During presidential inauguration, hotel offers social media butler
Capturing a trip is an important part of the experience for most travelers, something that the Ushuaïa Ibiza Beach Hotel picked up on with its instant Facebook update booths. In conjunction with the presidential inauguration earlier this week, The Madison Washington DC offered its Inaugural Town and Country package, which included a social media expert to document guests’ stays and keep their online profiles updated. READ MORE…
Fingerprint recognition allows automatic Facebook updates for hotel guests
We’ve already featured the Ushuaïa Ibiza Beach Hotel on these pages before thanks to its biometric payment system. Using the same technology, the hotel is now set to feature similar technology that recognizes guests’ fingerprints and automatically updates their Facebook profiles. READ MORE…
In the Netherlands, hotel aims to offer complete holiday experience in one building
We recently covered the Vienna-based Urbanauts project’s efforts to get tourists out of their hotel room and into the city by outsourcing hospitality to local businesses. Taking the opposite angle, Hotel Droog in the Netherlands now aims to provide the entire holiday experience in one building. READ MORE…
In London, taxi cab serves as makeshift ‘hotel room’ during the Olympic Games
It goes without saying that hotel rooms in London skyrocketed in price and bottomed out in availability during the Olympic Games, but at least one enterprising cabbie in the city apparently made the most of the situation. According to reports, David Weekes offered up his London Taxi TX4 as a makeshift “hotel room” during the games, complete with a stuffed Paddington Bear for extra comfort. READ MORE…
Wise Words with Isabel Rutland
It’s often the small details that give good hotels a memorable quality – perhaps a particular lampshade, or the softness of the bed sheets. Isabel Rutland, is the founder of Discover&Deliver, a start-up with a focus on luxury, picking out beautiful design in hotels across the globe and giving visitors to the site the chance to purchase particular items or décor spotted on their travels. READ MORE…
250,000 bees atop New York City’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel
Reminiscent of the way the Fairmont Royal York hotel installed a three-hive apiary 14 stories up above the streets of Toronto not long ago, so New York City’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel is now raising thousands of honey bees on its own urban rooftop. READ MORE…
In Stockholm, hotel accepts artwork as payment for a night’s stay
We’ve seen barter used as a method of payment by Italian bed and breakfast operators, but the Clarion Hotel Stockholm recently put a particularly interesting spin on the concept. As part of its focus on art and music, the Swedish hotel recently began accepting artwork as payment from the artists who visit. READ MORE…
French hotel offers art history concierge
Hotel guests looking for something more from their hotel stay have already benefitted from services such as an in-house pet psychic and a soap concierge, offering hand-cut locally-made products. Now, Raffles Hotels and Resorts has installed an art concierge at Le Royal Monceau in Paris. READ MORE…
Chilean hotel gives each guest a virtual, trackable tree seed to help reforest Patagonia
We’ve seen tree-planting efforts associated with pages printed and watches sold, but not until recently had we seen a hotel commit to reforestation as well. Enter Chile’s Tierra Patagonia Hotel & Spa, which now gives each guest a trackable virtual tree seed for planting in fire-ravaged areas of the Chilean Patagonia. READ MORE…
At Ibiza hotel, biometric payments let guests pay with fingerprints
Innovative ideas enabling consumers to pay digitally without the use of a card have recently included RFID chips embedded into watches and receipts sent directly to customers’ smartphones. However, Ushuaïa Ibiza Beach Hotel has rolled out what is the first instance of biometric payments we’ve seen in the hospitality industry, utilising the PayTouch system. READ MORE…
