Hotel Girl

An Austrian hotel is encouraging healthy living by charging its guests by the pound - literally, the Times has reported today.

Visitors to the Bioferienhotel Mandler's Landhaus in the Austrian Alps are weighed on arrival and slim visitors are charged less than their tubby counterparts. Apparently this charging system "stimulates people to do more fitness training".

I think I'd rather stay at the the Goldener Hirsch, where I've heard they do a great afternoon tea..

I made sure I visited all corners of the beautiful Four Seasons Hotel in Hampshire when I visited recently - including the stables. It was the first time I'd been anywhere near a horse, but Bradley (right, without the hat) treated me so gently I didn't even mind when he bit my partner's horse Archie on the bottom.

I was a bit saddle sore myself the next day, so I treated myself to a couple of hours in the amazing spa and had a facial with an Indian head massage. The hotel is the ultimate in luxury and they're proactively working with the trade.

Leisure sales manager Sarah Hammond is putting together an agent incentive package to co-incide with the Book Britain campaign - so watch travelweekly.co.uk for more details.

Bill Marriott is urging the travel industry to think outide the box on his blog today.

Read his anecdote about a prisoner who finds a clever way to help dig up his dad's tomato garden, even though he's stuck behind bars.

His advice applies to travel agents too, who are having to think creatively to survive in the face of competition from the internet.

Speaking of tomatoes, check out this high street travel agent who has opened recently in London's shoreditch. Black Tomato opens until 9pm, sees customers by appointment only, and even has a bar. Now that's thinking outside the box.

Luxury fashion houses are migrating from the catwalk to the corridor as one by one they enter the hotel business.

It started with the Palazzo Versace in Australia's Gold Coast in 2000 (right) and now Armani, Moschino and Missoni are following in Versace's haute-couture footsteps.

Is this a good way for luxury hotels to offer a point of difference in a highly competitive market? Or just another gimmick that's unlikely to take off?

I went to the Haymarket Hotel here in London yesterday to hear all the latest hotel price trends from hotels.com.

To get to the meeting room, I passed through a swanky swimming pool which doubles up as a cocktail lounge. A nice idea for evening events - but a perhaps a bit odd for the person swimming up and down as the journalists piled in for their morning briefing..

The hotel is part of the Firmdale Group, which also owns the lovely Charlotte Street Hotel and Soho Hotel.

Travel Weekly's sister publication Caterer has reported that it now has its eye on Mayfair for its next project.

And if you have customers looking for a cool city break in the Big Apple, keep an eye out for the Firmdale's Crosby Street Hotel due to open in March next year. According to Hotel Chatter, it will be mega green, with locally-sourced building materials, wall-to-ceiling windows, and a roof garden.

Reports in the press suggest budget giants Premier Inn and Travelodge are to merge, creating a £3bn super hotel group.

Both have huge plans for expansion so a combined company would dominate the budget sector, and as the newspaper points out, possibly leading to a competition inquiry by the Office of Fair Trading.

With the growth of the budget sector already prompting the closure of many independent hotels, this can't be good news for consumer choice.

Do you think this merger would be good for the hotel industry? Do you stay in budget chains or independent hotels?

Travolution Blog has picked up on a new tool from Wikipedia which reveals the number of searches carried out for any keyword.

From the hotel brands I checked out, the most searches were entered for Hilton (8,556). The numbers peaked on 13 February - perhaps last minute Valentines Day research?

Other results for last month were:
Marriott - 4,624
Travelodge - 2,368
Four Seasons - 4,845
Plaza - 4,307
Dorchester - 2.562

Hotels lag way behind other aspects of travel. British Airways was searched for a whopping 230,694 times and even Thomas Cook attracted 8,742 searches.

Looks like customers are looking to other sources for their hotel information - mostly likely TripAdvisor and other social networking sites.

Why not try the tool for yourself?

And don't forget to admire the lovely rooftop pool (above) at the Hilton Molino Stucky in Venice, which I'll be checking out in May..

Any fans of Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares will be interested to know the chef is opening a hotel/restaurant in Camden, North London, in May.

The Camden New Journal reports that Ramsay is opening a ten-room boutique hotel and restaurant called York and Albany.

However, fans are unlikely to catch a glimpse of Ramsay hurling obscenties around his kitchen. The project is being led by his friend and former head chef at The Connaught, Angela Hartnett. A spokesman told the local paper: “It’s owned by Gordon Ramsay’s group but it’s very much Angela who’s taking it under her wing.”

The hotel could be a great addition to the area, which is lacking in decent places to stay. As a North Londoner myself I'll definitely be checking it out, just in the name of research of course..