Las Vegas was known as a place for inexpensive hotel rooms and food to lure you into the hotels casino. The mantra was bring them in anyway you can because we will get the money in the casino. For downtown, that may still be the case, but the strip has changed significantly.

Older hotels are being torn down to make room for upscale properties that charge room rates you would expect to find in most major cities. The traffic for the strip is now upscale as conventions, business travelers, and folks with lots of disposable income are flocking into the city and demand for the better things in life is now the rule.

No longer is the room just a place to sleep off a big night in the casino. It is now filled with fancy accessories as flat panel televisions, fancy sheets, and exotic soaps. More Visa Las Vegas than Viva Las Vegas.

Loud imposing smoke-filled casinos still anchor this town, and $50 rates are still typical at hotels downtown, away from the action. But the Strip, the boulevard of Las Vegas dreams, is no longer home to the low-cost weekend getaway.
Las Vegas “was known as the capital of cheap rooms and cheap food,” said Alan Feldman, a spokesman for MGM Mirage, the giant hotel and casino company developing the Boardwalk site. “It was known as the capital of the cheap vacation — and you got what you paid for. We used to give coupon books for free drinks and two-for-one buffet. Now we have 300-thread-count sheets and turn-down service.”
The trends conform to Las Vegas’s effort to redefine itself as a more diversified destination, offering superb but costly restaurants ($88 for the 12-ounce grilled Kobe rib-eye steak at Tao at the Venetian) and shows like Cirque du Soleil’s “O” ($93.50 to $150 a seat). The new features have helped keep Las Vegas growing even as many new casinos — from small card houses to Indian casinos — are springing up around the country and providing local outlets for gamblers. via New York Times.

We found an interesting article at MSN that lists their Top 10 Castles. We added links to the property’s websites for your information.

1. Amberley Castle, England
2. Balfour Castle, Scotland
3. Castle on the Hudson, New York
4. Château de Castel Novel, France
5. Chateau de la Bourdaisière, France
6. Kasbah du Toubkal, Morocco
7. Lake Palace, India
8. Palácio Belmonte, Portugal
9. Palazzo Gritti, Italy
10. Waterford Castle, Ireland

For the full article please visit MSN Travel.

A New Luxury Hotel Group is on the horizon.

Starwood Capital Group today announced plans to launch a new international luxury brand called the Crillon through its Societe du Louvre affiliate. The company will develop European-style Crillon hotels and serviced residences in major destinations throughout the world.

The Crillon’s flagship is the Hotel de Crillon in Paris, located on Place de la Concorde and one of only six Palace hotels (six-star) in that city. Housed in a historic building commissioned in 1758 by Louis XV, the 147-room de Crillon is considered a true Paris institution and has been a favorite of luminaries, including heads of state and celebrities, since it opened as a hotel in 1909. Starwood Capital expects that the Crillon Paris will undergo continuing upgrades in the near future. via Hotel Online

This is an excerpt from an outstanding article over at Travel and Leisure Magazine on tipping. Traditional ways of tipping the staff have changed over the last couple of decades, and many travelers do not understand the what is expected of them in hotels.

Luxury hotel chains generally charge a service fee that ranges from 10 to 15 percent of the cost of your stay and covers housekeeping, the concierge, and other small services, such as having a newspaper delivered to your door daily. However, what it includes varies from property to property, so check with the receptionist. Most luxury hotels in China, Japan, and Singapore add a 10 percent service charge to the bill and say that additional tipping is not necessary. At Shangri-La Hotels, the 10 percent service charge is based on the traditional European tronc system, where fees are distributed not only among staff members who interact with guests, but also to dishwashers, laundry staff, and other employees.

(more…)

It looks like the Hurricane Katrina has hurt another segment of the New Orleans tourism business as the steamboat cruise business is still hurting. Typically New Orleans is the starting or the end point to the Mississippi cruises. That is a large amount of hotel rooms that will not be filled during 2006.

The Delta Queen Steamboat Co. said the American Queen’s 2006 schedule will be cancelled “due to conditions in New Orleans and along the lower Mississippi River system.”

The vessel has been privately chartered through January, and possibly beyond that time, according to Delta Queen President Bruce Nierenberg.

The company said in a statement that it has seen strong positive momentum in bookings” in recent months and hopes this trend continues. But it is apparent that the upriver itineraries would have a difficult time supporting a three-boat operation” for the whole 2006 operating year.

The Delta Queen and Mississippi Queen are slated to operate with “minimal” schedule changes this spring. via Travel Weekly

One of the great names in Las Vegas Casino lore is going to be gone this year. The Stardust Hotel and Casino will be leaving to create the mega-complex  called the Echelon.

The Stardust Hotel and Casino, in business since 1958, will close later this year and be torn down in 2007 to make way for a $4 billion development to be called Echelon Place, it was announced last week. The 60-plus acre project from parent company Boyd Gaming will contain a grand total of 5,300 hotel rooms operating under four different banners.
The first, and by far the biggest, is the Boyd-owned and operated Echelon Resort, a $2.9 billion hotel and casino that will feature 3,300 rooms — 2,600 “standard” units in one tower and 700 suites in a second.
Next will be a Las Vegas version of the chic Los Angeles hotel the Mondrian that will feature 1,000 rooms and a separate check-in, pool, restaurants, bars and more.
The same group that is creating the Mondrian will also create a 600-room Delano hotel, patterned after the South Beach resort of the same name.
Finally, one of the leading hotel groups in Asia will build a 400 room Shangri-La hotel, complete with a 20,000-square-foot casino.
At the center of all of this accommodation madness is a massive casino and entertainment facility. It will feature 140,000 square feet of casino space (that’s second only to MGM Grand on the Strip), a 350,000-square-foot shopping facility (roughly the same size as Venetian’s Grand Canal Shoppes), a 4,000-seat theater for major productions and concerts, a 1,500-seat theater for smaller events, 1 million square feet of convention space, a giant pool and recreation area and another spa. via KTVU.com

Yotel, a new name in the hotel game, is trying to create a new niche. Yotel will be opening two budget hotels at Heathrow and Gatwick International airports outside of London. The  Yotel will feature capsule rooms for 70  US Dollars a night.

A capsule room is a small room that has a fold out couch that converts to a double bed  The room also has a pull down desk, closet space, adjustable mood lighting, a shower, wireless Internet, an iPod connection and a flat-screen TV.

If this concept is successful, you will see 15 of them around London.

When I am traveling for business, the last thing I need or want is a fancy room or an expansive suite. I am an entrepreneur, and travel expenses come directly out of my pocket. So the concept of the capsule hotel fits every need I have and saves money at the same time.

What a great concept!

via CNN and Yotel

Antigua is a tropical paradise located in the Leeward Islands of the Caribbean. It is one of the most important destinations in the sailing year as well as being one of the top vacation & holiday destinations in the world.  The combination of tradition, history,  and Caribbean warmth provides an island paradise for vacationers.

In 1784 the legendary Admiral Horatio Nelson sailed to Antigua and established Great Britain’s most important Caribbean base. Little did he know that over 200 years later the same unique characteristics that attracted the Royal Navy would transform Antigua and Barbuda in one of the Caribbean’s premier tourist destinations. Via The official Antigua Barbuda Tourism Site

Travel and Leisure has a this review of the Coco Bay resort.

$240 You don’t have to be on your honeymoon to enjoy Cocobay Resort, which is set on a hillside facing the Caribbean Sea. The idyllic hotel is made up of 47 Creole-style cottages in soft pastel hues with exposed beams and wood-slatted blinds. Activities abound, from Sunfish sailing to frangipani-scented aromatherapy massages in a thatched pavilion to guided hikes through the nature preserve led by a medicine man. Be sure to catch the sunset from an Adirondack chair on your room’s balcony or at Sheer, the open-air restaurant atop a bluff on Ffryes Beach. Valley Church; 800/816-7587 or 268/562-2400; www.cocobayresort.com; all-inclusive.

Maps of Antigua can be found here.

A List of Hotels on Antigua.

Sailing Week is one of the big events of the year on Antigua. Official Site of the Rolex Sailing Week

And a List of Restaurants with reviews by Fodors. .

If you are planning your corporate travel, be ready for changes in how the process works. More and more, software programs are being installed to monitor the travel plans and catching deviations from the corporate policies before the trip occurs. This in some ways is good for the business traveler, as it takes the battles away when expense reports are submitted.

Pre-trip audits are beginning to catch on in corporate America. Unlike post-trip auditing tools, they can save companies money by spotting unauthorized spending before the employee hits the road. A system like Visa’s can save a company a few percentage points of its annual travel and entertainment budget, which is typically the second-largest controllable expense behind payroll.

“I was told that I couldn’t stay at the Waldorf and that my best option was to get a room in New Jersey,” Mr. Chu recalled. “But that didn’t make sense.” Instead of a short walk from the Waldorf to the industry conference he planned to attend at the nearby Grand Hyatt, it meant a commute across the Hudson. In the end, he stayed with a college friend in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan and rode a cab to the conference.

Programs that snare business travelers who reserve a plane ticket in business class instead of economy class, or a room in a five-star resort instead of the no-tell motel, are controversial for all the obvious reasons - and a few that aren’t. Travelers often resent the added scrutiny and see the system as an example of bean counters running amok. via NY Times

This will be worth following up in the future.