Portal:Hotels
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The Hotels Portal
A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. Facilities provided inside a hotel room may range from a modest-quality mattress in a small room to large suites with bigger, higher-quality beds, a dresser, a refrigerator, and other kitchen facilities, upholstered chairs, a flat-screen television, and en-suite bathrooms. Small, lower-priced hotels may offer only the most basic guest services and facilities. Larger, higher-priced hotels may provide additional guest facilities such as a swimming pool, a business center with computers, printers, and other office equipment, childcare, conference and event facilities, tennis or basketball courts, gymnasium, restaurants, day spa, and social function services. Hotel rooms are usually numbered (or named in some smaller hotels and B&Bs) to allow guests to identify their room. Some boutique, high-end hotels have custom decorated rooms. Some hotels offer meals as part of a room and board arrangement. In Japan, capsule hotels provide a tiny room suitable only for sleeping and shared bathroom facilities.
Hotel operations vary in size, function, complexity, and cost. Most hotels and major hospitality companies have set industry standards to classify hotel types. An upscale full-service hotel facility offers luxury amenities, full-service accommodations, an on-site restaurant, and the highest level of personalized service, such as a concierge, room service, and clothes-ironing staff. Full-service hotels often contain upscale full-service facilities with many full-service accommodations, an on-site full-service restaurant, and a variety of on-site amenities. Boutique hotels are smaller independent, non-branded hotels that often contain upscale facilities. Small to medium-sized hotel establishments offer a limited amount of on-site amenities. Economy hotels are small to medium-sized hotel establishments that offer basic accommodations with little to no services. Extended stay hotels are small to medium-sized hotels that offer longer-term full-service accommodations compared to a traditional hotel. (Full article...)
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The 2008 Mumbai attacks (also referred to as 26/11 attacks) were a series of terrorist attacks that took place in November 2008, when 10 members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant Islamist organisation from Pakistan, carried out 12 coordinated shooting and bombing attacks lasting four days across Mumbai. The attacks, which drew widespread global condemnation, began on Wednesday 26 November and lasted until Saturday 29 November 2008. A total of 175 people died, including nine of the attackers, with more than 300 injured.
Eight of the attacks occurred in South Mumbai: at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, the Oberoi Trident, the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower hotel, the Leopold Cafe, the Cama Hospital, the Nariman House, the Metro Cinema, and in a lane behind the Times of India building and St. Xavier's College. There was also an explosion at Mazagaon, in Mumbai's port area, and in a taxi at Vile Parle. By the early morning of 28 November, all sites except for the Taj Hotel had been secured by the Mumbai Police and security forces. On 29 November, India's National Security Guards (NSG) conducted Operation Black Tornado to flush out the remaining attackers; it culminated in the death of the last remaining attackers at the Taj Hotel and ended the attacks. (Full article...) -
Image 2Pikes Hotel, now known as Pikes Ibiza, is a luxury hotel in Ibiza, in the Balearic Islands of Spain. It is located in the countryside, 1.6 miles (2.6 km) to the northeast of the town of Sant Antoni de Portmany, and 10.2 miles (16.4 km) to the northwest of Ibiza Town. A 15th-century stone mansion which was a finca (farm estate), it was converted into a hotel in 1978 by British-born Australian Anthony Pike.
The hotel, cited as one of the most famous or infamous hotels on the island, developed a notorious reputation for hedonism in the 1980s, and is associated with being a playground for the rich and famous. It is best known for being the location of filming for Wham!'s 1983 hit "Club Tropicana" and for Freddie Mercury's 41st birthday bash in 1987, cited as one of the most lavish parties ever to be held on Ibiza. (Full article...) -
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The Monbar Hotel attack was carried out by the Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación (GAL), a Spanish state-sponsored death squad, on 25 September 1985 in Bayonne, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France. The targets were four members of the Basque separatist terrorist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), whom the Spanish government believed to be senior figures in the organization, itself proscribed as a terrorist group in Spain and France. All four people were killed, with a fifth person, apparently unconnected to ETA, injured in the shooting. This represented the deadliest attack carried out by the GAL. Although two of the participants were apprehended shortly after the shooting, controversy surrounded the possible involvement of senior figures in the Spanish police.
This attack, and similar attacks carried out by the GAL, became a major issue during the 1996 Spanish general election after a supreme court trial established that the Spanish Interior Ministry had provided clandestine funding for the GAL. Spanish Interior Minister José Barrionuevo and his security chief, Rafael Vera, were jailed for ten years for sanctioning a kidnapping and misappropriation of public funds to finance the group, and the GAL scandal is seen as a key factor in the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) losing the election, though more senior figures in the PSOE, such as Felipe Gonzalez, denied knowledge and involvement. (Full article...) -
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The Ritz Paris is a hotel in central Paris, overlooking the Place Vendôme in the city's 1st arrondissement. A member of The Leading Hotels of the World marketing group, the Ritz Paris is ranked among the most luxurious hotels in the world.
The hotel was founded in 1898 by the Swiss hotelier César Ritz in collaboration with the French chef Auguste Escoffier. The hotel was constructed behind the façade of an eighteenth-century townhouse. It was among the first hotels in Europe to provide an en suite bathroom, electricity, and a telephone for each room. It quickly established a reputation for luxury and attracted a clientele that included royalty, politicians, writers, film stars, and singers. Several of its suites are named in honour of famous guests of the hotel including Coco Chanel, and the cocktail lounge Bar Hemingway pays tribute to writer Ernest Hemingway. (Full article...) -
Image 5The Briarcliff Lodge was a luxury resort in the village of Briarcliff Manor, New York. It was a notable example of Tudor Revival architecture, and was one of the largest wooden structures in the United States. It was also the first hotel in Westchester County. Walter William Law had it built on his estate, and the Law family owned it until 1937. When the lodge opened in 1902, it was one of the largest resort hotels in the world. The lodge hosted presidents, royalty, and celebrities, and was the scene of numerous memorable occasions for visitors and local residents who attended weddings, receptions, and dances in the ballroom and dining room. For a long time, the lodge was situated among other businesses of Walter Law, including the Briarcliff Farms and Briarcliff Table Water Company.
In 1933, the lodge ended year-round service and housed a "health-diet sanitarium" until the Edgewood Park School for Girls began operation there from 1937 to 1954. From 1936 to 1939, the lodge was run again as a hotel in the summer months while the school was closed. From 1955 to 1994, The King's College used the lodge building and built dormitories and academic buildings. Abandoned and unmaintained after 1994, the Briarcliff Lodge was destroyed between 2003 and 2004. (Full article...) -
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The Ritz London is a 5-star luxury hotel at 150 Piccadilly in London, England. A symbol of high society and luxury, the hotel is one of the world's most prestigious and best known. The Ritz has become so associated with luxury and elegance that the word "ritzy" has entered the English language to denote something that is ostentatiously stylish, fancy, or fashionable.
The hotel was opened by Swiss hotelier César Ritz in 1906, eight years after he established the Hôtel Ritz Paris. It began to gain popularity towards the end of World War I, with politicians, socialites, writers and actors in particular. David Lloyd George held a number of secret meetings at the Ritz during the latter half of the war, and it was at the Ritz that he made the decision to intervene on behalf of Greece against Turkey. Noël Coward was a notable diner at the Ritz in the 1920s and 1930s. (Full article...) -
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The Dorchester is a five-star hotel located on Park Lane and Deanery Street in London, to the east of Hyde Park. It is one of the world's most prestigious hotels. The Dorchester opened on 18 April 1931, and it still retains its 1930s furnishings and ambiance despite being modernised.
Throughout its history, the hotel has been closely associated with the rich and famous. During the 1930s, it became known as a haunt of numerous writers and artists such as poet Cecil Day-Lewis, novelist Somerset Maugham, and the painter Sir Alfred Munnings. It has held prestigious literary gatherings, such as the "Foyles Literary Luncheons", an event the hotel still hosts today. During the Second World War, the strength of its construction gave the hotel the reputation of being one of London's safest buildings, and notable members of political parties and the military chose it as their London residence. Queen Elizabeth II attended the Dorchester when she was a princess on the day prior to the announcement of her engagement to Philip Mountbatten on 10 July 1947. The hotel has since become particularly popular with film actors, models and rock stars, and Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton frequently stayed at the hotel throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The hotel became a Grade II Listed Building in January 1981, and was subsequently purchased by the Sultan of Brunei in 1985. It belongs to the Dorchester Collection, which in turn is owned by the Brunei Investment Agency (BIA), an arm of the Ministry of Finance of Brunei. (Full article...) -
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The Blackstone Hotel is a historic 290-foot (88 m) 21-story hotel on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Balbo Drive in the Michigan Boulevard Historic District in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois. Built between 1908 and 1910, it is on the National Register of Historic Places. The Blackstone is famous for hosting celebrity guests, including numerous U.S. presidents, for which it was known as the "Hotel of Presidents" for much of the 20th century, and for contributing the term "smoke-filled room" to political parlance. (Full article...) -
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Richard D'Oyly Carte ([ˈdɔɪli kɑːt]; 3 May 1844 – 3 April 1901) was an English talent agent, theatrical impresario, composer, and hotelier during the latter half of the Victorian era. He built two of London's theatres and a hotel empire, while also establishing an opera company that ran continuously for over a hundred years and a management agency representing some of the most important artists of the day.
Carte started his career working for his father, Richard Carte, in the music publishing and musical instrument manufacturing business. As a young man he conducted and composed music, but he soon turned to promoting the entertainment careers of others through his management agency. Carte believed that a school of wholesome, well-crafted, family-friendly, English comic opera could be as popular as the risqué French works dominating the London musical stage in the 1870s. To that end he brought together the dramatist W. S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan and nurtured their collaboration on a series of thirteen Savoy operas. He founded the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and built the state-of-the-art Savoy Theatre to host the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. (Full article...) -
Image 10Claudius Charles Philippe, also known as Philippe of the Waldorf or The Host of the Waldorf, (10 December 1910—24 December 1978) was a British-born French-American restaurateur, catering director, hotelier and businessman, who was the hotel banquet manager of the prestigious Waldorf Astoria New York hotel in the 1940s and 1950s. From 1961 until 1963 he worked as executive vice president of Loews Hotels, and was responsible for the planning and building of six new New York hotels.
Philippe is best remembered for founding the April in Paris Ball at the Waldorf Astoria in 1951, which he ran with Elsa Maxwell until his sacking from the hotel in 1959. The balls were major events in the US socialite calendar, and raised millions of dollars for American and French charities over the 28 years of its existence. His Lucullus Circle dinners also attracted some of the wealthiest businessmen of the day to feast on six to eight course meals. During his career at the Waldorf Astoria it has been estimated that Philippe was responsible for his clients spending $150 million alone on banquets, which led him to be referred to as "one of the truly great men this industry has ever produced" by George Lang. (Full article...) -
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The Virgin Hotels Chicago (formerly Old Dearborn Bank Building or 203 North Wabash Avenue) is a historic building in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois, that has been converted from use as an office building to use as a hotel run via a mobile app-based business model. The 250-room hotel is the first of Richard Branson's Virgin Hotels brand boutique hotels geared toward the female business traveller. (Full article...) -
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The Hotel Europa was a grand hotel located in Maracaibo, Venezuela. It opened in the late 19th century and served as the filming location for the first Venezuelan film, Un célebre especialista sacando muelas en el gran Hotel Europa, in 1897. Later, it was converted into other hotels with different names, most notably the Hotel Zulia, before being demolished in 1956 for the construction of the Maracaibo municipal building. (Full article...) -
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The Hôtel d'Alluye is an hôtel particulier in Blois, Loir-et-Cher, France. Built for Florimond Robertet when he was secretary and notary to Louis XII, the residence bears the name of his barony of Alluyes. On Rue Saint-Honoré near Blois Cathedral and the Château de Blois, it is now significantly smaller than it was originally as the north and west wings were destroyed between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries.
Built between 1498 (or 1500) and 1508, the hôtel particulier is one of the first examples of Renaissance architecture in Blois. Its façades consist of Gothic, French Renaissance and Italian Renaissance architecture. The Hôtel d'Alluye was owned by the Robertet family from 1508 until 1606 before undergoing frequent changes in ownership; since 2007, it has been divided into ten apartments and a large office. (Full article...) -
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Sir William Heygate Edmund Colborne Butlin MBE (29 September 1899 – 12 June 1980) was an entrepreneur whose name is synonymous with the British holiday camp. Although holiday camps such as Warner's existed in one form or another before Butlin opened his first in 1936, it was Butlin who turned holiday camps into a multimillion-pound industry and an important aspect of British culture.
Born in Cape Town, South Africa, to William and Bertha Butlin, Butlin had a turbulent childhood. His parents separated before he was seven, and he returned to England with his mother. He spent the next five years following his grandmother's family fair around the country where his mother sold gingerbread, exposing the young Butlin to the skills of commerce and entertainment. When he was twelve his mother emigrated to Canada, leaving him in the care of his aunt for two years. Once settled in Toronto, his mother invited him to join her there. (Full article...) -
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John Plankinton (March 11, 1820 – March 29, 1891) was an American businessman. He is noted for expansive real estate developments in Milwaukee, including the luxurious Plankinton House Hotel designed as an upscale residence for the wealthy. He was involved with railroading and banking. The Plankinton Bank he developed became the leading bank of Milwaukee in his lifetime. He was involved in the development of the Milwaukee City Railroad Company, an electric railway.
Plankinton was a Milwaukee-based meatpacking industrialist. He started this trade as a butcher for his general store operating in the center part of the city. He was the city's leading meat packer after his first year in the grocery business. He expanded this industry and eventually became acquainted with the meatpacking industrialist Philip D. Armour forming a company with him that lasted for 20 years. (Full article...)
General images - show new batch
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Image 2On top of the cliff, the Riosol Hotel in Mogán (from Hotel)
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Image 8Abandoned Grand West Courts in Chicago, demolished in September 2013 (from Motel)
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Image 11The Peninsula New York hotel, located at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 55th Street in Midtown Manhattan (from Hotel)
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Image 12Tremont House in Boston, United States, a luxury hotel, the first to provide indoor plumbing (from Hotel)
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Image 15Wigwam Motel No. 6, a unique motel/motor court on historic Route 66 in Holbrook, Arizona (from Motel)
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Image 16The Boody House Hotel in Toledo, Ohio (from Hotel)
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Image 18Motels frequently have large pools, such as the Thunderbird Motel on the Columbia River in Portland, Oregon (1973). (from Motel)
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Image 19The Harrison Hotel, an SRO hotel in Oakland, California. (from Apartment hotel)
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Image 20Holiday Inn's "Great Sign", used until 1982. Some remain in museums. (from Motel)
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Image 22Ithaa, the first undersea restaurant at the Conrad Maldives Rangali Island resort (from Hotel)
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Image 23The Waldorf Astoria New York, the most expensive hotel ever sold, cost US$1.95 billion in 2014. (from Hotel)
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Image 25A typical hotel room with a bed, desk, and television (from Hotel)
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Image 28Sign on Chicago motel (from Motel)
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Image 29An apartment hotel in Hammond, Indiana (from Apartment hotel)
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Image 30Burj Al Arab stands on an artificial island from Jumeirah Beach and is connected to the mainland by a private curving bridge (from Hotel)
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Image 31Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden (from Hotel)
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Image 32The Star Lite Motel in Dilworth, Minnesota is a typical American 1950s L-shaped motel. (from Motel)
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Image 36The 4 Seasons Motel sign in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin is an excellent example of googie architecture. (from Motel)
Selected articles - load new batch
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Hotel Arctic is a 4-star hotel with 5 star conference centre. It is located 2.7 km north of the Ilulissat Icefjord, a UNESCO World Heritage Site owned by Air Greenland. The hotel was built shortly after the airport was opened in 1984 to accommodate passengers.
Hotel Arctic has 76 rooms, 9 suites and 5 aluminium "Igloos" built on the edge of the coast. The hotel's facilities can accommodate up to 120 people. The restaurant Ulo serves Greenland cuisine and local food. All year round, there are 60 employees present, and in the peak season, this figure increases to about 70.
On September 1, 2013, the hotel was 100 percent CO2-neutral. (Full article...) -
Image 2Mountaintop Motel Massacre is a 1983 American psychological slasher film written and directed by Jim McCullough Sr. and starring Anna Chappell, Bill Thurman, and Amy Hill. The plot concerns a psychotic elderly woman who, after being freed from incarceration, returns to the motel she ran and begins murdering the guests.
Filmed in 1982 in Shreveport, Louisiana, the film was first independently released in the southern United States under the title Mountaintop Motel. In 1985, New World Pictures acquired theatrical distribution rights, and its ending was reshot to feature additional onscreen gore. New World Pictures released the film theatrically as Mountaintop Motel Massacre in March 1986. Although the film received negative critical reception upon its theatrical release, it has, in later years, been noted for its offbeat atmosphere, and has been referred to as an "early 1980s drive-in gem." (Full article...) -
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The National Hotel epidemic was a mysterious sickness that began to afflict persons who stayed at the National Hotel in Washington, DC, in early January 1857. At the time, the hotel was the largest in the city. By some accounts, as many as 400 people became sick, and nearly three dozen died.
Although there was speculation of an attempt to poison hotel guests, that theory was not proven. The outbreak affected mostly patrons of the hotel's dining room but not those who frequented the bar. It began to spread more noticeably by mid-January 1857. New cases of the illness began to decrease in number by the end of January 1857 and continued to abate until mid-February. When the numbers of guests increased for the presidential inauguration of March 4, 1857, the sickness returned again forcefully.
In the 21st century, medical experts attribute the outbreak to "dysentery because of the hotel’s primitive sewage system." (Full article...) -
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The Sherry-Netherland is a 38-story apartment hotel located at 781 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 59th Street in the Upper East Side neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It was designed by Schultze & Weaver with Buchman & Kahn. The building is 560 ft (170.7 m) high and was the tallest apartment-hotel in New York City when it opened.
The building is located in the Upper East Side Historic District, which was created in 1981. (Full article...) -
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The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas (commonly referred to simply as The Cosmopolitan or The Cosmo) is a resort casino and hotel on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada. It is owned by The Blackstone Group, Stonepeak Partners, and Cherng Family Trust and operated by MGM Resorts International. The resort includes a 100,000 sq ft (9,300 m2) casino and 3,033 rooms across two towers, as well as a 3,200-seat performance theater and various restaurants.
The project was announced in 2004, by a joint venture that included real estate developer Ian Bruce Eichner. Construction on the hotel towers began in April 2007, following excavation work for an underground parking garage. Deutsche Bank helped finance the project, and eventually took over ownership in September 2008, after the original developers defaulted on a loan. The resort's interior underwent several redesigns, and plans to include a condo hotel component were ultimately scrapped.
The Cosmopolitan opened on December 15, 2010, and at $3.9 billion, it was the most expensive Strip resort built up to that point. The resort proved to be popular, although casino revenue lagged behind other amenities. Deutsche Bank sold the resort to The Blackstone Group in 2014, for $1.7 billion. Blackstone made numerous changes which improved gaming revenue, and the company also negotiated a deal with the Culinary Workers Union, whose members had protested at the resort over the lack of a union contract. The resort operations were sold to MGM in 2022, while Cherng and Stonepeak joined Blackstone as owners. (Full article...) -
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The Hotel St. George is a building in Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn, New York City. Built in sections between 1885 and 1930, the hotel was once the city's largest hotel, with 2,632 rooms at its peak. The hotel occupies the city block bounded by Pineapple Street, Henry Street, Clark Street, and Hicks Street.
The building complex consisted of eight attached structures, surrounding a courtyard, prior to a 1995 fire that destroyed two of the buildings. It is located atop the New York City Subway's Clark Street station, whose sole entrance is through the hotel's ground story. The hotel once had various amenities such as a saltwater swimming pool, a ballroom, and numerous restaurants.
The hotel, originally operated by Union Navy captain William Tumbridge, was designed by Augustus Hatfield as a 10-story structure and was expanded over the years. Tumbridge hired Montrose Morris to design two additions in 1898 and 1913. After Tumbridge died in 1921, his son sold the hotel to Bing & Bing, which hired Emery Roth to design additional expansions in 1924 and 1928. The hotel was completed on March 21, 1930, and became a popular venue for events and military personnel over the next three decades. The St. George's patronage began to decline in 1950, with long-term residents making up the majority of the clientele. The hotel was sold three times during the 1960s and was mostly vacant by the early 1970s. Four of the hotel's eight buildings were renovated and converted to apartments between 1978 and 1984. The building survived a large 1995 fire and has been used as student dormitories since the late 1990s. (Full article...) -
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The Aztec Motel, also known as the Aztec Auto Court or Aztec Lodge, was a historic motel located on former U.S. Route 66 in the Upper Nob Hill neighborhood of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States. Until its demolition in 2011 it was the oldest continuously-operating Route 66 motel in New Mexico and "one of the five most important motels left" in Albuquerque. (Full article...) -
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The Boots Motel, a historic U.S. Route 66 motor hotel in Carthage, Missouri, opened in 1939 as the Boots Court at 107 S. Garrison Avenue.
It served travellers at the "crossroads of America" (US 66 and U.S. Route 71, the major roads of that era) and was built in streamline moderne and art deco architectural style, its roofline and walls accented in black Carrara glass and green neon. Arthur and Ilda Boots originally advertised "a radio in every room" and each room included a covered carport.
A filling station briefly operated at the front of the property when it opened during the Great Depression but was soon replaced by the motel's office. (Full article...) -
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A love hotel is a type of short-stay hotel found around the world operated primarily for the purpose of allowing guests privacy for sex. The name originates from "Hotel Love" in Osaka. Although love hotels exist all over the world, the term "love hotel" is often used to refer specifically to those located within Japan. (Full article...) -
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The Peninsula Paris is an historic luxury hotel, originally known as the Hotel Majestic, located on Avenue Kléber in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, France. It opened in 1908 as the Hotel Majestic and was converted to government offices in 1936. The hotel served as a field hospital for wounded officers during World War I, staffed largely by British aristocrats. During World War II, it served as the headquarters of the German military high command in France during the German occupation of Paris. The building played a pivotal role in the deportation of Parisian Jews and the 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler. The building reopened as The Peninsula Paris in August 2014, following a complicated and costly restoration. (Full article...) -
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Hotel Africa was a hotel on the western coast of Liberia in the northern Monrovia suburb of Virginia.
In 1979, the hotel, the largest in Liberia, hosted the Organisation of African Unity conference. The conference was led by President William R. Tolbert, Jr. who was the group's chair at the time, just months before he was overthrown by Samuel Doe. During the Liberian Civil War, many pilots of Russian and Ukrainian origin stayed at the hotel. In the 1980s, the hotel was owned by British-Liberian businessman Michael Doe. On 5 August 1990, the INPFL kidnapped the manager Doe, two Lebanese, and two Liberians at the Hotel Africa, later murdering Michael Doe, throwing him off the 4th floor balcony.
A South African consortium had plans to invest US$100 million to renovate the historic hotel in time for Liberia's hosting duties of an international women's colloquium in 2009. (Full article...) -
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Georges Auguste Escoffier (French: [ʒɔʁʒ oɡyst ɛskɔfje]; 28 October 1846 – 12 February 1935) was a French chef, restaurateur, and culinary writer who popularized and updated traditional French cooking methods. Much of Escoffier's technique was based on that of Marie-Antoine Carême, one of the codifiers of French haute cuisine; Escoffier's achievement was to simplify and modernize Carême's elaborate and ornate style. In particular, he codified the recipes for the five mother sauces. Referred to by the French press as roi des cuisiniers et cuisinier des rois ("king of chefs and chef of kings"—also previously said of Carême), Escoffier was a preeminent figure in London and Paris during the 1890s and the early part of the 20th century.
Alongside the recipes, Escoffier elevated the profession. In a time when kitchens were loud, riotous places where drinking on the job was commonplace, Escoffier demanded cleanliness, discipline, and silence from his staff. In bringing order to the kitchen, he tapped into his own military experience to develop the hierarchical brigade de cuisine system for organizing the kitchen staff which is still standard in many restaurants today. He worked in partnership with hotelier César Ritz, rising to prominence together at the Savoy in London serving the elite of society, and later at the Ritz Hotel in Paris and the Carlton in London.
Escoffier published Le Guide Culinaire, which is still used as a major reference work, both in the form of a cookbook and a textbook on cooking. Escoffier's recipes, techniques and approaches to kitchen management remain highly influential today, and have been adopted by chefs and restaurants not only in France, but also throughout the world. (Full article...) -
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The New Yorker Hotel is a mixed-use hotel building at 481 Eighth Avenue in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Opened in 1930, the New Yorker Hotel was designed by Sugarman and Berger in the Art Deco style and is 42 stories high, with four basement stories. The hotel building is owned by the Unification Church, which rents out the lower stories as offices and dormitories. The upper stories comprise The New Yorker, A Wyndham Hotel, which has 1,083 guestrooms and is operated by Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. The 1-million-square-foot (93,000-square-meter) building also contains two restaurants and approximately 33,000 square feet (3,100 m2) of conference space.
The facade is largely made of brick and terracotta, with Indiana limestone on the lower stories. There are setbacks to comply with the 1916 Zoning Resolution, as well as a large sign with the hotel's name. The hotel contains a power plant and boiler room on its fourth basement, which was an early example of a cogeneration plant. The public rooms on the lower stories included a Manufacturers Trust bank branch, a double-height lobby, and multiple ballrooms and restaurants. Originally, the hotel had 2,503 guestrooms from the fourth story up. The modern-day hotel rooms start above the 19th story.
The New Yorker was built by Mack Kanner and was originally operated by Ralph Hitz, who died in 1940 and was succeeded by Frank L. Andrews. Hilton Hotels bought the hotel in 1954 and, after conducting extensive renovations, sold the hotel in 1956 to Massaglia Hotels. New York Towers Inc. acquired the New Yorker in 1959 but surrendered the property to Hilton in 1967 as part of a foreclosure proceeding. The hotel was closed in 1972 and sold to the French and Polyclinic Medical School and Health Center, which unsuccessfully attempted to develop a hospital there. The Unification Church purchased the building in 1976 and initially used it as a global headquarters. After the top stories of the building reopened as a hotel in 1994, the lower stories were used as offices and dormitories. The hotel rooms have undergone multiple renovations since the hotel reopened. The New Yorker joined the Ramada chain in 2000 and was transferred to the Wyndham brand in 2014. (Full article...) -
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The Hydro Majestic Hotel is located in Medlow Bath, New South Wales, Australia. The hotel is located on a clifftop overlooking the Megalong Valley on the western side of the Great Western Highway.
The hotel is heritage listed and is notable for its unusual mix of architectural styles, including Art Deco and Edwardian. One key feature is the Casino dome (pictured). The dome was bought in Chicago and shipped to Australia, before being shipped to the Blue Mountains by bullock train and reassembled at the site. (Full article...)
Did you know (auto-generated)
- ... that the Summit Hotel, once described by its own architect as the "most hated hotel in New York", was protected as a New York City landmark in 2005?
- ... that the operator of the Commodore Hotel once hosted a circus, featuring an elephant in the ballroom, to impress visiting hoteliers?
- ... that Danny Kaleikini once worked as a singing hotel busboy in Waikiki before becoming the headline entertainer at the Kahala Hilton for 28 years?
- ... that New York City's Hotel Knickerbocker closed after fourteen years of operation and did not reopen for nearly a century?
- ... that according to Jimmy Carter, "more of [Georgia's] business was probably conducted in the Henry Grady than in the state capitol"?
- ... that a feng shui consultant convinced Donald Trump not to use a gold color for New York City's Trump International Hotel and Tower?
- ... that the Royal Hibernian Hotel is thought to be the oldest hotel in Ireland?
- ... that originally, residents of New York City's Ansonia Hotel received fresh eggs from a farm on its roof?
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