Ham Yard Hotel London

23-9-2014

The Firmdale Hotels are known for their eccentric British design with bright colors and a quirky sense of humor. Their new project, the Ham Yard Hotel, opened in the city centre of London, close to the Piccadilly Circus, in June. The hotel stands out for its striking design: the interior is a mash-up of colors, patterns, design motives and bold wallpaper. Especially the lobby has an inspiring interior with wool chairs, folk art and various types of lamps. The hotel has several playful public areas such as a bowling alley, a bar with a dance floor, a cinema and a rooftop terrace with olive trees and a vegetable garden. For inspiration, watch the video to get an impression. On the website of the Ham Yard Hotel are more pictures available.

Sand Hotel Friesland in Sneek

17-9-2014

We’ve spotted ice hotels and a hotel made of salt before, but this summer the first sand hotel opened. The sand hotel opened temporarily in the Dutch city Sneek in response to the annual Sand Sculpture Festival Friesland. The hotel is inspired by ice hotels located in Sweden and Finland but because of the limitations of sand the organization has chosen for a combination of high quality facilities hidden in a sand sculpture. The sand sculpture of nearly 8 meters represents the town of ‘Bedrock’ from the Flinstones. This design is chosen because of the Hollywood theme of this year. The initiative of a sand hotel is already a great success for the organization: several countries are interested in building a sand hotel as well. A night in the sand hotel in Sneek is bookable until 28 September.

Selfies are here to stay!

16-9-2014

Restaurants, hotels and tourist attractions can use the trends #selfies.

The Braggy

Regardless of your opinion, too narcissistic, often poor quality, you aren’t fond of those flashes of the phones of those young people, the #Selfie is incredibly popular. Especially during this holiday season it struck me how many people make selfies at tourist spots, in well-known restaurants, on the beach, drinking a cocktail etcetera and posted it on their social media channels. In America they already came up with a new term, ‘The #Braggy’, from to brag.

read more

How do you apply trends as entrepreneur in the hospitality industry?

1-9-2014

First of all, when talking about trends you need to realize that many different concepts are being named trends these days. However, there is a big difference between trends, hypes and inspiration. For example, we call our website hospitalitytrends.eu but mostly offer inspiration based on red threads in international trends. Real trends take their time in the adoption curve. If you look at the adoption curve of for example sustainability, you’ll see that it has been coming up for 15 to 20 years already and now it is mainstream, thus this is a trend. Hypes however usually stick around with the innovators and early adopters.

The usual development of a trend is that it begins with a very small portion of the population. Logically entrepreneurs are drawn to new trends since they are always looking for new success. They are constantly scared to miss out and fail in their business endeavours, yet specifically as an entrepreneur it is important that you keep on living your own dream and take care that you do not jump on every trend or hype that comes along.

read more

Beautiful rooftops

5-8-2014

For those who still have their holiday ahead and are going to either Singapore, Bangkok, New York, Rome, Barcelona, Hong Kong, London, Mumbai or Istanbul TripAdvisor has produced a list with the ten most visited roof tops. I have visited 2 of the mentioned rooftops and can assure you that you will enjoy the view while swimming (Marina Bay Sands rooftop) or sipping a cocktail while enjoying the view of Bangkok (Lebua at the State Tower rooftop). It’s a unique experience! For those owning hotels, it might be interesting to be mentioned in these kind of lists, so check your special features and let the world know! Check the other locations at TripAdvisor. ^Marjolein

Hunting down Pokémon figures in the Peninsula Hotel

29-7-2014

Exclusively designed to give their guests unique and unprecedented access to historical, cultural and local lifestyle experiences, The Peninsula Tokyo Academy offers a collection of bespoke programmes for both adults and children. Kids staying at the hotel as from 1 October, will get the chance to live out an episode of Pokémon with characters like Pikachu, Lucario and friends in an interactive game designed exclusively for the hotel. Kids as from five years old are invited to hunt down Pokémon characters, armed with a Poké Ball. A game that is a bit like hide and seek. Great way to entertain the kids of your guests and an inspiration for hotels in Belgium to introduce a meeting with Tintin! Or for the hotels in The Netherlands with Miffy.

Small hospitality gestures June

21-7-2014

Perfect service throughout the whole staff is the most hospitable gesture you can make to your guest. No grand gestures but simply a team like a well-oiled machine.

In this edition of “small hospitable gestures” we focus on gestures in hotels, where we separate gestures to the business guest and leisure guest. Download the full version here.

Profit from your fans and followers

11-6-2014

A new kind of booking site, Hotelied, offers luxury hotels the opportunity to target discounts towards influential travelers with a large social media influence. Hotels probably hope that by offering these deals, the discounts will be outweighed by the exposure and publicity. I am quite sure it’s been done already between bloggers and hotels. Some bloggers are quite clear in their communication about these deals. But now we have the website Hotelied where travelers have to create a profile and link to their Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin. For people with a lot of fans or followers a great opportunity to gain some profit. But on the other hand, could this mean that the social media becomes less social? It seems that hotels can kind of buy ‘good reviews’ from influential travelers. Am I too suspicious and could we consider this as a win-win situation for the hotels, the booking site and the travelers? And assume that all those fans and followers will be able to read between the lines, what do you think? ^Marjolein van Spronsen

Hotel offers guests unlimited access to newspapers

22-4-2014

Traders Hotels has launched its digital newsstand ‘PressReader’ in 15 hotels in Australia, Asia and the Middle East. Guest only have to connect with the Wi-Fi network and don’t need an account or log in. Through the ‘PressReader’ they get unlimited access to more than 2,500 global newspapers and magazines in 60 languages from 100 countries. They can read a newspaper or magazine at any time of the day, from anywhere in the hotel: a great gesture from to hotel to its guests.

Napkin origami

14-4-2014

In our publication ‘Royal hospitable gestures‘ we wrote an article about in old-fashioned origami with towels in hotels. But also restaurants can have a folded napkin on a set table. Duni napkins has some instructional videos folding napkins on their website, like the feather napkin in the video above. For every occasion and theme, a matching folded napkin.