Twitter Chat: It List + Hotel Trends

This month, Travel + Leisure announced the 61 hottest new hotels of the year in our 2013 It List. In celebration of these splashy properties—from the Amanzo'e resort on Greece's Peloponnese peninsula (pictured) to Tuscany's rustic Monteverdi—we’ll be hosting a one-hour Twitter chat to discuss the latest in hotel tech, design, and industry trends. Our expert panel of luxury travel agents and T+L editors will share their secrets on maximizing your hotel stay and where to travel next.

Join the conversation on Wednesday, May 22nd from 2pm to 3pm.

The Hosts

Clara O. Sedlak, T+L special projects editor, @csedlak1

Jennifer Flowers, travel news editor, @JennFlowers

Nikki Ekstein, editorial assistant, @nikkiekstein

The Panel

Sara Chapman, Vacationist.com, @GoVacationist

Bobby Zur, Travel Artistry, @travelartistry

Kendra Thornton, Room 77, @Room_77

Jared Simon, HotelTonight, @HotelTonight

Dawid Grausch, Design Hotels, @Design_Hotels

Tiffany Dowd, Luxe Social Media, @LuxeTiffany

Stacy Small, Elite Travel International, @EliteTravelGal

Shane Mitchell, T+L special correspondent, @shanegoesforth

Heidi Mitchell, T+L contributor, @heidismitchell

Andrew Sessa, T+L contributor, @SessaSaysWhat

How does it work?

1. Log in to Twitter any time from 2–3 p.m. ET and be sure to follow the chat host: @TravlandLeisure.
2. Use the hashtag #TL_Chat to follow.
3. To keep up with the chat in real time, head over to tweetchat.com/room/TL_Chat.
4. We'll pulse out some questions for our expert panel to answer, but feel free to post your own answers to our questions. Or ask your own questions!

All tweets are subject to our social media terms and conditions and may be used in any and all media including editorial. See full social media terms and conditions.

Maria Pedone is a digital editorial intern at Travel + Leisure.

Photo courtesy of Amanzo'e

Obsession: Hotel Sewing Kit

It’s a good thing I’m heading to London this month since I just lost a button on my favorite Brunello Cucinelli jacket. A needle and thread is hard to find in a jeans-and-T-shirt world; my local drugstore sells mostly useless assortments (orange?). A good hotel, however, understands the art of the sewing kit: a discreet envelope or fitted box with a sliding top, colors I want, and—a thrill every time—threaded needles. I squirrel one away every night, hoping for another. If it doesn’t come, I’m not above filling my pockets at the housekeeper’s cart.

Photo by Sam Kaplan

New York's Soho Grand Launches the City's First Hotel Dog Park

Thinking of bringing Spot to the Big Apple? Guests at the Soho Grand Hotel—a dog-friendly hotel if there ever was one—now have a couple of new amenities for their furry companions. This weekend, a dedicated dog run opened its gates—complete with fire hydrant water stations, bespoke benches, and design by gardener-to-the-stars Rebecca Cole.

But make no mistake: this isn't a place where your pup will run laps on end (this is New York after all; space comes at a predictably high premium). With downtown-inspired graffiti and oh-so-chic garden decor (yes, that's ornamental kale), it's the ideal place to teach your pup about the virtues of unwinding—that's what vacation is for, right?

See: America's Best Dog-Friendly Hotels.

Nikki Ekstein is an Editorial Assistant at Travel + Leisure and part of the Trip Doctor news team. Find her at on Twitter at @nikkiekstein.

Photo courtesy of SoHo Grand

High-End Boat Hotels

High-end hotels are taking to the water, deploying luxury yachts to give guests a taste of the sailing life. In Indonesia, the 151-foot, five-cabin Alila Purnama (pictured; $54,000 a week for up to 10 people) joins Alila’s two terra-firma properties in Bali. The teak-and-rattan phinisi carries guests to neighboring islands for snorkeling and massages on deserted beaches. This winter, Soneva Resorts will launch Soneva in Aqua (from $4,375 a day for up to four people) in the Maldives—the sleek, two-cabin seaborne villa will come complete with a chef, dive master, spa therapist, and 24/7 butler, and will cruise to less-explored atolls and reefs. Also on the horizon: La Sultana Yacht (nine days from $7,545 per person), a sister to hotels in Marrakesh and Oualidia, Morocco. The former Soviet spy ship is getting a serious upgrade and will have seven James Bond–worthy Moorish-style rooms.

Photo courtesy of Alila Hotels

The Ritz-Carlton Looks East

Kyoto’s cherry blossoms hit their peak last month, but when the famous trees burst open again next year, the city will also be buzzing about a new Ritz-Carlton. The luxury hotelier just announced the opening of a new property there in February 2014—a 136-room low-rise building on the Kamogawa River that mixes modern and traditional Japanese designs.

The announcement is just the latest news from this fast-growing company. Six of their hotels are slated to open in the second half of 2013, including one in Aruba in November. We’re already looking forward to escaping the New York City winter.

Photo courtesy of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company

The New Hamptons Hot Table: Q+A with Gail Simmons and Tom Colicchio

When chef Tom Colicchio’s long-awaited Topping Rose House restaurant opened its doors last September, it became the most buzzed-about spot on the East End. Now, the 19th-century Bridgehampton mansion is experiencing a second wave, with 22 rooms and cottages set to debut this month. Fellow Top Chef judge Gail Simmons sat down with the restaurateur turned innkeeper to discuss the opening, the menu, and his newfound interest in the hotel world.

Simmons: Why did you decide to get into the hotel business?
Colicchio: When Topping Rose House’s owners, Bill Campbell and Simon Critchell, approached me about two years ago to do a restaurant, I thought it would be too difficult with such a small property to have someone running the restaurant and someone else taking care of the rooms. We felt that we understood what needed to happen from a hospitality standpoint. We just needed to hire someone who had the experience to take care of the day-to-day. The idea was that this business would ultimately provide a springboard to do other hotels.

Read More

Behind the Scenes of T+L's Dog-Friendly Hotel Photo Shoot

Think it's easy shooting a bunch of pampered pooches in a hotel room? Whatever it is, it sure looks fun!

Watch this behind the scenes video of photographer Catherine Ledner and her team working with some canine talent to illustrate Peaches the Yorkie's June 2013 T+L article (as told to Kathryn O'Shea-Evans) about Dog-Friendly Hotels.

Related: Coolest Vacations for Dog Lovers and America's Best Dog-Friendly Hotels.

Go Around the World for 60 Days with DoubleTree

This week, DoubleTree by Hilton debuted DTour, a devoted YouTube channel created in collaboration with Google that lets travel aficionados add their favorite tips—or find inspiration—on a constantly evolving map of the world. While the hotel’s budding relationship with Google raises our eyebrow, we’re currently most excited about the prospect of winning a DTour of a Lifetime—an eight-week, all-inclusive trip around the globe.

Want to enter for your chance to win? Upload a video with your favorite travel tip to the DTour map by May 31—the six most promising global correspondents will be sent around the world to document their adventures for the brand.

Nikki Ekstein is an Editorial Assistant at Travel + Leisure and part of the Trip Doctor news team. Find her at on Twitter at @nikkiekstein.

Photo courtesy of DoubleTree by Hilton

Tech Thursday: How to Turn Your Hotel Stays into Airline Points

In the last few months, we’ve been tracking two new sites, PointsHound and RocketMiles—both trying to disrupt the stronghold of Expedia and Travelocity by offering airline points in exchange for hotel stays. How does it work? Consider it a big circle of back scratching, where hotel sale commissions buy airline miles that get passed on to you, the consumer, who’s still getting a best rate guarantee. And not only are the hotel rates good—an average booking can earn upwards of 7,000 miles with your preferred carrier.

To put them head to head, we entered an identical search heading to Chicago over Memorial Day weekend with United Mileage Plus as our preferred reward currency. The Tremont Chicago Hotel at Magnificent Mile showed up on both searches: $169 a night with 7,000 miles at RocketMiles; the same price at 6,500 miles with PointsHound. Some comparisons were less evenly matched: The Embassy Suites Chicago Downtown netted 2,100 miles on PointsHound, and almost double at RocketMiles, for the same price. Incidentally, prices were equal to or better than what the hotels were offering on their own sites, and the same as Expedia’s current rates.

But PointsHound gets an advantage in two key criteria: it offers much more variety in inventory (whereas RocketMiles had just 8 hotels available in Chicago, PointsHound had far too many to count, including some of our favorite properties). And by booking regularly on PointsHound, you “level up” and become eligible for even greater rewards. Regardless, both are tools we’ll be keeping in our back pockets.

Nikki Ekstein is an Editorial Assistant at Travel + Leisure and part of the Trip Doctor news team. Find her at on Twitter at @nikkiekstein.

Photo courtesy of PointsHound

Legoland's Disco Elevator Takes You Higher

Unless you’re allergic to primary colors—or LEGOS, of course—the biggest problem with the new Legoland Hotel in Carlsbad, California, may be that it’s not taller.

For a lot of grown-up guests, the coolest part about the otherwise kid-centric, three-story hotel may be the “disco elevator.” Inside, the walls are decorated with nightclub-ready LEGO characters, a strobe light hangs from the ceilings, and when the doors close, the lava floor panels light up and the music kicks in: ABBA, the BeeGees, the Village People. It makes you think: How many elevators out there have wasted an opportunity to be fun? (The hotel has figured out how to make everything enjoyable: there’s also a jump-able whoopee cushion corner in the elevator lobby.)

Nigel Woods, the project designer who created the elevator, told us that he felt he had to up the ante set by the elevator at another theme park hotel, the Alton Towers Splash Landing Hotel, in the UK. “It plays some ‘Hawaii Five O’ music,” he told us by email, “which my children (Emily, 9 and Lucy 6) and I loved to dance to as we went up to our room.” Then, he recounts, he saw a YouTube video of a disco elevator, “and fell over laughing. From there, the Legoland disco elevator was born.”

While at least one reviewer has pooh-poohed the elevator as a little intense for toddlers (or parents who haven't had their morning coffee)—most guests at the hotel's opening in April seemed to love it. Some of us may have wished the ride lasted longer than just two floors up from the lobby. Then again, some guests booked on the ground floor were guilty of mere joyriding.

See: World's Greatest Elevator Views.

Photo credit: LEGOLAND California Resort