Breaking: Marriott to launch boutique hotels

Name: Budget Travel LLC
Price range: $

By Sean O'Neill

October 3, 2012

Moments ago, Marriott announced a partnership with Ian Schrager, the developer of some of the world's best-known boutique hotels, to build roughly 100 boutique hotels within the next several years. The partners say they will have five development deals signed by the end of the year, and that a brand name for the line of boutique properties should appear within a few months.

The news is surprising because in many ways the Marriott brand is the antithesis of what consumers think of when they think of a boutique hotel, such as Schrager's Gramercy Park Hotel, where the news was announced. Marriott hotels tend to have hundreds of rooms that look interchangeable and are designed to consistently deliver a room for the night for business travelers. Schrager's hotels are small and feature modern art, unusual light fixtures, oddly-sized lobbies with wood-burning fireplaces or enormous high-definition TV sets--with no two hotels having an identical look.

Even at the press conference this morning, the different personal styles of Schrager and Bill Marriott were striking. Schrager wore a collarless black shirt and a black sportcoat, while Marriott wore a navy blue suit, a white shirt with a starched collar, and a standard necktie.

Marriott admitted that the guests going to Schrager's hotels haven't been going to Marriott's hotels. But, he said, he didn't see why his company couldn't attract them by building a new set of properties. After all, he noted, Marriott recently announced a partnership with Nickelodeon to build hotels that assiduously aims to please children. "And with this deal we're going after the grown-up kids," he said.* Schrager responded with a funny facial expression that quickly turned into a smile.

Despite differences, money talks, of course. And the boutique hotel segment of the business has been enormously profitable. Marriott's resources--its reservations systems and existing supply channels and staff--could help reduce the cost of building additional boutique hotels, and put them with an reasonable "splurge" zone for budget-conscious travelers.

Earlier: Marriott announces a deal to create kid-friendly hotels.

Related info: For delightfully obsessive coverage of hotel trends, visit HotelChatter.com. Update: HotelChatter has more info on this deal.

*A typographical error in this original blog post said "sad" instead of "said."

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The first videoguide to hotels has debuted. Trivop.com, a European Web agency for booking hotels, has filmed videos of several hotels in Paris and has embedded them in a Google map of the city. You can click on a hotel and get a virtual tour of its amenities, helping you confirm if the hotel deserves its star rating. Reviews are pulled in from other travelers via TripAdvisor.com, and a Google mashup map is used, to help you see where any given hotel is located relative to the major attractions in the city. While the videos have been edited in an amateurish way, they provide high-quality images of what the hotel rooms, lobbies, and exteriors truly look like. Check it out here. (Link via Vijay Dandapani) Future digital maps will offer three dimensional simulations of cities. Consider the new 3-D simulation of ancient Rome, called RomeReborn1.0, that will soon be made available to the public by its inventors at the University of Virginia. This digital model of the city will reproduce for tourists "on satellite-guided handsets and 3-D orientation movies in a theater to be opened near the Colosseum...what the Colosseum, the Forum, the imperial palaces on the Palatine once looked like," according to this Reuters story in the L.A. Times. What's more, "When in virtual Rome, visitors will be able do to even more than ancient Romans did: They can crawl through the bowels of the Colosseum, filled with lion cages and primitive elevators, and fly up for a detailed look at bas-reliefs and inscriptions placed atop triumphal arches," according to this Associated Press article, via USAToday/World Hum. Meanwhile, Seattle's Pike Place Market is a popular tourist attraction that receives loving treatment in a new interactive map by the Los Angeles Times. See it here. It's a precursor, I think, to the types of maps you'll someday find in digital guidebooks, which travelers will download and read on their personal computers or wireless digital devices. Or future digital maps may simply be enhanced Google Maps. For example, look at this superdetailed Google mash-up map of Walt Disney World, which plots every location with a description and photos--including facts about individual rest rooms. (To see details, you need to zoom in by adjusting the map scale with the slider control on the side of the map.) (Link from The Disney Blog).

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Where does the Guinness man go on vacation?

Fergal Murray's job is to visit about 400 Irish pubs worldwide every year... As one of eight master brewers for Guinness, the Irish stout maker, Murray is an international ambassador for the brand. This year he expects to hopscotch Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean over the course of about 20 weeks. He will, as always, be thanking pub owners for selling Guinness and offering tips on how to store and pour the beverage. Given his broad travel experience, Murray knows by heart a variety of spots worth visiting. His favorite place to take his family on vacation is Quinta do Lago, an oceanside resort town in Algarve, the most southern region of Portugal. Last year he went there with his wife and their two sons, a one-year old and a four-year old. Here's what he has to say about the place: "I would recommend it for American families for a few reasons. First, the town's restaurants and hotels are set up to entertain small children. You can walk into any restaurant with two kids and let the kids be themselves without feeling self-conscious as a parent. The pools are designed to be safe for children, and there's always someone around to mind them. Second, the weather's good and the beaches are fantastic. Third, it's a favorite destination of Irish and British families, but I'd be totally surprised if any American family visits there. So if you are an American visiting the town, you will truly feel like you are visiting another country because none of your fellow citizens will be near you, while you'll still enjoy the benefits of child-friendly facilities and English-speaking staff." While I chatted with Murray, I had a few pressing questions to ask that weren't precisely travel related, but he was kind enough to answer them anyway... Is there any downside to your job as master brewer? I can't stand being served a bad pint. And this causes a problem when I'm out with my wife and two kids. I'll be served a bad pint--it even happens in Dublin, from time to time. Knowing what my reaction will be, my wife will say, "You're not going to do that, now are you?" and then she'll go off somewhere else because she doesn't want to hear any more about how to pour the perfect Guinness, and she knows it's going to take an hour for me to instruct the bartenders. Maybe they need to clean the lines, or change the mix of gas, or make sure that someone behind the bar is fully engaged, instead of looking at blond at the end of the bar. How does a person become a Guinness master brewer? There's a bit of drinking involved, of course. But primarily it's a process, a craft. You join Guinness at some stage of your life, and you experience it, and when you've experienced enough, you take exams and get accredited by an external organization. It takes about ten years of experience, and the exams are fairly challenging, covering everything from running a power plant to the chemistry of beer. You spent three years in Nigeria working for Guinness. What was the deal with that? In Nigeria, they don't have the same infrastructure, generally speaking, for serving draft Guinness at the ideal temperature. So we concentrated on marketing our beer by the bottle. The Guinness stout sold there is about 7.5 percent alcohol, while in the 'States it's about 5 percent and in Europe it's about 5.5 percent. We vary the alcohol level primarily to accommodate local tastes and regulations and storage methods. What's your favorite pub in Quinta do Lago? De Barra. It has an outside deck, great beer, and great craic (the Irish term for good conversation). Learn more about Algarve and Quinta do Lago at VisitPortugal.com. For discounted travel to Portugal, check out a recent Real Deal for airfare and a week in Lisbon and Porto from $1,044. Earlier: Learn about kid-friendly places to stay in Europe by clicking here.

7 tips for booking train tickets in Europe

Here's a quick rundown on how to get the best deals for inter-city rail travel in Europe. 1. European websites frequently sell tickets at lower prices. For example, French Railways often supplies lower prices on its website for tickets that are identical to the ones it sells via RailEurope.com, an American agency. To be sure, agencies like RailEurope.com sometimes do provide superlow deals, such as a current discount of 50 percent off train tickets on Paris-Brussels-Amsterdam routes. (Details here.) Still...you gotta shop around--and not merely rely on American sites for one-stop shopping--if you want the best deal. 2. English speakers living in the U.S. can still buy discounted tickets through European websites. Your first stop online should be at Seat61.com. This amazingly helpful British website offers step-by-step advice on how to pinpoint the best route for your desired itinerary...and also how to find the cheapest tickets. (The site's editor, Mark Smith, answered reader questions yesterday at BudgetTravel.com. Transcript here.) 3. Booking at the last-minute? There may be a deal for you online, too. In the same way that airlines offer last-minute deals to fill empty seats, Europe's rail networks have deeply discounted point-to-point tickets. You'll find examples here. 4. You can only buy a Eurorail ticket in the U.S. but it's not always your cheapest option for rail travel in Europe. Says Mark Smith, "In theory, Eurail tickets can ONLY be bought outside Europe, as they are intended for overseas visitors. But in many cases you'll find ordinary point-to-point tickets are a cheaper option, especially if you book direct with the European rail operators at their own website rather than through an expensive US agency, and especially if you are prepared to pre-book tickets on a no-refunds, no-changes-to-travel-plans basis so as to take advantage of European railways' various budget-airline-beating special train deals." 5. Get your timing right. The most intuitive way to figure out train times for any European rail journey is to visit the website of the German rail line Deutsche Bahn, which has comprehensive listings for all major European train companies. But the website makes it difficult for Americans to purchase travel, so book your tickets at RailEurope, Railpass.com, or European Rail. These sites offer point-to-point tickets, rail passes, and student discounts. For railpasses for travel within the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, visit Railkey's website. 6. Know that booking tickets on the "Chunnel" between London and Paris can be tricky for Americans. Eurostar offers fares and times for routes reaching London, Paris, Brussels, and other nearby destinations. But Eurostar's website doesn't offer reservations for overnight trains. Expect to make such reservations by phone instead. Another warning: Eurostar will not mail tickets to the U.S., but you can dodge this problem by booking your Eurostar tickets at Eurostar.com. The site will give you a choice of picking up your tickets at Waterloo station in London or having your tickets be mailed to a British address, such as your hotel, says rail expert Mark Smith. If your train will travel on through France, after stopping in Paris via the underground Chunnel, then opt to pick up your onward tickets at any major ticket office in France, says Smith. 7. Look beyond Europe's best-known tourist destinations. Europe's train systems make it easy to take a day-trip to a place outside of a well-known capital--and still be back in time for dinner. Here are BudgetTravel.com's ideas for adding on day-trips out of Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Copenhagen, Lisbon, London, Paris, Prague, Rome, and Vienna. Related: Europe's newest high-speed train, the TGV East between Paris and Strasbourg, is a hit with Americans after just one day in operation," reports the Los Angeles Times.

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