Portal maintenance status: (July 2022)
|
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 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...)
Recognized articles - load new batch
-
Image 1Pikes 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...) -
Image 2
The official residence of the United States ambassador to the United Nations, established in 1947, was originally located in a suite of rooms on the 42nd floor of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City leased by the U.S. Department of State. Described in press reports as "palatial", the ambassadorial residence was the first one to be located in a hotel. The Department of State vacated the Waldorf Astoria shortly after the Chinese Anbang Insurance Company purchased the Waldorf-Astoria in 2015, raising security concerns. The United States purchased a penthouse apartment at 50 United Nations Plaza in May 2019 after initially renting a different penthouse apartment in the same building. (Full article...) -
Image 3
Hotel Valley Ho is a historic hotel in Scottsdale, Arizona. Also called the Valley Ho and, for 28 years, the Ramada Valley Ho, the hotel was originally designed by Edward L. Varney. It first opened in 1956 with a forward-looking and futuristic design. Movie stars and famous baseball players stayed, and the building quickly became known for its trendsetting guests and its fashionable atmosphere. The success of the venture resulted in expansion in 1958, with two additional two-story wings of guest rooms extending to the north. Though initially proposed by Varney, a central tower of guest rooms, rising over the lobby, was not built.
The property was bought by the Ramada hotel chain in 1973, and was redecorated to cover the 1950s design, seen at the time as outdated. No longer in vogue, but centrally located, the hotel remained prominent for years, and hosted conferences, business meetings, and vacationers. Under Ramada management, however, the property began to show a lack of maintenance, and its popularity declined. It closed in 2001 and its demolition was considered when no purchase offers were received. Admirers of the hotel's exemplary architecture and its local history rallied to save it, and it was placed on the Scottsdale Historic Register. (Full article...) -
Image 4
The Knickerbocker Hotel is a hotel at Times Square, on the southeastern corner of Broadway and 42nd Street, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Built by John Jacob Astor IV, the hostelry was designed in 1901 and opened in 1906. Its location near the Theater District around Times Square was intended to attract not only residential guests but also theater visitors.
The Knickerbocker Hotel is largely designed in the Beaux-Arts style by Marvin & Davis, with Bruce Price as consultant. Its primary frontages are on Broadway and 42nd Street. These facades are constructed of red brick with terracotta details and a prominent mansard roof. The Knickerbocker Hotel also incorporates an annex on 41st Street, built in 1894 as part of the St. Cloud Hotel, which formerly occupied the site. The 41st Street facade contains a Romanesque Revival design by Philip C. Brown. Inside, the hotel contains 300 rooms, a restaurant, a coffee shop, and a roof bar. The original interior design was devised in 1905 by Trowbridge & Livingston. There are scattered remnants of the original interior design, including an entrance that formerly led from the New York City Subway's Times Square station to the hotel's basement. (Full article...) -
Image 5
The Waldorf-Astoria originated as two hotels, built side by side by feuding relatives, on Fifth Avenue in New York, New York, United States. Built in 1893 and expanded in 1897, the hotels were razed in 1929 to make way for construction of the Empire State Building. Their successor, the current Waldorf Astoria New York, was built on Park Avenue in 1931.
The original Waldorf Hotel opened on March 13, 1893, at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 33rd Street, on the site where millionaire developer William Waldorf Astor had previously built his mansion. Constructed in the German Renaissance style by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, it stood 225 feet (69 m) high, with fifteen public rooms and 450 guest rooms, and a further 100 rooms allocated to servants, with laundry facilities on the upper floors. It was heavily furnished with antiques purchased by founding manager and president George Boldt and his wife during an 1892 visit to Europe. The Empire Room was the largest and most lavishly adorned room in the Waldorf, and soon after opening it became one of the best restaurants in New York, rivaling Delmonico's and Sherry's. (Full article...) -
Image 6
The Crowne Plaza Times Square Manhattan (originally the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza Manhattan) is a hotel at 1601 Broadway, between 48th and 49th Streets, in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. The hotel is operated by third-party franchisee Highgate and is part of the Intercontinental Hotels Group's Crowne Plaza chain. It has 795 guest rooms.
The hotel was designed by Alan Lapidus and is 480 feet (150 m) tall with 46 floors. The facade was designed in glass and pink granite, with a 100-foot-tall (30 m) arch facing Broadway. The hotel was designed to comply with city regulations that required deep setbacks at the base, as well as large illuminated signs. In addition to the hotel rooms themselves, the Crowne Plaza Times Square contains ground-story retail space, nine stories of office space, and a 159-space parking garage. The hotel's tenants include the American Management Association, and Learning Tree International; in addition, New York Sports Club was a former tenant. (Full article...) -
Image 7
The Paramount Hotel (formerly the Century-Paramount Hotel) is a hotel in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States. Designed by architect Thomas W. Lamb, the hotel is at 235 West 46th Street, between Eighth Avenue and Broadway. The Paramount Hotel is owned by RFR Realty and contains 597 rooms. The hotel building, designed in a Renaissance style, is a New York City designated landmark.
The hotel is 19 stories tall and is H-shaped in arrangement, with light courts to the west and east. The north and south faces of the hotel contain numerous setbacks. The facade is made of brick, stone, and terracotta; most of the decorative detail is concentrated on the south facade, along 46th Street. The hotel building contains a double-height colonnade at street level, as well as several terraces above each of the setbacks. The building has a double-height hip roof flanked by mansard roofs. The basement contains an event venue named Sony Hall, which has historically been used as a nightclub and theater. The double-height lobby's design dates to a 1990 renovation by Philippe Starck. (Full article...) -
Image 8
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...) -
Image 9
The Royal Albion Hotel (originally the Albion Hotel) is a 3-star hotel, on the corner of Old Steine and Kings Road in Brighton, England. Built on the site of a house belonging to Richard Russell, a local doctor whose advocacy of sea-bathing and seawater drinking helped to make Brighton fashionable in the 18th century, it has been extended several times, although it experienced a period of rundown and closure in the early 20th century. A fire in 1998 caused serious damage, and the hotel was restored. However, another fire in 2023 seriously damaged the building to the extent that demolition of the western part of the building began on 19 July 2023.
The Classical-style building is in three parts of different sizes and dates but similar appearances. Large pilasters and columns of various orders feature prominently. Amon Henry Wilds, an important and prolific local architect, took the original commission on behalf of promoter John Colbatch. Another local entrepreneur, Harry Preston, restored the hotel to its former high status after buying it in poor condition. The building took on its present three-wing form in 1963. The original part of the building was listed at Grade II* by English Heritage for its architectural and historical importance, and its western extension is listed separately at the lower Grade II. (Full article...) -
Image 10The Shamrock was a hotel constructed between 1946 and 1949 by wildcatter Glenn McCarthy southwest of downtown Houston, Texas next to the Texas Medical Center. It was the largest hotel built in the United States during the 1940s. The grand opening of the Shamrock is still cited as one of the biggest social events ever held in Houston. Sold to Hilton Hotels in 1955 and operated for over three decades as the Shamrock Hilton, the facility endured financial struggles throughout its history. In 1985, Hilton Hotels donated the building to the Texas Medical Center and the structure was demolished on June 1, 1987. (Full article...)
-
Image 11The 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...) -
Image 12Hotelito Desconocido (Spanish: [oteˈlito ðeskonoˈsiðo], "Little Unknown Hotel") was a Mexican boutique hotel and ecotourism resort in the municipality of Tomatlán, Jalisco. Formed in 1995 by an Italian architect, Hotelito Desconocido used an architectural style of that combined both rustic and luxurious designs. It was built on an UNESCO-designated natural reserve that was home to a number of endangered bird and turtle species. The hotel won international and domestic awards for its unique architecture and sustainable energy model, and it was a famous getaway spot for international tourists and celebrities. Its construction, however, created tensions with a local group of fishermen that protested against the alleged ecological violations caused by Hotelito Desconocido's construction and expansions.
In 2007, Hotelito Desconocido was acquired by W&G Arquitectos, a company headed by Wendy Dalaithy Amaral Arévalo. She is the wife of Gerardo González Valencia, a former suspected drug lord of Los Cuinis and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, two allied criminal groups based in Jalisco. After years of resistance from the local fishermen, three members of their group went missing in Guadalajara, Jalisco in 2011 after attending an ecological preservation meeting. They had reportedly previously received death threats from the hotel's management and local farmers who were also opposed to their protests. (Full article...) -
Image 13
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...) -
Image 14
The Sands Hotel and Casino was a historic American hotel and casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada, United States, that operated from 1952 to 1996. Designed by architect Wayne McAllister, with a prominent 56-foot (17 m) high sign, the Sands was the seventh resort to open on the Strip. During its heyday, it hosted many famous entertainers of the day, most notably the Rat Pack and Jerry Lewis.
The hotel was established in 1952 by Mack Kufferman, who bought the LaRue Restaurant which had opened a year earlier. The hotel was opened on December 15, 1952, as a casino and hotel with 200 rooms. The hotel rooms were divided into four two-story motel wings, each with fifty rooms, and named after famous race tracks. Crime bosses such as Doc Stacher and Meyer Lansky acquired shares in the hotel and attracted Frank Sinatra, who made his performing debut at Sands in October 1953. Sinatra later bought a share in the hotel himself. In 1960, the classic caper film Ocean's 11 was shot at the hotel, and it subsequently attained iconic status, with regular performances by Sinatra, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Sammy Davis Jr., Red Skelton and others in the hotel's world-renowned Copa Room. (Full article...) -
Image 15
The Hilton Washington DC National Mall The Wharf, previously known as the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel, is a 367-room hotel located on the top four floors of a 12-story mixed-use building in downtown Washington, D.C., in the United States. It was designed by architect Vlastimil Koubek, and was opened on May 31, 1973, as the Loews L'Enfant Plaza Hotel, named after Pierre Charles L'Enfant, the first surveyor and designer of the street layout of the city.
The hotel sits atop L'Enfant Plaza, an esplanade and plaza structure erected above a highway and a parking garage in the Southwest quadrant of the District of Columbia. The plaza and hotel were approved in 1955, but construction did not begin on the plaza (on which the hotel sits) until 1965. The plaza and esplanade were completed in 1968. The start of construction on the hotel was delayed three years, and was completed in May 1973. The construction led to a lawsuit after it was found that the foundation of an adjoining structure had encroached on the hotel's property. The hotel suffered a serious fire in 1975 that claimed the lives of two people. (Full article...)
General images - show new batch
-
Image 1Tremont House in Boston, United States, a luxury hotel, the first to provide indoor plumbing (from Hotel)
-
Image 2An apartment hotel in Hammond, Indiana (from Apartment hotel)
-
Image 3The 4 Seasons Motel sign in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin is an excellent example of googie architecture. (from Motel)
-
Image 6Sign on Chicago motel (from Motel)
-
Image 7The Star Lite Motel in Dilworth, Minnesota is a typical American 1950s L-shaped motel. (from Motel)
-
Image 12Holiday Inn's "Great Sign", used until 1982. Some remain in museums. (from Motel)
-
Image 14The Harrison Hotel, an SRO hotel in Oakland, California. (from Apartment hotel)
-
Image 15Ithaa, the first undersea restaurant at the Conrad Maldives Rangali Island resort (from Hotel)
-
Image 16A typical hotel room with a bed, desk, and television (from Hotel)
-
Image 18On top of the cliff, the Riosol Hotel in Mogán (from Hotel)
-
Image 20Abandoned Grand West Courts in Chicago, demolished in September 2013 (from Motel)
-
Image 21Burj Al Arab stands on an artificial island from Jumeirah Beach and is connected to the mainland by a private curving bridge (from Hotel)
-
Image 22The Peninsula New York hotel, located at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 55th Street in Midtown Manhattan (from Hotel)
-
Image 24Wigwam Motel No. 6, a unique motel/motor court on historic Route 66 in Holbrook, Arizona (from Motel)
-
Image 25The Boody House Hotel in Toledo, Ohio (from Hotel)
-
Image 29Motels frequently have large pools, such as the Thunderbird Motel on the Columbia River in Portland, Oregon (1973). (from Motel)
-
Image 31The Waldorf Astoria New York, the most expensive hotel ever sold, cost US$1.95 billion in 2014. (from Hotel)
-
Image 35Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden (from Hotel)
In the news
- 6 September 2024 – 2024 United Kingdom riots
- Sheffield Crown Court in South Yorkshire, UK, sentences Thomas Birley, a British man who set fire to a hotel that housed asylum seekers in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, to nine years in prison for arson with the intent to endanger life, the longest sentence related to the riots so far. (Al Jazeera)
- 2 September 2024 –
- Over ten thousand hotel workers strike in cities across the U.S. to demand higher pay, as part of the Hotel Workers Rising campaign organized by the UNITE HERE labor union. (Reuters)
- 29 August 2024 – Effects of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans
- It is announced that the abandoned Six Flags New Orleans amusement park, which has been closed since Hurricane Katrina struck the park and New Orleans, will be demolished beginning next month. Bayou Phoenix is expected to rebuild the area as a $500 million complex with youth sports fields, hotels, shops, a movie studio and a waterpark. (Axios)
- 25 August 2024 – Russian invasion of Ukraine
- A British safety adviser working for Reuters is killed and two other journalists are injured in a Russian ballistic missile strike on their hotel in Kramatorsk, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine. (Reuters)
- 22 August 2024 –
- Seven people are killed and 12 others are injured after a fire at a hotel in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea. (The Nation Thailand)
- 12 August 2024 –
- One person is killed and several others are injured when a helicopter stolen from Cairns Airport crashes into a hotel in Cairns, Queensland, Australia. (The Guardian)
Selected articles - load new batch
-
Image 1Hotel Mumbai is a 2018 independent action thriller film directed by Anthony Maras and co-written by Maras and John Collee. An Indian-Australian-American co-production, it is inspired by the 2009 documentary Surviving Mumbai about the 2008 Mumbai attacks at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in India. The film stars Dev Patel, Armie Hammer, Nazanin Boniadi, Anupam Kher, Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Jason Isaacs, Suhail Nayyar, Nagesh Bhosle, and Natasha Liu Bordizzo.
The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on 7 September 2018, and had its Australian premiere at the Adelaide Film Festival on 10 October 2018. The film was released in Australia and the United States on 14 and 22 March 2019, respectively, and in India on 29 November 2019. (Full article...) -
Image 2
Georges Panayotis (Georges Panayotis is a pseudonym for Georges Chatzipanayotis) is a French/Greek businessman and consultant for the tourism, hotel and hospitality industries. He has contributed to establishing more than 2,500 hotels (150,000 hotel rooms) in France and throughout EMEA, representing a global investment of over 10.5 billion euros. (Full article...) -
Image 3
The Biltmore Los Angeles is a historic hotel opened in 1923 and located opposite Pershing Square in Downtown Los Angeles, California. The hotel has 70,000 square feet (6,500 m2) of meeting and banquet space. Built with 1500 guestrooms, it now has 683. (Full article...) -
Image 4
The Madonna Inn is a motel in San Luis Obispo, California. Opened for business in 1958, it quickly became a landmark on the Central Coast of California. It is noted for its unique decor, pink dining room, and themed rooms. It was created by Alex Madonna, a successful construction magnate and entrepreneur (d. April 2004), and his wife Phyllis. The inn includes a restaurant and bakery, and is located on the west side of US Route 101 and situated on the lower eastern portion of Cerro San Luis Obispo. (Full article...) -
Image 5
César Ritz, born Cäsar Ritz (23 February 1850 – 24 October 1918), was a Swiss hotelier and founder of several hotels, most famously the Hôtel Ritz in Paris and the Ritz and Carlton Hotels in London (the forerunners of the modern Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company). He was an early hotel chain founder known as "King of Hoteliers, and Hotelier to Kings," and it is from his name and that of his hotels that the term ritzy derives. (Full article...) -
Image 6
The Gobbler was a motel, supper club, and roadside attraction in Johnson Creek, Wisconsin, United States. It was designed in the late 1960s by Fort Atkinson architect Helmut Ajango for local poultry processor Clarence Hartwig and opened in 1967. The menu featured turkey, prime rib and steak. It included a rotating circular bar that completed one revolution every 80 minutes. The Gobbler was at the intersection of Wisconsin Highway 26 and I-94, halfway between Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin. It closed in 1992. The original restaurant building reopened as the Gobbler Theater in late 2015. (Full article...) -
Image 7
The Australia Hotel was a hotel on Castlereagh Street, Sydney in New South Wales, Australia. From its opening in 1891 until its closure on 30 June 1971 and subsequent demolition, the hotel was considered "the best-known hotel in Australia", "the premier hotel in Sydney" and described itself as "The Hotel of the Commonwealth". The hotel was situated in one of Sydney's important thoroughfares in the Sydney central business district. (Full article...) -
Image 8
Vladislav Yurievich Doronin (Russian: Владислав Юрьевич Доро́нин; born 7 November 1962) is a Russian-born businessman, real estate developer and art collector. He is the owner and chairman of Aman Resorts, chairman and CEO of OKO Group and is a co-founder of Moscow-based Capital Group. (Full article...) -
Image 9The Legends Resort & Country Club, often called simply Legends, was a hotel located on County Route 517 in Vernon Township in Sussex County, New Jersey, United States. In the 1970s, Hugh Hefner built the facility as The Great Gorge Playboy Club Hotel, and it officially opened in 1972. The Playboy Club was sold in 1982 to the Americana Hotel franchise . The hotel was sold again to the Seasons Investment Corp. and reopened in 1991 as the Seasons Resort and Conference Center. The property was sold yet again to parent-company Metairie Corp (owned by Hillel A. "Hillie" Meyers with individual hotel rooms owned by Andrew Mulvihill), which reopened the hotel as the Legends Resort & Country Club. The hotel declined severely after 2000 and has been nearly derelict with the amenities all damaged and shut down. The hotel did stay open but mostly housed recipients since about 2005. After evicting long term tenants, the hotel finally closed to public operations in April 2018 with various plans to restore it for commercial use of some sort.
In July of 2024 Mayor Anthony Rossi announced that the property had been sold to an affiliate of Lockwood Hotels. (Full article...) -
Image 10
A ryokan (旅館) is a type of traditional Japanese inn that typically features tatami-matted rooms, communal baths, and other public areas where visitors may wear nemaki and talk with the owner. Ryokan have existed since the eighth century A.D. during the Keiun period, which is when the oldest hotel in the world, Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan, was created in 705 A.D. Another old ryokan called Hōshi Ryokan was founded in 718 A.D. and was also known as the world's second oldest hotel. Such inns also served travelers along Japan's highways.
Ryokan are difficult to find in Tokyo and other large cities because many are often much more expensive compared to modern hotels and hostels. As elsewhere in the world, hotels have become a standard in Japanese urban tourism. Nonetheless, some major cities do offer ryokan with competitive rates. Traditional ryokan are more commonly found in areas with natural hot springs, and in recent years, many ryokan have been redeveloped to their original style, particularly by resort chains Hoshino Resorts, whose first ryokan opened in Karuizawa in 1914. (Full article...) -
Image 11
The Waldorf-Astoria Orchestra was an orchestra that played primarily at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, both the old and new locations. In addition to providing dinner music at the famous hotel, the orchestra made over 300 recordings and many radio broadcasts. It was established in the 1890s, and was directed by Carlo Curti in early 1900s, Joseph Knecht at least from 1908 to 1925, later by Jack Denny and others, and then Xavier Cugat from approximately 1933 to 1949.
Denny and the Waldorf-Astoria Orchestra appeared in the movie Moonlight and Pretzels in 1933. Both Denny and Cugat had their own orchestras when they began playing at the Waldorf-Astoria, so the term "Waldorf-Astoria orchestras" might be an appropriate description. (Full article...) -
Image 12
Fairmont Hotels & Resorts is a global chain of luxury hotel that operates more than 70 properties worldwide, with a strong presence in Canada.
The company originated from two hotel businesses established in the late 19th century, the Canadian Pacific Limited-owned Canadian Pacific Hotels & Resorts, and Fairmont Hotels. In 1999, Canadian Pacific Hotels acquired a majority interest in Fairmont Hotels; with Canadian Pacific Hotels later renaming its entire hotel portfolio under the Fairmont Hotels & Resorts banner in 2001. Shortly after the hotel division was renamed, Canadian Pacific Limited was split into several smaller companies in a starburst move, with Fairmont becoming a separately-traded company.
In 2006, Fairmont was acquired by Colony Capital, who subsequently entered into a joint partnership with the Kingdom Holding Company; consolidating Fairmont with their other hotel brands, Raffles and Swissôtel to form Fairmont Raffles Hotels International (FRHI). FRHI in turn became a subsidiary of AccorHotels in 2016. (Full article...) -
Image 13
Shepheard's Hotel was the leading hotel in Cairo and one of the most celebrated hotels in the world from the middle of the 19th century until its destruction in 1952 during the Cairo Fire. Five years after the original hotel was destroyed, a new one was built nearby and named the Shepheard Hotel. (Full article...) -
Image 14
The Sarkies Brothers, Martin (1852–1912), Tigran (1861–1912), Aviet (1862–1923), and Arshak (1868–1931), were a group of brothers of Armenian ethnicity best known for founding a chain of luxury hotels throughout Southeast Asia. The brothers were born in Isfahan, Iran. (Full article...) -
Image 15
The MGM Grand fire occurred on Friday, November 21, 1980, at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino (later Bally’s, now Horseshoe Las Vegas, and unrelated to the current MGM Grand Las Vegas), located on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada. The fire killed 85 people, most through smoke inhalation. The fire began from a refrigerated pastry display case in one of the restaurants, located on the first floor. Fire engulfed the resort's casino, and smoke travelled into the hotel tower.
The tragedy remains the deadliest disaster in Nevada history, and the third-deadliest hotel fire in modern U.S. history, after the 1946 Winecoff Hotel fire in Atlanta that killed 119 people and the 1986 Dupont Plaza Hotel fire in Puerto Rico that killed 97. The incident led to the reformation of fire safety guidelines and codes in the state. (Full article...)
Did you know (auto-generated)
- ... that when a ban on developing the Hotel Macklowe was revoked two years early, some New York City Council members said they did not realize that they had voted to rescind the ban?
- ... that after a guest smuggled a lion into the Hotel Belleclaire using a piano crate, the lion was thrown out of the hotel?
- ... that New York City's Lexington Hotel banned tipping when it opened?
- ... that to promote the Paramount Hotel, its operator mailed out apples?
- ... that New York City's Barbizon Hotel hosted its first male guests on Valentine's Day in 1981 after operating as a women-only hotel for more than five decades?
- ... that the Royal Manhattan Hotel, sold for $10 million in 1969, attracted no buyers when it was placed for sale at $1.8 million just six years later?
- ... that American lawyer and politician Armistead Abraham Lilly was also a principal owner of Ruffner Hotel in Charleston, West Virginia, and resided in its penthouse?
- ... that New York City's Mansfield Hotel was developed by two neighbors from Vermont, one of whom later served as Vermont's governor?
Related portals
WikiProjects
List articles
- Historic Hotels of America
- List of largest hotels
- List of largest hotels in Europe
- List of tallest hotels
- List of casino hotels
- List of chained-brand hotels
- List of defunct hotel chains
- List of hotels in the Caribbean
- List of caravanserais
- Lists of hotels
- List of motels
- Lists of hotels by country (category page)
- Lists of hotels by city (category page)
Topics
|
|
Categories
Associated Wikimedia
The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:
-
Commons
Free media repository -
Wikibooks
Free textbooks and manuals -
Wikidata
Free knowledge base -
Wikinews
Free-content news -
Wikiquote
Collection of quotations -
Wikisource
Free-content library -
Wikiversity
Free learning tools -
Wiktionary
Dictionary and thesaurus