hotels articles

One of the most difficult challenges for beginning web marketers is to build a list. Everyone says that the money is in the list. It’s true, but you don’t want to take forever to do it. Fortunately, there are other factors that is more important when it comes to list building and you don’t have to own a huge list to make use of it.

The factors I referred to in the previous paragraph is relationship and responsiveness. Although high quantity doesn’t always mean low quality, most of the time when people focus too much on the quantity, they will end up building less responsive list.

If you’ve read some blogs or sites from the Internet Marketing gurus, you should find out that they often brag about the size of their list. This creates a comparison point in our mind that to be effective the list has to be close to that size.

Nothing is further from the truth. There are ways to obtain a lot of names and there are a few ways to build a highly responsive list. I often saw a so called guru with more than 200,000 names in the list made less than bright marketers who do it the right way from the start.

Too many unresponsive names are burdening the list itself. The system delivers the email at much slower rate than small, light but responsive list.

With those said, article marketing is one way to build highly responsive list. It is possible because of how it works. Unlike many other more aggressive marketing methods, in article marketing you have to actually provide value to the readers.

If your articles are of quality, not only the readers will like them, other web publishers will also publish them on their sites, giving you much more exposure and traffic.

When the readers come to your site, you know that they have at least read some of your content, perhaps have a bit of trust in you. They may expect that you can help them solve their problems.

This is when you need to capture their name and email address to continue building the momentum. Give them even more information and you should have highly responsive list.

Don’t get me wrong. It isn’t that you can’t build a huge list from article marketing. The point I want to get across is that you can have a small list, but responsiveness and relationship are more important than numbers.

Do you want to learn the secrets about article marketing? I drive 5,238 unique visitors to my site each month, and I’ll teach you how to do it.

Article marketing can lead to many lucrative endeavor. Getting traffic and profit are just two of them. If you’re in for the long haul, you should better have some passion about what you do. How could you grow the passion and get followers?

I can’t explain exactly how it happens but passion shines through every article that you write. If you drag yourself to writing an article, the readers will sense that. The problem is, not all people are passionate about their business.

If I could let you do it again, I’d recommend that you choose a topic that you’re at the very least interested in. Even if you don’t know a thing about it, the Internet is a rich research platform you could be able to know more than 90 percent than the entire world population by doing a few hours or a day of research.

However, not all people have the time to redo it again. Is there a quick fix to inject passion into your existing business? I would say yes.

Let’s take McDonald’s as an example. The employees are trained to do predefined tasks that are part of the system. They can’t get creative and add ingredients to the burger without approval. This kind of work can be very boring and suitable just for robots. But, how come the employees still greet you with smiles on every visit?

Passion can be found not only in the chore, but through other sides of the business as well. You just have to find it. Perhaps receiving emails from your customers thanking you for your information or telling a story about how your product have changed their life is something that can make your day. Perhaps it is something else.

It helps if you find your inner value and see if it matches something that you do right now. If you always want to contribute and make a difference to the world, perhaps you can express yourself better by writing and helping others through articles?

To continue with our example, the employees at McDonald’s are passionate about their system. They like to be able to do things repeatedly and still have the same results. They love it when their customers are happy and satisfied with their service.

With passion, you should have good line of products and before you know it, you will get those followers.

Write your articles with passion. Your readers will know it and that’s a good start to having long lasting success through this strategy.

Do you want to learn the secrets about article writing? I drive 5,238 unique visitors to my site each month, and I’ll show you how to do it.

Hotel Mount View ( 3 Star Equivalent Hotel )

Address: The Mall, , Dalhousie
Location: Suburban
Property Type: Business And Leisure Hotel
The only hotel in Dalhousie set amidst scenic splendour in 6 acres of sprawling gardens. Hotel Mount View with the best and easily accessible location invites you to be in a romantic hideaway, viewing the majestic Dhauladhar, Pir Panjal and Bathri Valley. It provides all the comforts that you expect in a deluxe hotel.
Accessibility: Airport Domestic: 180KM., Airport International: 560KM., Railway Station: 80KM., Bus Stand: 0.2KM., City Center: 0.5KM., Shopping Center: 0.2KM.
Approx. Price Range: $50  -  $75  (Rs. 2500  -  3750)

There’s no hint of melodrama in the air when Martin Burge tells me that cooking saved him from going completely off the rails as a youngster. Flamboyance is not part of his personality. Yet the 34-year-old head chef of the Whatley Manor hotel in the Cotswolds confesses he was a “totally wayward” teenager in danger of falling into serious trouble. “I clearly remember a geography teacher turning to me at school and telling me I was going to fail absolutely everything,” he says. “Suddenly, the penny dropped and I focused. Cooking was the thing that felt right.” It’s not really an unusual scenario - many chefs have experienced similar road to Damascus-type conversions.

What is unusual about Burge, though, is the fact that he’s the son of deaf parents, so his was an unusual and “pretty tough” upbringing. “Having deaf parents slows up your rate of learning as a child, because you grow up learning to sign at the same time as learning to speak,” he says. “So at school I tended to be a bit behind, but was good at practical things like sport, art and cooking.”

In fact, he became one of only two boys in his class to study home economics, and clearly remembers pedalling home on his bike, proudly carrying the dishes he’d made. “My mum really encouraged me with cooking, as my grandfather had been a chef in the Army,” he says. “And when I did work experience in a professional kitchen at the age of 15, that was it. There was no question of what I was going to do - I absolutely loved it.”

Since those early days and that “much-needed kick up the backside”, Burge has scarcely looked back, going from strength to strength, with stints in some of the country’s most illustrious kitchens.

Strangely, it was a stroke of misfortune that landed Burge his job at Whatley Manor. He had been working for John Burton Race for six years; first at L’Ortolan in Berkshire, then as head chef at Burton Race’s two-Michelin-starred restaurant in London’s Landmark hotel, when the latter was put into liquidation. “The timing couldn’t have been worse,” Burge remembers. “John made the decision the day after my wife Julie had given birth to our second child.”

A call from friend and fellow chef Alan Murchison tipped off Burge about the Whatley Manor position shortly afterwards, in January 2003. The property was under construction and Burge recalls having an interview with the owner and general manager, wearing Wellington boots in the middle of a building site. “I remember driving away from that, wanting the job but feeling like it had gone badly,” he says. He was wrong. He got the post and began his tenure at Whatley in February 2003, four months before the hotel opened.

Recruiting a 15-strong brigade from scratch, ordering equipment and organising the layout of the kitchen were Burge’s key tasks before Whatley’s opening. Once the hotel was up and running, his first few months in charge of the kitchen were spent getting the food to a level he was happy with in both the brasserie-style Le Mazot and the fine-dining restaurant, the Dining Room.

The hard work paid off a year later in January 2005 when, just 18 months after opening, Whatley Manor won a Michelin star for the Dining Room food. The hotel has also secured a rating of seven out of 10 in the Good Food Guide, and three AA rosettes.

Burge is proud of the food he is serving in both restaurants - there’s no hint that he feels Le Mazot is the poor relation. “We produce bloody good food in there,” he says. “We do a belly of pork that is braised forever, for instance, and everything is done properly. The only difference is that the dishes are simpler than in the Dining Room, with about six components in a dish compared with 10.”

Most people wouldn’t describe a dish with six elements as simple, and there’s no doubt that Burge’s food for the Dining Room showcases his skill and pedigree as a chef. As you’d expect (his most impressionable years were spent at Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons in Oxfordshire and with Le Manoir-influenced chefs), Burge’s menu is characterised by classically based, modern European cooking which nods to the wider world. A best-selling starter - hand-dived Scottish scallops with a pumpkin purée, crispy bacon and a light curry oil infusion - typifies the style.

“Raymond Blanc went through a crazy fusion stage at Le Manoir,” Burge recalls, “and I remember playing about with the ingredients with him. John Burton Race did it too, so it’s inevitable that I do it - I like to use different ingredients, but without being silly. The key is restraint: balance is everything.”

Burge is fortunate to have complete freedom at Whatley to cook whatever he wants, using the best ingredients available. “The owner, Christian Landolt [a former international event rider], is in this for the long term and wants us to be the best we can be,” he says. “He gives me the opportunity to use prime ingredients and sets realistic GP targets. So many places squash what their chefs are capable of, but here it’s the total opposite.”

Burge has also relished the move from London to the countryside. He is currently working hard on establishing a kitchen garden, growing baby leeks, carrots, beetroot, courgettes, lettuces and herbs. The hotel’s greenhouses yield peppers, cucumbers and melons. “We certainly don’t grow everything for our menus,” Burge says, “but it’s so satisfying when we use our own produce.”

He has ambition aplenty for Whatley and makes no secret of being hungry for more awards. “I’d like to go up a level with every accolade we have,” he says. “It would be fantastic to win another AA rosette and amazing to win two Michelin stars. I’m not a three-star chaser, but I’d love to join the lucky 12 and become number 13 with two stars.”

Martin Burge: career path
Brought up in Bristol, Martin Burge went to Brunel Technical College at the age of 16 to take his City & Guilds qualifications as a chef. Emerging with distinctions in his 706/2 exams, he got a job as a commis at the Royal Crescent hotel in Bath under Michael Croft and, on his day off, studied for the 706/3 in pastry.

When Croft moved to run the kitchens of London’s Mirabelle, the 21-year-old Burge went with him, but soon moved to Pied àTerre under Richard Neat. He says: “I spent 13 months there. It was the most tough, intense kitchen I’ve ever worked in.”

Neat got Burge his next job, at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons. Ultimately, he worked his way up to junior sous chef. “I worked under Raymond Blanc and his then head chef, Clive Fretwell,” he says. “I owe them both huge thanks for what I’ve become.”

After three years, an opportunity came up to go to Raffles in Singapore to help John Burton Race out with a food promotion. Burge says: “I saw his cooking out there and thought he had a lot to offer, so then went to work at L’Ortolan as senior sous chef.”

Soon after joining Burton Race, Burge was elevated to head chef, aged 27, and spent six years with him, moving to the Landmark in London when Burton-Race transferred there. “For the last year [before it closed], I was running it while John was away in France, and I feel a great sense of achievement that we retained the two Michelin stars,” he says.

How would you like to live in a condo where you never have to cook, clean or walk your own dog?

While it sounds like a dream, it’s a reality for the residents who call a five-star hotel–such as the Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons or Mandarin Oriental–home.

The hotel apartment concept has been around since at least the 1950s at such old-style New York hotels as the Pierre, Waldorf-Astoria, Sherry-Netherland and Carlyle. But over the past five years, hotel-managed condominiums have sprung up in many other cities, including San Francisco, Boston, Miami and Washington, D.C.

These condo hotel properties are enticing because they provide residents with amenities seldom found at conventional condo buildings. Residents, for example, have the same access to hotel services as a nightly guest. The concierge can arrange anything from room service to valet parking, from a baby sitter to a dog walker.

Like hotel guests, condo hotel residents have signing privileges–charge to your account, just like a hotel guest–at the hotel’s restaurant, bar and retail shops, as well as with use of dry cleaning and laundry services, at the usual hotel rates. For a price, residents can use hotel staff for cleaning or to water plants when they are out of town. Just like in a hotel room, these hotel condos come with a house phone, so residents need only push a button to get room service or the concierge on the line.

Hotel condos are generally around 25% more expensive than comparable non-hotel units, despite the fact that their conveniences, like concierges, routine maintenance and access to the gym, also raise the monthly maintenance charges.

The Mandarin Oriental, situated above the just-opened Time Warner Center in New York, has 66 hotel condos selling for up to $3,000 per square foot, which comes to at least $12 million for a three-bedroom with a maid’s room and library. The typical buyer owns several other homes around the world. At 50 Central Park South, at the Ritz-Carlton New York, condos range in price from $12 million to $28 million.

But not all hotel condos are priced in the millions. At the Residences at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, D.C., condos start at $600,000, and at the Four Seasons Residences in San Francisco, units sell for $700,000 and up.

Many more luxury condo hotels are under construction. Starwood Hotels & Resorts plans to open its W Dallas Victory Residence in early 2007, with 71 residential units. Starwood’s 42-story St. Regis Residences, under construction in San Francisco, will have 102 apartments when it opens a year from now. In Las Vegas, a condominium-hotel development due to open in 2006 at the existing MGM Mirage’s MGM Grand Hotel & Casino will be the Las Vegas Strip’s first casino-based residential complex.

You don’t need to have a bundle of money for you to enjoy what others are taking great pleasure in – like going on a cruise. All you need to have is the right timing and motivation to get into something that you deserve – a much-awaited break from the everyday distress you’re encountering.

There are things you need to keep in mind as you plan your cruise.

Shop Around

Nowadays the internet has been a good venue which offers different types of information such as directing people to sites where they can find cheap cruises. Do not jump into the first cheap cruise package you come across, instead bookmark it for further review and evaluation.

Apart from using the “cheap cruise” keyword when you run the search engine, why not try “affordable cruise.” You may also key-in other alternative words which are synonymous to the word “cheap”.

The internet is not the only option. You can also opt to look over the yellow pages and call travel companies within or nearby your area. Try to let them orient you of their different cheap cruise packages. Additionally, you can ask for friend’s referral, especially if they have been into a discounted cruise.

Type of Cheap Cruise Package

Most cheap cruise packages are being offered during the following circumstances:

- Off-peak season. There are months which are less traveled. During these months, most travel companies reduce their traveling fees to draw people’s attention in considering cruising.

- Cruises which are repositioned. Due to higher demand to a certain place, there are travel companies which reposition their destination. By doing so, they keep the prices low.

- Introductory Cruises. Most travel companies which introduces their cruise ships give discounts to anyone who wish to go out for a cruise.

Getting Ahead: Ready to Pack

Once you are done and you have carefully chosen the most suitable cheap cruise package for you, it is time to consider the things you will need for your much-awaited vacation.

Most travelers go wrong when they try to pack, instead of saving money; they tend to overindulge on some unimportant things such as:

- Clothes. A pair of new attire for your cruise is enough. You can use your existing clothes to use for your cruise. By doing so, you will be able to cut off your expenses. These days, the prices of clothes are getting expensive every time you visit the mall.

- Other belongings. It is best to keep your belongings countable and easy to carry. Choose bags or shoes that most likely will be utilized. Check with your travel company the itinerary so you know what important belongings to pack.

- Credit cards. You are in a budget cruise. Bringing credit cards will tempt you to splurge on unnecessary items. Hence, it is recommended that you bring cash instead of credit cards. By doing so, you will be able to properly allocate your funds depending on the available money on hand.

Let no one and not even a thing ruin something beautiful, like taking a cruise. It is not money that can keep you away from getting what you want. When you have the eagerness, the motivation and proper mindset then you can overcome any barriers. Adding with it, are careful planning and research so that you will obtain your goal.

Hotel Piet Hein*** offers you a pleasant nautical atmosphere and is located at the Vondelpark in the heart of Amsterdam. The Van Gogh museum, Rijksmuseum, the Modern Art museum and the lively Leidseplein with casino are located within walking distance. You can find the PC Hooftstraat, the most exclusive shopping street in Amsterdam, behind the hotel and the Concertgebouw is only 300 metres from the hotel.

Come and stay in the hotel which currently has the most media-coverage! This remarkable hotel offers an experience in itself. Renowned Dutch architects, designers and artists have transformed this monument dating from 1921 in a hotel where many inhabitants of Amsterdam, international artists, tourists and business people feel at home.

The Lloyd Hotel is very well situated: it is near the city centre (direct public transport connections), access from the ring-road is easy and from the rooms lovely views over the fashionable Eastern Docklands area are to be had. The hotel has parking facilities of its own in a parking garage. Lloyd Hotel has a restaurant, a bar, a soundproof music room, a library and even a “corner” shop.

All 116 rooms in the Lloyd Hotel -ranging from one to five stars- offer a different experience. These entail a difference in design, surface area and therefore rate. Much attention has been given to the interior of the rooms. A number of exciting Dutch Designers (Claudy Jongstra, Hella Jongerius, De Bazel, Marcel Wanders, Richard Hutten, to name but a few) have created several of the furniture pieces. All guests can enjoy free high speed internet access as well as satellite television with a unqiue selection of channels. Our full menu is available in your room with our 24 hour room service.

For privately held RLJ Development, the move to acquire 100 hotels from White Lodging Corp. for approximately $1.7 billion marks a strategic shift. Instead of targeting full-service hotels in large urban markets, an approach that RLJ has followed since 2000, this mega-deal will net the company 90 select-service hotels, primarily in the Midwest.

RLJ is one of a growing number of companies that view select-service hotels as favorable yield plays. According to Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels, the average cap rate on select-service assets in the Midwest and Great Plains registered 9.50% in 2005 versus just 7% on a national basis. Lagging growth in the manufacturing and auto sectors has tempered pricing on many hotel assets in the Midwest, reports Jones Lang LaSalle. RLJ declined to disclose the going-in cap rate on the deal.

“This is one of the best hotel portfolios that we’ve seen in a long time,” says Tom Baltimore, president of Bethesda, Md.-based RLJ Development, the nation’s largest African-American-owned hotel investment firm. Black Entertainment Television (BET) founder and billionaire Robert L. Johnson founded RLJ in 2000, which closed on 63 of the hotels in June. RLJ expects to close on 24 more hotels this month. The remaining 13 hotels in the acquisition are in the development pipeline.

“One reason we liked this portfolio is that there has been a much broader acceptance of select-service hotels from both a consumer and investor standpoint recently,” says Baltimore, adding that one-third of the assets are less than 3 years old and located in recovering markets. The 90 select-service hotels are chiefly Marriott and Hilton-branded properties.

The acquisition will more than double the dollar value of RLJ’s hotel portfolio (see table). RLJ is one of a growing number of hotel owners vying for select-service hotels, defined as mid-priced properties that offer limited meeting space and dining facilities. Courtyard by Marriott and Hilton Garden Inn are among the most prominent select-service chains.

Jones Lang LaSalle reports that $3 billion worth of select-service hotels traded hands in 2005, an increase of more than 30% over the previous level in 2004. The Chicago-based brokerage also expects 2006 to meet or exceed that sales volume. Widespread room demand that is no longer narrowly limited to the full-service segment has also bolstered the select-service market, which posted an 8.8% RevPAR increase last year, up from 6.7% in 2004.

“For the past few years, there has been an incredibly strong market for full-service hotels, but most of it was going into the luxury end of the sector,” says Al Calhoun, managing director of the select-service division at Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels. “That’s why I thought that the RLJ acquisition [of the White Lodging portfolio] was so surprising.”

Calhoun says that the deal proves that investors are disillusioned by puny yields for higher-end assets. Indeed, several large investors have moved into select-service. In 2004, Blackstone Group bought select-service operator and owner Prime Hospitality for $790 million.

The following year, Encore Enterprises bought nine Hampton Inns from Mercury Investments for more than $100 million. Blackstone then returned again to the select-service market earlier this year when it spent $3.4 billion to buy LaQuinta Properties Corp.

Based in Merrillville, Ind., White Lodging has 40 new hotels in the pipeline. Under terms of the deal, White Lodging will also continue to manage the 100-hotel portfolio that it recently sold to RLJ. “The timing was right to sell these properties,” says Judy Bronowski, White Lodging’s vice president of business planning. “More investors see the true value of these assets now than they have in the past.”

The condo hotel industry is coming to grips with its first-ever construction boom. Ground-up developments — virtually non-existent five years ago — are outpacing conversions three to one as hotel developers build projects in Las Vegas, Orlando, Chicago and other prime markets. The run-up is occurring even though the concept’s complex operating strategy has yet to prove itself on a large scale.

Condo hotels enable individuals to buy hotel rooms, occasionally use them, and pocket income by renting the units to hotel guests. The concept surfaced some 30 years ago in the U.S., and until recently the niche industry operated predominantly in Florida.

But after the 9/11 attacks and a foundering economy drove the hospitality industry to the brink of depression early this century, hotel developers have increasingly embraced condo hotels to fill a financing void left by reluctant lenders: By selling units, developers raise more equity and require less debt in projects.

Even in today’s healthy hospitality industry — Smith Travel Research reports that profits rose 35.3% to $22.6 billion last year — luxury developers are chasing condo hotel deals to help pay for their projects. In fact, 80% of the 50 luxury hotels in the construction pipeline include condo hotel units, private residences or timeshare interests, according to Lodging Econometrics, a real estate research and consulting company.

But more questions than answers surround condo hotels, including whether there is enough demand to support the proposed developments, and how condo hotel unit buyers will react to their first taste of declining income when tourism begins to slow at some future point.

At the very least, real estate experts predict, disgruntled condo hotel unit owners will barrage the industry with lawsuits within the next three years, particularly if they bought the units anticipating a return on investment (See sidebar p.95).

“Well-capitalized, well-thought-out and properly managed condo hotels that work as a hotel first make sense,” says Jim Butler, an attorney and chair of the global hospitality group with Jeffer Mangels Butler & Marmaro, a law firm based in Los Angeles. “But developers have become over-enthusiastic and have wandered away from some basic sound principles.”