Where’s the best place to practice your hole-in-one double entendres? Golf travel website, The A Position released a list of the World’s Sexiest Golf Resorts.
What makes for a particularly sexy golf resort? Warm weather, spa treatments, dark corners for stolen…putting practice? The site’s press release goes so far as to suggest “provocative golf course mounding” as a qualifying factor. That’s odd, usually I get frustrated when caught between moguls. But maybe that's the point...
NBC Los Angeles | The Hollywood sign might look different Thursday—as in, completely covered.
Trust
For Public Lands, a nature conservation group, said it has reached a
deal that would protect a huge swath of land above the Hollywood sign
from being developed into luxury homes. The group's president, Will Rogers, said Monday that the Trust secured an option to buy the rugged 138-acre parcel for about $12 million from Chicago-based Fox River Financial Resources.
As
part of its initiative to save land near the sign from development,
Trust for Public Lands wants to cover the sign with a shroud that
reads, "Save the Peak."
Reuters | The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co will close its five-diamond property in Las Vegas this May, after the hotel struggled with a slide in demand and revenue.
"It's nothing the hotel did. It's a simple lack of business and a decline in the tourism industry," said Ritz-Carlton spokeswoman Vivian Deuschl.
The owners of the 348-room property, Village Hospitality LLC, an arm of Deutsche Bank, will stop funding the Ritz-Carlton Lake Las Vegas day-to-day operations on May 2.
"That was the owner's decision and we reluctantly agreed to go along with it," Deuschl said.
Luxury properties have been hit hard in the past year and a half. Corporate travel and business from associations accounts for the bulk revenue of these hotels, but companies and groups have cut back on travel spending in the past year.
New York Times | American Airlines quietly announced last week that it would
eliminate free blankets in coach and sell an $8 packet that includes a
pillow and blanket starting May 1.
According to Joesentme.com, a
subscription travel site that reported the move last Friday, the
airline based its decision on consumer surveys. Joe Brancatelli, the
site’s publisher, raised a skeptical brow. “American executives run
focus groups on blankets?,” he said. “You think they’d look for
customer focus group data on what fliers think about American’s
worst-in-the-nation on-time performance, its atrocious baggage-handling
ability or the hideous condition of its planes.”
If watching the video of last Saturday’s gleeful, well-attended snowball fight at Dupont Circle makes you as envious as it makes me, maybe you’re ready to head to D.C. for some cold comfort. The Jefferson, a posh Beaux-Arts hotel between Dupont Circle and Logan Circle, has dropped the rates on their deluxe rooms from their usual $380 to $195 for the next couple of days.
So, own your own piece of the Snowpocalypse (or, D.C. residents, wait out the approaching storm in luxury, no snow shovels required). Call the Jefferson directly at (202) 448-2300 and ask for the Winter Storm Special. Pack your snowpants and mittens.
UPDATE: The D.C.-area Kimpton hotels (including the Hotel George, Hotel Helix, Hotel Madera, Hotel Monaco, Hotel Palomar, Hotel Rouge, and Topaz Hotel) have jumped on the wagon with a special snow-day rate that starts at $99. Use SNW as the booking code. (See if you can talk them into combining the snow special with the Rub the One You're With spa treatment package!)
Ann Shields is an online senior editor at Travel + Leisure.
Think for a second: When’s the last time you heard any welcome news—news really worth celebrating—out of New York City’s Financial District? (Here’s a hint: it was likely back in the days when Lehman Brothers was considered a bastion of solvency.)
Once the epicenter of Manhattan’s high-rolling, fat-cat corporate culture, Wall Street has lately been in serious need of a boost. That’s why the opening of the Andaz Wall Street hotel earlier this month couldn’t have been better timed; finally, in their hour of need, both weary business visitors and beleaguered hometown financiers were granted a new sanctuary.
Bloomberg News | Air passengers should be made aware of the health risks of airport body screenings and governments must explain any decision to expose the public to higher levels of cancer-causing radiation, an inter-agency report said.
Pregnant women and children should not be subject to scanning, even though the radiation dose from body scanners is “extremely small,” said the Inter-Agency Committee on Radiation Safety report, which is restricted to the agencies concerned and not meant for public circulation. The group includes the European Commission, International Atomic Energy Agency, Nuclear Energy Agency and the World Health Organization.
Washington, D.C. is getting a different kind of stimulus package this month—one spearheaded by the newly-appointed Secretary of Love and Relationships, Dr. Ruth Westheimer. The famous love doctor (inspired by the Obama’s “date nights”) has wasted no time in making her priorities clear, by launching “Date Nights D.C.,” a program that offers tons of deals during the month of February at D.C. hotels, restaurants, museums and more. Here are some highlights:
OK, OK, we're a bit giddy over 3floz.com the genius new high-end beauty site (it launched today)—and for good reason. Founded by friends, co-workers, and longtime travel companions, Kate and Alexi (below), it only sells products
that are TSA acceptable (small enough to carry-on in those transparent
little plastic baggies we frequent travelers hold so dear).
Wall Street Journal | Putting a new spin on the term "designer hotel," boutique chain W Hotels is hiring a fashion director to amp up its style credentials and its profile within the fashion industry.
After a two-year search, the chain is planning to announce next week—on Feb. 11, the opening day of New York Fashion Week—that it has hired stylist Amanda Ross in what is very likely a first for the hotel industry. W Hotels, which operates 36 properties worldwide, is a unit of Starwood Hotel & Resorts Worldwide Inc.
NBC Los Angeles
