Harrods considers luxury hotel on rooftop

by Melanie Nayer on

What’s better than a sale at Harrods and mid-afternoon tea? A sale at Harrods and mid-afternoon tea from your hotel room at the top of Harrods.

The new owners of the iconic London department store are considering plans to open a luxury hotel on the roof, according to the London Evening Standard. The article claims the Qatari owners of the landmark store think a luxury “Harrods Hotel” would be a success with wealthy, foreign visitors. We tend to agree.

The store is located in the trendy Knightsbridge district, also home to the five-star Mandarin Oriental hotel, Jumeirah Carlton Tower Hotel and The Stafford London by Kempinski.

Could this be a trend? Might other department stores start planning hotels in their presence? In Massachusetts, the Natick Collection, which houses everything from Nordstrom’s to Levi’s, also has condos and business apartments on the top floors of the mall. Strategic planning? Absolutely!

We want to know: Would you stay at a hotel located on top of a department store, or would the temptation be too much?

[via USA Today]

Want to get lucky on the road? Look on Wednesday, act on Thursday

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Feeling amorous on the road? Well, the best day to act on that urge is probably Thursday. Avoid people on Tuesdays, since that’s when a crappy mood is most likely, and save Monday’s for relaxation (and to avoid a heart attack). This may sound like strange advice, but it comes straight out of a study in the British Medical Journal.

The progression actually makes a lot of sense. The study suggests looking for love (or, I assume, lust) on Wednesday, calling it “ideal for a first date,” according to 40 percent of the 8,000 singles polled. So, cruise the hotel bar for some temporary bliss, but don’t act on it right away! Thursdays are for sex. And to help you seal the deal, Wednesday is the best day to ask for a raise, so you’ll be able to line your pockets to finance the big push, so to speak.

Thursday, remember, is your day for action. Natural cortisol energy levels hit their peak, The Sun writes. Get up early when testosterone and estrogen are up to five times higher, and take full advantage of what nature’s giving you. Then, shower, grab a quick bite from the hotel’s continental breakfast and get off to that morning meeting!

[photo by Melissa Audrey via Flickr]

Get 178 Mandarin Oriental Tokyo rooms, keep the neighbors away

by Tom Johansmeyer on

There’s nothing worse than being in a hotel room that’s filled with the sounds of your neighbors. It has to get pretty bad outside your door for some out-of-control moron to be loud on your side of it, but let’s face the reality: some hotel neighbors are awful. You can solve this problem easily, as long as you have close to three quarters of a million dollars on hand per single night of bliss.

The Mandarin Oriental Tokyo has a great deal for guests who just want to sleep well at night. Pony up a whopping $679,500, and the only other people in the hotel will be the staff – and the few lucky people you invite to join you. Spa rooms, all nine restaurants … you can turn the hotel into your personal playground

According to the Sydney Morning Herald:

The luxury hotel in central Tokyo began selling the plan a week ago as “something splashy” to commemorate its opening five years ago, said hotel spokeswoman Chie Hayakawa. It intends to apply for recognition from Guinness World Records once a reservation is finalised.

“When the hotel opened we had an exclusive party like this — black tie, cocktail dresses. There was music and drinks and food from the restaurants, and it was all quite grand,” said Hayakawa, who took part.

The rather hefty price tag doesn’t even get you a full 24 hours; it only runs from 3 PM until noon the next day. But, you can host a cocktail reception for up to 500 people.

There has been some interest in the package, mostly from businesses. Of course, eccentric individuals are also open to book a stay of this caliber. There is a catch:

“The only thing is, you have to pick a date where there are no reservations already,” she added. “It’s not as if you could just request it for later this week.”

[photo by TheTruthAbout via Flickr]

Travel and social media: five ways to cut through it all

by Tom Johansmeyer on

As I was scanning the headlines this morning, I came across Christopher Elliott’s article, “Are travelers overloaded by social media?” It’s a fair question. Not only are more and more of us plugging in – Twitter, for example, is adding 1.8 million new users a week – but we’re being increasingly being bombarded “communicated to” by hotels and airlines that are eager to get a bigger share of our wallets. So, there’s a whole lot of status updating and tweeting going on, and we need to figure out how to deal with it all.

It’s easy to blame the marketing guys for this. Aren’t they the people responsible, clogging our Facebook news feeds and Twitter timelines with hot deals and other promotional content? Well, yes … but we want some of that. That’s why I follow, for example, people like @Bsimi and @Colonnade, not to mention @JetBlue.

So, we have to balance our desire for promotional content (and let’s be honest – we do desire it) with keeping our social media environments clean and decidedly our own. Here are five ways you can get what you want without giving up too much:1. Make loyalty choices: with all the content floating around, you need to trim down the number of travel businesses you follow in order to truly take advantage of the best deals. Otherwise, you risk not seeing what you really want. Decide which brands mean the most to you, and ditch the others.

2. Make travel brands earn your social media share: for me at least, it takes more than a few hot deals to get me to follow a brand on Twitter or like it on Facebook. I want interesting content and customer service, too. I may test out a social media relationship for a while, but to make it stick, the company is going to have to perform.

3. Watch your friends: if you see a brand retweeted or otherwise interacting with one of your friends, it may be worth following it – or at least asking your friend why. This is why I follow @FSHotelHouston (Four Seasons Hotel Houston), for example, which was based on Twitter action I saw from @welshwonder.

4. “Favorite” and “like” what matters: use these features to bookmark social media content that you may want to use later. It will keep great deals from getting lost in your active social media stream.

5. Use these relationships effectively: By trimming your list down, you are effectively making a statement about customer loyalty – make sure the people managing those accounts know that! Don’t do it just for perks. Instead, develop a real relationship with the person behind the brand.

Cross-dressing employee gets Hyatt sued

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Daynara Fernandez got back to her hotel room at a Hyatt and found, to her obvious surprise, a male employee clad in her skirt, underwear and … of course … high heels. So, is it all that shocking that she’s suing the hotel chain?

When she got back to her room, after having attended a wedding, her door was blocked by a cleaning cart. Getting past it, she saw, according to Gawker, that “her luggage had been opened and her belongings strewn about.” There was only one way the situation could have been made worse, I suspect, by one thing: finding a man wearing some of her clothes.

And, yep, that’s what she saw. Oscar Garcia-Franco, an employee of the Deerfield, Illinois Hyatt, denied t at first, claiming he was cleaning the room … yeah, that old line (get the blow-by-blow in the police report). Interestingly, despite wearing Fernandez’s skirt and shoes, kept his Hyatt shirt on! Now that’s company loyalty!

When he got busted by the guest, Garcia-Franco shouted at her, “Don’t tell, don’t tell,” a sure way to make sure your name and mug shot winds up on The Smoking Gun and Gawker.

[Via Gawker, photo by Markusram via Flickr]