The 124-room resort, due to open in 2013, will be located 2,400m above sea level in the upper reaches of the Kangra Valley and surrounded by a dense forest and the Himalayan Mountains.

Its key attraction will be a 2,500sqm Ayurvedic spa which will feature extensive preventive health programmes, detox sessions, international treatments alongside Ayurvedic, meditation and yoga therapies.

As befits the resort’s stunning Himalayan setting, it is in the sustainable arena where Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts is really pulling out all the environmental stops.

The Swiss hotel company along with the owning group, Kamakhya Hospitality Services Pvt Ltd are committed to sourcing mainly locally available materials in the construction process, installing energy-efficient systems to harness wind, solar and hydro power, and serving organic vegetables and fruits, and local products from rural farms nearby.

Links with the local community won’t end there, with guest programmes set to provide the opportunity to interact with villagers and learn about their mountainous lifestyles – and perhaps pick up a tip or two on the secrets to their longevity.

In addition, the resort’s lobby will double up as the living room and serve as a centre point for socialising and gathering around open fire places. The hotel will face the Dhauladhar mountain range and rooms will vary from 45sqm (standard) to 70sqm (suites).

Jean Gabriel Pérès, President and CEO of Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts, said: “This is a project where the word ‘unique’ is truly apt, and where guests can expect a hospitality experience second to none. Getting the community involved in all stages of the project is crucial, and the sustainable emphasis underpins the entire resort.”

Vijay Sharma, chairman of owning company, Kamakhya Hospitality Services Pvt. Ltd. mentioned: “Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts is an upscale international brand with experience of operating renowned retreat resorts. We have found the perfect partner to manage the property in a long-term, sustainable fashion.”

Guests will be able to enjoy a wide range of food and beverage options, and undertake activities which are as varied as the terrain, with everything from mountain biking and trekking to adventure sports, all at their doorstep.

To access the resort, guests will take a one-hour flight from New Delhi to Gaggal, followed by a 40-minute drive through spectacular mountain ranges, trails and gorges.

Andreas Mattmüller, Chief Operating Officer for Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts, Middle East & Asia, said: “We are delighted to sign our second property in such a dynamic and fast-growing market. Adding this landmark property to our portfolio follows our global objective to expand our presence in India as we set to open the Mövenpick Hotel & Spa Bangalore this spring.”

Source: thepeninsulaqatar.com

Global reservations through the mostly leisure alternative distribution systems (ADS), or online channels, declined from January’s levels due to a variety of factors including regional unrest in the Middle East and North Africa. However, bookings growth still remained above February 2010 by +1.1% as the average daily rate (ADR) set a new growth record for North America at +2.9%, rising for the rest of the world to an almost +5% increase over last year.

“Despite the challenges unfolding at a regional level in the Middle East and North Africa, hoteliers were still able to raise rates enough in February to achieve average rate growth worldwide and capture more bookings than last year,” said Mike Kistner, chief executive officer of Pegasus Solutions. “Consumers are not only traveling, but they are also willing to spend more. Additionally, the corporate market is booking more groups and meetings business from corporations of all sizes as February bookings, rate and revenue growth was coupled with increases in length of stay and booking lead time.”

February global distribution system (GDS) bookings, representing the mostly corporate market, grew a substantial +23.5%, driving revenue up +36.8% over 2010. Both length of stay and booking lead time for this segment also expanded. Forward-looking data shows this segment displaying average monthly growth of more than +20% through July, with accompanying rate, length of stay and booking lead time increases.

While the full impact of the Japan earthquake will be analyzed in a special edition of The Pegasus View, forward-looking data for February’s report displays a continued leisure travel recovery. Bookings made thus far through online channels suggest growth rates strong enough to regain lost momentum during the upcoming spring and summer travel periods.

The February 2011 The Pegasus View is available in its entirety online and by free subscription at www.pegs.com. Data reported in The Pegasus Viewcomes from billions of transactions processed monthly by Pegasus Solutions, the world’s single largest global processor of hotel transactions. It is the only industry report to reflect data drawn from both GDS and ADS transactions, representing the business and leisure markets respectively for approximately 90,000 hotels worldwide.

About Pegasus — Proud honoree of the 2010 InformationWeek 500, CIO 100 and InfoWorld Top 100

Pegasus Solutions is the world’s leading provider of technology and services to hotels and travel distributors, supplying the award-winning RezView® NG central reservation system, electronic distribution services, advanced agency commission processing and payment services, and hotel marketing representation services. Founded in 1989, Pegasus created and launched the hotel switch, and today its customers include approximately 90,000 properties around the globe as well as a majority of the world’s travel agencies. Additionally, Pegasus’ powerful representation arm incorporates Utell® Hotels & Resorts and Utell Connect services that have been chosen by nearly 6,000 member hotels in more than 130 countries. Pegasus is the hotel industry’s most experienced third-party marketing, sales and reservations specialist. Pegasus also powers the niche consumer Web site www.hotelbook.com_^TM, dedicated to promoting independent and boutique hotels throughout the world. Headquartered in Dallas, Pegasus has 21 offices in 12 countries, including regional hubs in London, Singapore and Scottsdale, Arizona. For more information, please visit www.pegs.com or www.utell.com.

Of those surveyed, 93% compared prices before booking and 81% used hotel review sites.

Conversely, only 21% of customers saw the hotel brand as important.

That means savvy hotels should be lowering prices and working towards better online reviews.

Joel Brandon-Bravo, managing director of Travelzoo UK said, “People are becoming much more price-conscious and may base their whole destination choice on finding a good-value hotel.”

Get the full story at Travolution

Facebook is fast becoming more than a customer relationship tool for many independent properties and chains. Many hotels now offer room-booking technology on their Facebook pages, which is leading to incremental sales.

“Over the course of 2009, we saw the volume of direct referrals from Facebook to hotel websites grow. The conversion rate was higher for Facebook than it was for TripAdvisor and other travel review sites,” said Douglas Quinby, senior director of research for PhoCusWright, a travel research firm in Sherman, Connecticut. The conversion rate on direct referrals from traveler review sites to hotel supplier websites ranged from 4% to 6% in 2009, while conversion from Facebook to hotel websites was 8%.

Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide has provided a booking function within a tab on Facebook for all of its brands and properties since it has been on Facebook.

“Conversion on Facebook is smaller but close to conversion on our brand websites. (Starwood’s Facebook fans) start to see other people’s experiences at the properties,” said David Godsman, VP of global Web for Starwood.

While Starwood primarily uses Facebook to “engage” with its guests, the company’s executives realize the valuable e-commerce potential on the global social-networking site. To that end, Westin Hotels & Resorts in January introduced a “Shop” tab on its properties’ Facebook pages. The shopping widget serves as a fully-contained shopping transaction, instead of working as a link from Westin’s website.

“What we are seeing now is an emergence of technology that that we didn’t see six months ago. There is an opportunity for ourselves and other hotel brands to enable these type of transactions within Facebook,” Godsman said.

Get the full story at HotelNewsNow.com

Another perhaps surprising finding: Corporate travel led the US travel market’s 2009 plummet and is now fueling its recovery, in a dramatic swing that is temporarily disrupting the overall market’s shift to online channels, says the company.
PhoCusWright also projects a restrained recovery through 2011, varying by travel segment and distribution channel.
The U.S. online leisure/unmanaged business travel market will grow by eight percent in 2010 while the traditional travel agency/travel management company (TMC) channel, powered by the business travel rebound, will post a 15 percent gain.
“Corporate travel’s wild ride over the past two years has caused an unusual shift in trend, with online channels growing more slowly than the total US travel market for the first time,” said Douglas Quinby, PhoCusWright senior director of research.

Get the full story at Travelmole

The difficulty for them, and for you if you are responsible for setting prices in your organization, comes in deciding exactly what constitutes a fair price. The question is important for several reasons because:

- Buyers must be convinced the prices they pay are fair if they are to become loyal, repeat customers.

- The front desk and sales staff at a hotel must be convinced the prices they charge guests are fair if they are to be effective salespersons for the business.

- Regulatory agencies must be convinced prices charged are fair or they may be motivated to increase their oversight and control of an industry.

- Actually, while the issue of what constitutes a fair price is pretty interesting, even more interesting is the question of who decides when a price is fair.

Sellers tend to think fair prices reflect their cost of doing business and their profit objectives. Sounds reasonable, but its backwards. That’s because in the long run it is always the buyer, not the seller, who determines the fairness of a price.

Get the full story at Hotel Online

This new capability is part of an aggressive strategy to leverage Facebook’s growing importance in online travel distribution and planning while continuing to drive innovation in an increasingly homogenous travel search market.

“As the only major U.S. travel search engine with its own proprietary travel search technology, deep integration into the Facebook ecosystem makes perfect sense for us to reach the 500 million Facebook users who want to be able to search for travel without leaving Facebook.” said Beatrice Tarka, Mobissimo’s CEO and co-founder.

The recent developments in travel search show the risk of relying on third party technologies for core search. Many travel companies already depend heavily on Google (GOOG) to drive visitors. If the Google-ITA acquisition is approved, travel search companies will be forced to rely on Google for core technology, further increasing their dependence and reliance on Google and reducing their ability to innovate within important new distribution channels like Facebook.

“As ITA has become the dominant provider of travel search technology, companies that rely on it for core search cannot differentiate their content and innovate. Our unique position as the only major travel search engine with its own technology gives us the flexibility to continue to innovate and provide unparalleled access to travel content no other company can provide,” said Tarka.

Mobissimo’s new Facebook travel search is an example of how companies with proprietary technology can continue to drive innovation and differentiation in the travel industry. In addition to the launch of its own search engine within Facebook, Mobissimo is also providing the Mobissimo Facebook travel search protocol to its partners so they can quickly integrate their own travel inventory into Facebook via the application marketplace.

Most importantly, beginning today Facebook users no longer have to leave Facebook to search and plan travel, they simply can navigate to the Mobissimo Facebook application to get instant access to the world’s leading travel brands and the best deals on airfare, hotel, and car rentals, all within Facebook.

Related Link: Facebook Mobissimo

Mr. Oberoi received the award at a reception held at the New York Palace in New York on November 15, 2010.

The cover story of the November edition of HOTELS magazine refers to Mr. Oberoi as ‘the founder father of modern luxury hospitality in India’.  It credits Mr. Oberoi with growing the company ‘into one of the world’s most prestigious luxury hotel groups’.

In addition to providing leadership for the management of luxury hotels in several countries, Mr. Oberoi has been instrumental in pioneering the development of the new Oberoi hotels and resorts.  The “Oberoi” brand has come to represent fine luxury hotels offering personalized service.

Mr. Oberoi is credited with placing Oberoi hotels on the international luxury travelers’ map with the opening of several new luxury hotels in Mauritius, Indonesia, Egypt and hotels in India at important tourist destinations such as Jaipur, Agra, Udaipur, Ranthambhore and Mashobra in the Himalayas.  Mr. Oberoi has directed the development of these hotels breaking ground in new destinations and redefining architectural and design standards in luxury hospitality.

Recently, The Oberoi Vanyavilas, Ranthambhore was ranked the best hotel in the world in Travel + Leisure magazine’s 2010 World’s Best Awards readers’ survey.  In the same readers’ poll, The Oberoi Vanyavilas, Ranthambhore; The Oberoi Amarvilas, Agra; The Oberoi Rajvilas, Jaipur and The Oberoi Udaivilas, Udaipur were ranked 1_^st, 2_^nd, 3_^rd and 4_^th respectively in Asia and 1_^st, 5_^th, 13_^thand 15_^th respectively in the world.

About HOTELS magazine

Published for more than 40 years, HOTELS magazine reaches more than 99,000* readers each month in more than 150 countries through online and print communications, providing hotel owners, managers and chain executives with a global perspective on news, finance, development, technology, design, food and beverage, trends and more.

http://ehotelier.com/

Making it to five-star status this year: Falling Rock at Nemacolin Woodlands Resort in
Farmington, Pa. (the resort is shown at right; Falling Rock is a small luxe part of it); the Island Shangri-La Hong Kong. Chef Daniel Boulud’s Daniel in Manhattan attains Forbes 5-star status, as does Manhattan’s Eleven Madison Park, where rising chef Daniel Humm caused a buzz.

Tops in five-star hotels: The Four Seasons chain.

Criteria for making the five-star list includes service (75% of the total score) and in hotels, “flawless service from department to department,” says Shane O’Flaherty, president and CEO of Forbes Travel Guide. As opposed to competitor AAA, which hands out diamonds, “we evaluate a hotel or restaurant more for what it is,” not off a strict checklist, O’Flaherty says.

There are 54 five-star hotels, same as last year. The two new ones were offset by the loss of Dallas’ The Mansion on Turtle Creek, which has fallen to four stars, and The Hotel Bel-Air in L.A., which is closed for renovation and not rated. Longest-running five-star: The Broadmoor in Colorado, logging its 51st year. There are 23 five-star rated restaurants. As for spas, the two new (of 20) five-star oases are The Spa at The Grand Del Mar, outside San Diego, and The Spa at Mandarin Oriental in CityCenter, Las Vegas.

In popular Vegas, just three properties made five-star status: Skylofts at MGM Grand and the Tower Suites at both Wynn Las Vegas and Encore Las Vegas. I’m sure fans of The Venetian, Palazzo and Bellagio have something to say about that!

Are ratings guides dinosaurs in the day of TripAdvisor and other guest-review sites that update daily? Says Flaherty: “As a consumer, you’re looking for someone to clear through the clutter and provide objective information. Consumer input is valid and important, but we are experts in this arena. We follow a specific process and evaluate everyone the same.”

External source: To read complete article ‘Click Here‘.

Roger Collis, acclaimed journalist and author of ‘The Survivor’s Guide to Business Travel’ has extensive expertise in luxury travel.  He recently met Andrew Pike, the General Manager of the Milestone Hotel in Kensington to discuss the significant challenges of running a five star London hotel.

Below is the London Hotels Insight summary of the key issues they discussed.  You can hear the full podcast on the Red Carnation Hotels blog.

Part of the Red Carnation Hotel Collection, the Milestone is currently ranked number five out of over a thousand hotels on TripAdvisor and was rated ‘No. 1 in the world for service’ by Travel and Leisure Magazine in 2008.

As the hotel’s General Manager, Andrew Pike’s expertise in service delivery is clearly apparent.  He was also interviewed last year on this blog to explain why the Milestone has been riding so high on TripAdvisor.

On what makes a hotel worthy of five stars, he says, “It’s down to the staff and the interaction they have with the guests.”

Despite their opulent image, luxury London hotels are suffering the squeeze of the ongoing financial crisis as much as any other business, while a fear of terrorist attacks remains a concern.

Challenging times

“I think we’re probably experiencing some of our most challenging times today.  One factor is certainly the recent security alerts that have been in place for a while now.  And the second thing is the continuing issue with the dollar exchange rate which is obviously eating into people’s pockets.”

Indeed, as many as 50% of the Milestone’s guests are thought to be American (though the hotel also has a lot of European guests).

But where guests come from according to Mr Pike is not as important as who they are individually.  For this reason, the hotel does its best to meet the needs of the individual rather than following cultural stereotypes.

“We recognise that different nationalities may have specific requirements…but we like to personalise our service and see people as individuals.”

What are the characteristics of a five star hotel?

As Roger Collis points out, there is often confusion about what constitutes a five star hotel, in contrast to a four star hotel. Without a unified international rating system, star ratings can be used to gain a rough indication of quality and price but are far from a concrete classification.

Mr Pike sees a 5 star hotel as one in which, “quality, comfort, fixtures and fittings,” are all of an exceptional standard. But, he says, there’s more to providing a truly five star experience than simply ticking these boxes. He elaborates: “I think what really marks a five star property out is service.”

The key to good service

So if service is of paramount importance, how does the Milestone Hotel go about providing service that meets guests’ expectations so consistently?

Mr Pike puts an emphasis on hiring the right people – “people who genuinely love looking after other people” – and providing a fair and rewarding environment for those individuals to work in.

Exceptional training programmes are another essential element in maintaining good service levels, he says, while mystery shoppers are used periodically to make sure standards are always up to scratch.

When asked what the Milestone’s main competitive advantage is, he replies decisively: “it’s our staff – the great interaction and the personalised service that we offer our guests.”

Book direct with the Milestone Hotel at the best guaranteed rate

Back to basics

As well as being dedicated to high service levels, Mr Pike says that fulfilling the basic essential needs of guests first and foremost is at the core of the Milestone’s business philosophy – “the quality mattress and bed, the air conditioning that works and isn’t noisy – that’s really number one for us.”

In line with this, the hotel has rigid requirements that linen is of a minimum 200 thread count per square inch thickness to ensure its softness.

Though he recognises that keeping up with technology is key (for example, the Milestone is a free WiFi hotel), Mr Pike stresses that it’s the basic and timeless comforts that guests really look for above all else: “The comfortable bed, a feeling of security, a decent bar where they can get a drink and relax in the evening, anything they need in terms of newspapers and information – I think those are the basics they expect.”

The personal touch

As well as having a head concierge acting as the main point of contact for guests, the Milestone goes all out to ensure that the service provided by staff is tailored to the individual and is conscientious and helpful.

Book direct with the Milestone Hotel at the best guaranteed rate at every opportunity

This is particularly evident in the consideration taken towards lone female travellers at the hotel.

“If a single female traveller is dining in the restaurant, our team are trained not to sit them in the centre, where they may feel a bit surrounded, but to find a nice cosy corner. When we’re delivering a room service tray to our guests, we’ll always allocate a female member of staff to deliver that.”

Mr Pike had an interesting response when quizzed about the value of loyalty point schemes in hotels. He said that while they may have their place, they’re no substitute for real human interaction and warmth.

“When Mr or Mrs Smith check into the hotel, it’s about us knowing what their newspaper is and offering that newspaper up front and having a drink ready for them in the bar- it’s that feeling of being wanted and made special that’s more important than any points they may collect.”

This interview highlights a few of the “tiny noticeable touches” which have helped the Milestone attain a solid rank among the best hotels in London.

The Milestone’s sister luxury boutique hotel in Victoria (Hotel 41) is the current TripAdvisor number 1 and was also recently featured on this blog.

http://ehotelier.com