W Hotels Worldwide, the hotel category buster and industry innovator, proudly unveils the new W Atlanta-Downtown and The Residences at W Atlanta-Downtown. Ideally located in the heart of Atlanta, W Atlanta-Downtown offers a whimsical wonderland of nature-inspired design, setting the stage for the perfect escape in Atlanta's bustling Downtown business district.

Passkey, the worldwide leader in online group reservations, today announced that Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino (“Planet Hollywood”) will begin utilizing Passkey’s online group reservations system as a hotel standard for all its meetings and groups starting in spring 2009. This will allow Planet Hollywood to offer its meeting planners and guests a world-class hotel booking and event management experience, while streamlining its internal business process.

The Rezidor Hotel Group (STO:REZT), one of the fastest growing hotel companies worldwide, announces the Radisson Blu Axelmannstein Resort in Bad Reichenhall, Germany. The existing property with 152 rooms will be rebranded and join the Radisson family on 30th June 2009. “With this signing our steadily growing resort portfolio comes close to 40 properties with more than 9,500 rooms across Europe and the Middle East”, comments Kurt Ritter, President & CEO of Rezidor.

Hotel magnate Sol Kerzner opens his latest luxury hotel in Cape Town, South Africa despite the economic downturn.

Just over a week ago a number of blogs presented us with Hotelicopter, the world’s first flying hotel, featuring a modified Soviet helicopter decked out to create a five-star aerial resort. Of course, this turned out to be a total hoax in honor of April Fools day (albeit an early one) - Hotelicopter is in fact a web startup, and it launches today to the public.

On the environmental sensitivity front, the Lenox Hotel has long been ahead of the curve. The Lenox and other hotels in the Saunders Hotel Group have been using earth-friendly cleaning products and pursuing resource efficiency since 1989. But with their Pure rooms, the hotel has taken sensitivity to another level - the 11th level to be precise. The 23 rooms on the hotel's top floor constitute the first hypoallergenic floor in Boston hostelry.

n the market for a Bentley sports car, a Jean Paul Gaultier dress or a cell phone, but don't feel like dealing with a pesky salesperson? Literally at the touch of a button, visitors to the Mondrian South Beach can buy those items — as well as more prosaic hotel gift-shop staples like toothbrushes — from a new lobby vending machine called a Semi-Automatic. In a postmodern echo of the early 20th century's Automats, where office workers could buy coffee and comfort food without talking to a soul, the Semi-Automatic peddles a jumble of more than 60 items priced between $10 and $1.2 million in a large, sleek rectangular display. "We don't have a newspaper stand or some place where you can just buy a sundry item," front office manager James A. Bryant III said. "We've got Semi-Automatic, which is sort of an 'in-your-face' gift shop. Just like our hotel is really sort of brash and out there."

Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario -- Renowned Ontario Theatre, The Shaw Festival celebrated the launch of its 48th Season with preview performances of Stephen Sondheim's Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Sunday in the Park with George at the Royal George Theatre. Preview performances of Sunday in the Park with George began on Tuesday, April 1 and will run through the play's opening on Friday, May 22.

Focusing on hospitality issues prominent in the Asian region, Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP®) is hosting the Second Annual Asian Hospitality Finance and Technology Conference. The boutique conference is a specially-designed education conference for hospitality finance and technology professionals working in the Asian marketplace. The conference is May 11–12 at UNLV–Singapore in Singapore. Online registration is now available on the HFTP web site.

Traffic Distribution Analysis: 37.86% of all visits to the online 'Travel' industry went to the top 10 websites for the month of March, 2009. 47.23% went to the top 20 websites and 68.81% went to the top 100 websites. | Visit Duration Analysis: The average visit duration for visits to the online 'Travel' industry was 9 minutes, 20 seconds for the month of March, 2009. This is a minimal decrease from last months average visit duration of 9 minutes, 21 seconds. The monthly churn in the Top 100 in the 'Travel' industry for the month of March, 2009 based on visits was 4.0%, which means that 4 websites in this industry's Top 100 rankings have changed since February, 2009.

One of the world's largest providers of business software solutions, SAS, has joined the corporate partners program of Cornell's Center for Hospitality Research. A private corporation with over $2 billion in revenues based in North Carolina, SAS has installations at more than 45,000 business, government, and university sites in 113 countries. Steven Pinchuk, vice president, profit optimization systems, will join the center's advisory board as part of the corporate partners program agreement. As a member of the partner program, SAS will have a seat at all center roundtables and the opportunity to interact with Cornell faculty to learn about research in progress.

Listings on online travel agencies (OTAs) and third-party travel websites present hoteliers with opportunities to engage travel consumers at every step in the travel shopping process, from research and comparison through to booking. Many hoteliers aren't getting the maximum value from their hotel listings because they aren't leveraging the power of online merchandising strategies.

NYLOhotels.com won top honors in the 2009 Internet Advertising Competition Awards, earning the distinction of Best Web Site in the Hotel and Lodging category. Launched in late January 2009, NYLOhotels.com (http://www.nylohotels.com) was recognized for outstanding design, content and search engine optimization. The site is a collaboration between hospitality innovator NYLO Hotels and Milestone Internet Marketing, Inc., Santa Clara, Calif.

The Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority has said that it estimates that the emirate will have an additional 4,000 hotel rooms by the end of 2009. The added units will bring the UAE capital's total room numbers to 17,000, including hotel apartments.

The Spa Suite at Emaar's flagship hotel The Address Downtown Burj Dubai provides a stunning place to stay in Dubai's most happening 'new quarter'. Phil Blizzard takes in the view of the world's tallest tower, Burj Dubai, from the sun deck before starting his tour of the hotel.

In San Francisco, prices of hotel rooms have “gone off a cliff,” said Karl Hoagland, chairman of Larkspur Hotels and Restaurants. Softening demand has led some luxury hotels to offer rooms for less than $100 a night. “It’s a great windfall for travelers,” said Mr. Hoagland, whose company owns three hotels in the city’s Union Square neighborhood. But it is anything but a windfall for Mr. Hoagland. His company paid about $100 million for the three hotels, in 2006 and 2007. “It was a pretty big bet on San Francisco,” he said.

This is another segment of the Bakers Dozen of Strategies series and focuses on hotel controllers. There is an enormous range of responsibilities for financial controls in today’s hotels and much of this depends on the type and size of hotel property. A facility that has gaming, banquet facilities and extensive public space has very different needs than a smaller rooms only hotel. A four or five star upscale property has different client needs than a property serving youth groups. All hotels need someone to act as the financial manager of the hotel, and there can be a danger and a liability if the General Manager has to be the one who handles all facets of the operation.

The Hotel Association of Canada (HAC) is pleased to announce that it has been confirmed as a network member of the United Nations backed Partnership for the Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria (GSTC Partnership). The GSTC are a set of 37 criteria organized around the four pillars of sustainable tourism: effective sustainability planning; maximizing social and economic benefits to the local community; reduction of negative impacts to cultural heritage; and reduction of negative impacts to environmental heritage.

As the economic downturn continues, CEOs are playing a greater role in talent management, job restructuring, and work practices, according to two global business reports from Deloitte U.S. The reports outline key findings from extensive one-on-one interviews and polling of top business leaders from around the world, revealing their strategies for managing today’s most pressing talent issues.

There’s some cause for cautious optimism in the tourism and travel industry across the Asia Pacific region, according to PATA’s Strategic Intelligence Director John Koldowski.