English Español Tagalog

Archive for the ‘The Art of Travelling’ Category

Three Interesting Airport Hotels

Saturday, November 14th, 2009

Is there anything more boring than being asked to fly to a city for a meeting, only to find out that the meeting is in an office by the airport and that you’ll be staying at the airport hotel?

Airport hotels have a reputation for being soulless and extremely dull. Trust me, once you’ve stayed in a few of the same chain, it becomes difficult to distinguish between them. Part of the reason is that airport hotels tend to be less expensive than their downtown counterparts. And because they cater almost exclusively for business travelers, they can be pretty unremarkable.

Thankfully, the hotel business is one that’s always innovating and if you’re luckily enough to have a generous boss, you might want to consider staying in any of the following hot airport hotels.

Cyberport Hotel, Hong Kong (HKG)

cyberport

I first saw this hotel in Wallpaper* (a decor and design magazine based in UK) a few years ago. Unusually for a hotel out of town, this place is bafflingly chic.

To describe it as a conventional hotel is a bit unfair. For a start, the room keys have been specially comissioned by artists- they look stunning, by the way.

Your bedroom will probbaly have a glass wall that looks out over the leafy Hong Kong hills and South China Sea, and so much stylish furniture that you might wake up thinking you’ve been teleported.

Oh, did I mention the real reason I like staying here? One word – wine. The ultimate expense account drinking hole has to be Podium where you can drink almost anything imaginable (that’s not always easy in Hong Kong).

Yotel, London (LGW)

yotel

This might not win awards for space, but the Yotel is enormously original. For a big city, London has worrylingly little space, and land is very expensive. The same is true in Japan, where the concept of the ‘capsule hotel’ has been popular for decades.

While Yotel isn’t really an authentic capsule hotel (I don’t think you’re given slippers, and you’ll get your own bathroom), it’s the nearest you’ll get to one.

Being right by the airport, the “cabins” are also available by the hour. All capsules include free Wifi and an en-suite bathroom.

Radisson SAS Hotel, Franfurt (FRA)

raddissonfrankfurt

Want to stay in something that looks a bit more interesting than a box? Radisson have built an enormous, disc-shaped hotel right by Frankfurt airport.

Since Frankfurt’s the big hub for Lufthansa, you’re likely to end up here at some point. And if you have a long stopover then this place is pretty neat.

It’s got most of the same features of any top-end hotel, and feels a million miles away from those boring, beige airport hotels you’re used to staying in. Styling is sophsticated, simple, masculine.

And if you’re anything like me and like to entertain clients with good wine then try the wine bar which features an enormous free-hanging glass wine tower. Wine! A tower of wine!

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Bloggers, The Art of Travelling | No Comments »

Business Lounge Access

Saturday, November 14th, 2009

Three options for gaining access to business lounges

One of the big headaches for the business traveler is ‘dead-time’. I’m talking about the insane amount of time you spend traveling to airports, waiting around in airports, taxiing in airports. If you fly within Europe or the States, it’s not unusual to spend more time messing around on the ground than in the air.

One way to make the most of your time in the airport is to access a business lounge. Your lounge will at the minimum provide a desk, power-point and Internet. Some offer free drinks, showers and other services. Usually though, these lounges are the preserve of business/first passengers. But what if your company isn’t willing to pay for a business or first class ticket?

You can, thankfully, still make use of those lounges – but only if you either buy access or get an unlimited access pass. Below I’ll talk through some of the options.

Priority Pass

priority

You may have seen this company advertised in Airline magazines. They provide lounge access to economy class passengers and seem to be doing a roaring trade (particularly in tightened times).

The pass allows you access to over 600 airport lounges around the world, so it’s likely that if you’re flying from a major airport then there will be a lounge for you. In fact some of the bigger cities like New York, Chicago, London, Tokyo etc have several to choose from. Some are better than others.

There are several packages to choose from, ranging from $99/year to $399/year. The lowest membership package gives you the ability to charge visits to your card at $27 each. For 10 visits a year, the next tier up is $249. Then for unlimited visits you’re looking at $399/year.

It’s not a cheap option, but this card does provide the benefit of instant access without having to plan ahead. Also quite a good option for corporations who want to give their staff the option to use a lounge – much cheaper than paying for an upgraded ticket.

You can take a guest into a lounge for $27 (same for all plans)

American Express Platinum

platinumamex

If you’re credit-worthy and don’t mind the annual fee, the Amex Platinum includes the top tier of Priority Pass membership. Even better than that, you can nominate one other cardholder who can also use lounges free of charge.

The card costs around £300/year, so it isn’t cheap. However, there are additional benefits to the card such as free global travel insurance, so arguably the card would pay for itself if you travel enough.

Another thing to bear in mind is this: if you spend enough on your card, you’ll accumulate points. Those points can be used to pay for the membership fee, so this could be a totally cost-free proposition. Warning: accumulating enough points to pay your £300 fee will involve spending tens of thousands of pounds.

Some other premium credit cards also offer Priority Pass (HSBC’s offshore credit card, for instance), so keep an eye out for one in your country.

Ad-Hoc

If you’re not travelling too often, and you don’t mind planning ahead then it’s actually possible to book a few hours of lounge access online.

It’s fairly easy to do this – just type in the name of the airport in which you require lounge access, and then the keyword ‘lounge access’. I just ran a search for Amsterdam Schiphol aiprort and found access from £18 ($25) to the Menzies lounge, which is the same one Priority Pass offers. The price includes free drinks and snacks, inluding alcohol.

Things to remember:

Normally your lounge access is only valid for a few hours, so it’s not acceptable to sleep there. Also, sometimes lounges will not open until later than your flight so make sure you check this before you travel. They do occasionally shut earlier at weekends. YMMV – the quality of lounges varies enormously. At the least though, you should be away from the crowds and able to work which after all is the main thing!

Tags: , ,
Posted in Bloggers, The Art of Travelling | No Comments »

Best Wine

Monday, November 2nd, 2009
Best Wine

Best Wine



After last time having given you a bit of fatherly advice regarding the right hotels we now come to the next point – and all those to whom wine is nothing more than fermented grape juice should now close the browser and go and pour a cola down your throat – wines.

There really is nothing more dispiriting than to dine in a hotel of the style which I’m used to, say some hotel in Paris, and upon questioning the waiter regarding the house wine not to have at least one wine offered which falls within my list of the best wine in the world.

Yes it’s quite true, thus can one recognise a good hotel – I mean, the best wines in the world do naturally have their price – but they’re worth every penny, and really who should know that better than I?

The Best Wine – EVER!

#1 Chateau Petrus – an extremely good wine, that one can enjoy equally with dessert or with cheese – and just to be alone in a hotel room with this little darling is in itself an experience. A bottle of this wine from its 1961 vintage will set you back around 14,990€, and thus belongs in among my front runners.

#2 Chataeu Ceval Blang – not all, but some of the older vintages are most drinkable and set you back around 10,000€ a bottle. I always keep a few in my cellar for anyone who fancies a drop, and the really cheap years go for around 100€ a bottle. But if you’re going to do that then honestly you may as well pop down to the nearest off-licence and get yourself a bottle of Californian red.

#3 Château Lafite Rothschild – a truly excellent wine while yet being affordable also for your run-of-the mill wage slaves, and while that does make it almost boring, still it’s a  Frenchman through and through, a true Bordeaux, and it’s simply unfortunate that there are also some rather cheap vintages. The most expensive bottle, and I’m afraid the only one which is known as being really good, costs around 11,500€ and would have been bottled in 1899. A real party wine!

#4 Domaine de la Romanée Conti - from the French Burgund, it’s really my fun choice, but if in doubt then the Burgunder just pips the Bordeaux price-wise, at 7,300€ a bottle.

#5 Château Le Pin – 1989, 6,290€ a bottle, also a Bordeaux; and with that we pretty much come to the end of the list – all the other wines of which I’m aware fall far short of the 5,000 USD mark and as such are for me simply unacceptable.

There’s just one more wine that I’d like to add to my list of the best wine of the world, and that’s the Kreuzberger wine from Berlin – every year very few bottles are produced and despite my excellent standing with the mayor of that city it’s only the other year that I finally managed to get hold of a bottle. The normal price must really be exorbitant – it’s unfortunately not generally known – and at that even I begin to perspire slightly.

However it might be better to start off instead with the first wine on my list of the best wine of the world.

:-) by the way: wine always tastes best at any of the romantic hotels in Paris

Tags: , , ,
Posted in The Art of Travelling | No Comments »

Travelling flexible

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Honestly, I’m a pretty flexible traveler, but I still have my dreams. The following are the things that I look for most when choosing a hotel. Again, they’re not mandatory criteria, just priorities.

  1. Free wireless Internet that ALSO works with Macs: I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve checked into a hotel with „free wireless Internet“ and when I try to get on the web with my lovely little Macbook, it’s a no-go. I need my email all the time, as well as my free NYTimes. Love that David Brooks. If there’s no free wifi, the hotel had better at least have a business center. And God forbid they try to charge me for that.
  2. Location, location, location: I’m not one to want to stay in the middle of tourist lala land. I don’t consider overpriced restaurants a must. All the same, some parts of town, you just don’t want to end up in, especially as a younger, somewhat vertically-challenged woman.
  3. Fitness Center: Even if I don’t use it, a fitness center in my hotel makes me feel a little less guilty about that extra round of Kaiserschmarn: “I’ll work it off in my fitness center!” Right. Important though: gotta have the sweat-wipey cloths. Nothing worse than a drippy Treadmill to kill your fitness motivation.
  4. Clean Swimming Pool: I’d honestly rather have no pool than the green monsters I’ve experienced in some hotels (see Hotels in LA).
  5. Cheerios at Breakfast: I have to admit, it doesn’t matter how bad they are, I always get really excited about the complementary breakfasts. I’m a breakfast person. Muffins, bagels, pancakes….I could it breakfast 3 meals a day every day (see: Fitness Center)
  6. Clean: I used to work as a room cleaner in a hotel in Concord, NH to help pay for college. Some guests are just dirty. (Note: Tip your room cleaners well. It’s a brutal line of work).
  7. Open Minibars: Not that I ever take anything from the minibar, but sometimes I like to put in my own food or bottled water. It’s also obnoxious when the minibar is locked and you can’t find the key. Case in point: around 2am last March, my boyfriend got food poisoning in our five-star Mexican hotel (“Don’t drink the water,” I told him). Anyway, the minibar was locked with the key nowhere to be found. Obviously the boy needed to drink, so I spent the rest of the night sterilizing water using the in-room coffee pot. Never again.

Hope that helps any of you out there trying to figure out what to look out for in your next hotel. For the rest of you, I hope it was at least mildly interesting, entertaining or maybe even both.

Posted in The Art of Travelling | No Comments »

What great Hotels like the Burj Al Arab Hotel in Dubai have to offer to satisfy me

Friday, October 23rd, 2009
Burj Al Arab Hotel in Dubai

Burj Al Arab Hotel in Dubai

There can only be one…

By which I mean, it’s unusual that there is more than one of the brand-name hotel I check into in any given metropolis (like Hong Kong).

OK, so the Four Seasons Hong Kong offers all kinds of complimentary perks, but I want to know the details – like are the masseuse’s hands big enough. Of course the Rome Hotel in Berlin is luxurious, but does the staff change out every 12 hours?

Here are just a couple of points in checklist form – this is what you need to know if you want to feel like you’re being taken care of and not just put up:

  1. Private Concierge/Butler – there’s nothing more annoying than having to deal with constantly-changing personnel.
  2. Complete Silence – It is SO annoying when the AC or the Minibar makes noise. That’s a killer-criteria for me – I need it quiet in my room.
  3. Pool temperature should be less than 21 degrees Celsius… I want a swim in the mornings, not a warm bath. The WORST is when the pool is less than 15 meters – I’m 1 meter 90… so why would I even bother getting into a 15-meter-long pool?
  4. Brand name soap… I let two things touch my skin: water, and quality soaps. Please, no cheap Chinese imports.
  5. A decent level of exclusivity amongst the other guests, please. Watch out for luxury hotels which offer package deals to common tourists. That’s always unpleasant. You want hotels where you can network and rely on your network to stay exclusive.
  6. Masseuses with really small hands… I’m not kidding, it creeps me out. I can’t help but think of them as some kind of Asian forced laborers.
  7. High-end Stereo System – Bang & Olufsen at a minimum. It needs a jack for my iPhone 3GS. And I need an integrated marble shower – not some clunky tub. A decent sink design is necessary, too.

I’ve been in basically all the cities worth going to in the world, and I can tell you from experience it’s not so easy to find a place with just a passable level of class. I mean, is it possible to see it any other way? I don’t think so, do you?

P.S. Don’t forget, you’ll want a hotel with a decent limo service – by which I mean a long Mercedes S-Class or higher. There is one hotel in Dubai where they get it right: the Burj Al Arab. If you’re looking for an excellent butler, I mean they have one. He’s London old-school – they just don’t make them like they used to.

Posted in The Art of Travelling | No Comments »

Hotels-In.com is proudly powered by WordPress
Entries (RSS) and Comments (RSS).

Login