Hotel Blogs by Guillaume Thevenot

Do you know the Pink Room?

The Pink Room is a new hotel room concept which has been developped by the Spanish chain Hesperia. These rooms have been created for women who can enjoy:

- Women's Magazine
- 100% cotton sheets and towels
- Clothers hangers for skirts and blouses
- M-sized bathrobe and slippers
- Full-size mirror
- Full bathroom set with lovely surprises

Also 1€ from every stay in the Pink Room will be donated to Breast Cancer research.
There is no extra charge to select this room.

This room type is now available in around 20 hotels in Europe and recently at the Hesperia London Victoria.

Having said that, I haven't yet found this particular room type on their hotel website when asking for availability. What a shame...

...but after 4 clicks in the bookings process, I found where to select the extra bit you need to select for the Pink Room. I believe it would be easier if selecting the pink room from step 1.

Unfortunately, I haven't found any pictures of these pink rooms. Even on Hesperia website, the dedicated page to this concept presents no clear pictures about how the room looks like in different hotels.

Surely, the room doesn't look like this.

 

If you happen to try this room in the future, let us know.

Hilton brand hit by new Google trademark decision

Following up the article found on Travolution, Hilton might be one of several hotel brands affected by this change about the right for any company to bid on trademarks names.

Funny enough, when you type Novotel on Google, Hilton doesn't appear on paid listings...

GHM Hotels new website

GHM Hotels - probably my favourite hotel group ever - has improved its new website and has a better navigation throughout. Having said that, the website is built in Flash, therefore not really SEO friendly. This is probably one of the common mistakes when building a hotel website.

I am not sure which next GHM hotel I should try on my next holidays. Maybe the Setai in Miami...

The Prem Group's Managing Director writes his blog

The Prem Group - an Irish company who owns hotels in Ireland like Days Inn or Premier Suites or other franchises hotels in Europe like the Holiday Inn in Calais - has embraced Web 2.0 by getting their Managing Director Jim Murphy writting a blog. Jim Murphy's Blog covers topics such as updates about his hotel  and real estate company but also gives some insights about hotel and tourism trends (check out the controversial post "Antwerp is the new Paris"...).

Jim, welcome to my list of Hoteliers' Blogs.

Looking to work for a hotel group, come to the UK

Intercontinental Hotel Group with brands like Holiday Inn or Express by Holiday Inn has unveils its plan to open more than 4,000 hotel jobs in the UK in the next 5 years. 44 hotel properties are under development in the UK and 1,600 worlwide. The famous hotel group is looking for smart skilled talents to join their different new hotel openings. Just in the UK, their HR department is looking for 44 General Managers, 350 heads of department and 500 supervisors.

Accor and the "flex" rates

Have you noticed that Accor (the leading hotel group in Europe) has introduced some  graphics to help consumers book the right rate based on their flexibility to cancel or amend their booking. I believe this is quite a good initiative and is definitely  a major improvement from the long list of hotel rates that users could find with hotel chains websites in the past. Make it simple and your consumers will come back to book direct with you.

Potentially the biggest Hospitality merger this year

You may have read or heard on the news recently that there are some merger talks between Premier Inn (the leading hotel economy brand in the UK) and Travelodge.

The owner of Premier Inn, Whitbread is in serious talks with the owner of Travelodge, Dubai International Capital. According to sources of The Times, this merger is 50 - 60% likely to happen.

If the merger goes ahead, it would means Whitbread will own 830 hotels across Europe with the brands reunited. And it would give a better competitive position in Europe against their competitors like Accor, Louvre Hotels or IHG.

I believe this is probably the story to watch in the hospitality industry at the moment.

Hyatt "design" brand is Andaz

The new brand of Hyatt has been launched last year with Andaz. The first hotel under this brand is the former Great Eastern Hotel on Liverpool Street in London which isnow known as Andaz Liverpool Street London.

According to Wikipedia, the name Andaz is an Urdu (an Indio European language, the official language of Pakistan) word meaning Style... that says it all.

It looks like every international hotel group has its own design &chic brand now.

IHG with Indigo
Starwood with W
Accor with So by Sofitel
Rezidor Hotel Group with Missoni

Marriott is cooking something with Ian Scrager  since June 2007 to develop their own design brand, let's see what they come up with. But to be fair, Marriott staff already operates in Milan and Bali the fantastic brand Bulgari Hotels & Resorts.

Wyndham hasn't devopped their portfolio of brand towards the upscale / luxury market yet.

Hotel Formule 1 becomes HotelF1

The low cost hotel chain Formule 1 - a brand of Accor Hotels - has changed it brand name to HotelF1 (this sounds even more speedy hotel than before!). The website has 2 different URLs to make a smooth transition from this to this. The brand has over 380 hotels.
 

At this stage, the website seems only available to French speakers.

The website is very different to the old one and aims at the 18-35 generation with a small wallet. The room price starts from €30 per night.  A video explains the concept of F1 Hotel.

A new blog for Marriott

After launching sucessfully last year Bill Marriott' s blog "On The Move", Marriott Hotels has decided to expend this initiative with Brad Nelson, their  vice president culinary and corporate chef. Since January 08, Brad has been sharing his observation around the food industry and what he does for Marriott on his blog Marriott in the Kitchen. The blog structure works well with RSS feeds, comments box, search engine, "email me" post notification and different tags filters. A good job from Marriott again.