast is the anchor tenant of One World Trade Center, the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, but we think that downtown New York City is where Manhattan’s true heart beats. And now there’s one more piece of evidence to bolster that claim: The Four Seasons has opened its latest hotel, the Four Seasons New York Downtown, just around the corner. The hotel, which sports both U.S. and Canadian flags at the front entrance (the Four Seasons is based in Toronto) officially opened to the public on September 19.
Read full story at CN Traveler
US billionaire John Malone snaps up €150m Dublin hotel portfolio
A partnership headed up by TV3 owner and chairman of Liberty Media, the US billionaire John Malone, has paid a figure believed to be in excess of €150m for a portfolio of three Dublin hotels.
Read full story an Independent Ireland