hotels articles

SILVER SPRING, Md. — Beginning June 1, travelers who apply for the no annual fee Choice Privileges Visa Platinum credit card by August 31 and make their first purchase by November 1 will receive 16,000 Choice Privileges reward points. That’s two free nights(1) at the majority of the Comfort Inn, Comfort Suites, Quality, Sleep Inn, Clarion and MainStay Suites brand hotels in the U.S. The card is issued by Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) in conjunction with Choice Hotels International, Inc. (NYSE:CHH).

“Choice Hotels is proud to partner with Bank of America this summer to provide travelers an opportunity to receive two free nights at the majority of our midscale hotels in the U.S.,” said Wayne Wielgus, Choice Hotels’ executive vice president and chief marketing officer. “Our Choice Privileges rewards program is fast becoming the premier frequency program in the midscale segment offering consumers the value they want when making travel decisions.”

In addition to no annual fee, cardholders earn bonus points at almost 3,000 Comfort Inn, Comfort Suites, Quality, Sleep Inn, Clarion and MainStay Suites brand hotels throughout the U.S., as well as points for everyday spending at any location that accepts Visa credit cards. Choice Privileges Visa cardholders will automatically be enrolled if not already a member of the Choice Hotels’ Choice Privileges rewards program.

Ads featuring the Choice Privileges Visa Platinum credit card promotion will launch in national print including the June issues of Budget Travel and USA Today. Additionally, ads will run on cable networks such as CNN, and other major media outlets.

Travelers may learn more about the advantages of membership in Choice Privileges by visiting choiceprivileges.com, by calling 888.770.6800 or by inquiring at the front desk of any Comfort Inn, Comfort Suites, Quality, Sleep Inn, Clarion or MainStay Suites brand hotel in the United States.

Bank of America is one of the world’s largest financial institutions, serving individual consumers, small and middle market businesses and large corporations with a full range of banking, investing, asset management and other financial and risk-management products and services. The company provides unmatched convenience in the United States, serving 33 million consumer relationships with more than 5,800 retail banking offices, more than 16,700 ATMs and award-winning online banking with more than 13 million active users. Bank of America is the No. 1 overall Small Business Administration (SBA) lender in the United States and the No. 1 SBA lender to minority-owned small businesses. The company serves clients in 150 countries and has relationships with 98 percent of the U.S. Fortune 500 companies and 85 percent of the Global Fortune 500. Bank of America Corporation stock (NYSE:BAC) is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Comfort Inn, Comfort Suites, Quality, Clarion, Sleep Inn, MainStay Suites, Econo Lodge, Rodeway Inn and Choice Privileges are proprietary trademarks and service marks of Choice Hotels International.

(1) Two free nights based on an 8,000 point Choice Privileges award night hotel in the U.S. A free night may require more points at certain hotels. For point level information, visit choiceprivileges.com. Please allow 4-6 weeks after your purchase for the 16,000 points to be deposited into your Choice Privileges account. To be eligible, you must apply for the credit card between June 1 and August 31, 2005 and use the card by November 1, 2005. Credit subject to approval. Normal credit standards apply. The Choice Privileges Visa Platinum card is issued by Bank of America, N.A. (USA).

Hyatt Hotels Corporation brought a new level of luxury, service and fun to the California Coast when Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort & Spa opened to the public yesterday. The 517-room Andalusian-designed resort is destined to top the list of the world’s finest destinations with its casually elegant facilities, pampering services and abundance of amenities.

The relaxed blending of guests in business attire and those in board shorts may best describe the one-of-a-kind ambiance and allure of the new “Surf City, USA” resort, situated on the famed Pacific Coast Highway. All of the resort’s tastefully appointed guestrooms, including 57 suites, feature private terraces with spectacular views of the Pacific Ocean and surrounding beaches, sure to tempt business and leisure travelers alike.

“Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort & Spa offers travelers the perfect blend of luxury, excitement and relaxation,” said Cormac O’Modhrain, general manager, Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort & Spa. “There are a wide range of amenities offered to guests including outdoor activities in the Pacific Ocean and nearby beaches, as well as a world-class spa and an eclectic variety of dining options.”

Standard in-room amenities include two-line telephones, high speed Internet access, 27-inch color televisions, CD/clock radios, built-in safes, refrigerators, pillow-top mattresses and down comforters, hair dryers, bathrobes, irons and ironing boards, over-sized desks, vanities, Portico(R) toiletry items and spacious balconies. The resort’s portfolio of one- to three-bedroom suites offer the luxury and convenience of a separate parlor to accommodate small business meetings or intimate gatherings.

Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort & Spa features more than 110,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor function space, the largest collection on the California Coast, including a 20,000-square-foot Grand Ballroom, which can be divided into seven sections providing maximum flexibility and dramatic views of the Pacific Ocean. Two additional ocean view junior ballrooms, totaling almost 10,000 square feet, can accommodate more than 1,000 guests. The resort also offers a 10,700 square foot dedicated exhibit hall. For outdoor functions ranging from weddings and receptions to other special events, the property offers six open-air courtyards with lush gardens, water features and ocean views.

The resort also is home to the 20,000-square-foot Pacific Waters Spa, offering guests the ultimate in relaxation and rejuvenation, with 18 private indoor and outdoor treatment rooms. Designed to emulate an elegant Spanish estate, the spa offers guests a broad selection of massages, skin therapies and body wraps, as well as scrubs and moisturizing facials using preparations indigenous to the Pacific Island culture. Pacific Waters Spa also offers Thalasso Hydrotherapy, one of the rarest, most exotic treatments in the world in which guests have the opportunity to relax in a warm bath of fresh seawater.

Sure to please even the most discerning of palates, the resort offers three restaurants, two lounges, 24-hour room service and Surf City Grocers, an island-style market. An exclusive on-site retail plaza, The Village, provides an eclectic mix of shopping experiences with everything from ice cream and flowers to surf memorabilia and fine art.

Through May 21, 2003, the resort is pleased to offer the introductory “Surf City Experience” including deluxe accommodations, a $25 gift certificate to Pacific Waters Spa and a S’mores creation kit, which can be used at the firepits located at the resort or on the nearby beaches, compliments of the resort’s Surf City Grocers. The package is $199 a night.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — The next Olympic Games may be several months away, but this summer, thousands of kids across the country will receive an early gift that brings the energy and excitement of the world’s biggest sporting event to their family vacations.

As a member of the Hilton Family of Hotels, Doubletree(R) Hotels (NYSE:HLT) is proud to announce a new partnership with the United States Olympic Committee (USOC). In celebration, the brand is bringing the Olympic spirit to more than 110 family-friendly destinations across North America this summer in this year’s kidsCAREpak(R) program. The complimentary backpacks will feature a variety of athletic interests and will be presented to young guests ages 3-12 staying with their families at participating Doubletree hotels from now through Labor Day weekend.

The Doubletree 2005 kidsCAREpak “sports” an assortment of items that youngsters will certainly enjoy during their travels. Included in this year’s Doubletree USA five-ring branded “sling” canvas kidsCAREpak are:

–A kidsCAREpak Foam Softball - perfect for major league players in training!

–A kidsCAREpak Deck of Playing Cards - for improving brain and finger agility!

–A kidsCAREpak “World Map” Slinky(R) - a classic toy, customized to envoke the same feelings of world unity the Olympic Games does

–Sports-themed Temporary Tattoos - so kids can show the world their enthusiasm for athletic activities!

–A fun Activity Book and a box of kidCAREpak crayons - to give kids a tangible theme of sportsmanship, teamwork, empowerment and the Olympic spirit!

“Finding family ‘play’ time is easier said than done in today’s hectic world. From warm chocolate chip cookies to fun kidsCAREpacks, our Doubletree family wants to make guests of all ages feel relaxed and ready to play from the time they arrive at our front door,” said Ronnie Kaiser, senior director - brand marketing for Doubletree. “Through our partnership with the USOC, our 2005 kidsCAREpak program gives children playful souvenirs with the spirit of Olympic sportsmanship to last long past their visit to our hotels.”

From the sundrenched beaches of California and Florida to the exciting citylife of New York, Chicago and Washington D.C., Doubletree hotels are located in and near some of the country’s most desirable vacation destinations. Children ages 18 and under stay free in the same room with their parents or grandparents at all U.S. Doubletree properties (subject to room occupancy and local fire safety regulations). kidsCAREpaks are offered at no additional charge to guests traveling with children between the ages of 3-12 to participating hotels from May 28 - Sept. 5, 2005. Welcome gift available while supplies last at participating hotels. Participating hotels subject to change without notice. Program not available to meetings or groups. Other restrictions apply.

For more information on the Doubletree kidsCAREpak program and/or participating hotels, please visit our kidsCAREpak website at www.doubletree.com/kidscarepak or call 1-800-222-TREE in the U.S. or Canada.

The Post’s Travel Section Flight Crew will take your comments, questions, suspicions, warnings, gripes, sad tales and happy endings springing from the world of… the world. Of course, the Flight Crew will be happy to answer your travel questions — but the best thing about this forum, we insist, is that it lets travelers exchange information with other travelers who’ve been there, done that or otherwise have insights, ideas and information to share. Different members of the Crew will rotate through the captain’s chair every week, but the one constant is you, our valued passengers.

We know you have a choice in online travel forums, and speaking for the entire Flight Crew, we want to thank you for flying with us.

You may also browse an archive of previous live travel discussions.

Did you have travel plans to the Gulf coast? Check out our

Katrina Q&A

for an update.

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Cindy Loose: We usually skip the weekly travel chat when it falls on a holiday Monday. But in the midst of concern and grief over the still-unfolding tragedy along the Gulf Coast, it seemed like chatting shouldn’t be skipped this week.

The chat host today, Cindy Loose, is joined by K.C. Summers, John Deiner, Anne McDonough, Andrea Sachs, Carol Sottili, Gary Lee and Steve Hendrix. The lines, so to speak, are open.

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NW Washington, DC: No question, but I wanted to say how meaningful I found your essay on New Orleans as American icon. I’ve been going to New Orleans at least once a year for 12 years (I’d live there if there was job for me). You summed up the beauty of the city perfectly and for the first time all week I actually cried as I read it.

I have plans to go next March and I’m not cancelling yet.

Steve Hendrix: Many thanks, NW. I have no idea what you’ll find in New Orleans next March, but I hope to see you there soon.

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Travel to St. Louis: Hi Crew,

I know you are mostly taking questions about the hurricane, but I have a middle-america travel question. I am looking for a good fare to St. Louis the weekend after Thanksgiving. Do you know what a good fare would be? They seem to be hovering around $200, which seemed high for a down week…

Thanks!

Carol Sottili: That’s about the going rate to St. Louis. $200, if it includes taxes, is really quite good. Sign up for Southwest’s “Ding” feature, and you might get a better deal. American also has frequent esavers to St. Louis of about $139 round trip, but it’s hit or miss - if you need to be there for a specific weekend, you can’t count on it.

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I should know this…: What is the current status of New Orleans? Is the mandatory evacuation still in place? I have a non-refundable reservation for next week, and while I know it’s no place for a vacation, I can’t figure out whether or not I am officially eligable for a refund. I can’t even reach the bed and breakfast.

Any tips? I don’t want to stick them with charge-back fees from the credit card company.

Thanks,

Cindy Loose: There is no way travelers will be welcome into New Orleans next week, or weeks to come. You should have no problem getting back money for a nonrefundable airline ticket–first of all, they must give back money if flights are cancelled, and beyond that, the airlines have all made allowances for refunds or credits for non-refundable tickets. If you were stayin in a major hotel chain I’m sure you could call to get a refund. But there will be no way to get through to a B&B–phone lines are down, and who knows when they’ll reopen. Your options are to wait until the B&B reopens, if it does, and ask for your money then, or to ask the credit card company to return your deposit, seeing as how it’s pretty clear you won’t get the service for which you paid.

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Annandale, Va.: Sorry, I had no other way to ask this question, but could you possibly know and therefore give me, Steve Hendrix’s e-mail address. I want to compliment him on that wonderful article he did about New Orleans. Thank you, gloria Dunlap

Anne McDonough: He just may shoot me for doing this, but Steve’s email is hendrixs@washpost.com. Just kidding: We welcome and any and all feedback to our stories.

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Haymarket, Va.: Several months ago, I booked a package (air-hotel-transfers-insurance) thru Expedia.com for a convention in Nov. in New Orleans. The convention was cancelled, and Expedia told me I’d get everything back but the $25 I paid for travel insurance. When pressed, Expedia admitted that those who did NOT buy insurance but cancelled got all of their money back. So, I’m being punished for being prudent. Does this seem fair to you? I’ll never book Expedia again, nor will I buy this scam insurance ever again.

Greeting guests in a warm and caring way has been a proud tradition at Doubletree Hotels, Suites, Resorts and Clubs during the past several years — especially through the presentation of more than 100 million of the brand’s fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies at check-in. This year, Doubletree is pleased to announce the launch of a new kid-friendly initiative that is available to families during the upcoming peak summer travel season.

From now through Labor Day weekend, the Doubletree KidsCAREpak(TM) is a welcome addition to families who check in at 80 participating Doubletree hotels. Younger guests between the ages of 3-12 will be welcomed with the following fun items:

– A colorful KidsCAREpak Backpack, made of durable canvas with

pockets for water bottles, toys and much more.

– A fun KidsCAREpak Activity Book with crayons, which includes

several types of games and activities connected with a

“caring” theme that carries forth Doubletree’s commitment to

social awareness.

– The Original Silly Putty(R), and “Chip” — a Doubletree Cookie

Bean Bag Toy — round out the fun!

“The Doubletree KidsCAREpak program is yet another example of Doubletree’s commitment to explore and develop new ways to exceed the expectations of our hotel guests at every age,” said Dave Horton, senior vice president — brand management for Doubletree. “It’s the pleasant surprises that can make or break an enjoyable vacation. The Doubletree KidsCAREpak provides parents and kids with a special souvenir to remind them of their memorable time with Doubletree — long after their hotel stay.”

From Seattle’s Space Needle to the heart of the Big Apple to desert destinations in the Southwest, Doubletree hotels are located in and near some of the country’s most desirable vacation destinations. Children ages 18 and under stay free in the same room with their parents or grandparents at all U.S. Doubletree properties (subject to room occupancy and local fire safety regulations). KidsCAREpaks are offered at no additional charge to guests traveling with children between the ages of 3-12 to participating hotels through Labor Day. Welcome gift available while supplies last at participating hotels. Participating hotels subject to change without notice. Program not available to meetings or groups. Other restrictions apply.

Surabaya, City of Work: A Socioeconomic History, 1900-2000. By H. W. Dick (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Center for International Studies Research in International Studies Southeast Asia Series No. 106, Ohio University Press, 2002. xxix plus 541 pp.).

Howard Dick, an economic historian at the University of Melbourne’s Australian Centre of International Business, calls for a re-evaluation of the colonial heritage of Surabaya, and of Indonesia generally, in light of post-colonial events. During the struggle for independence, Indonesians fought against the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of an arrogant, foreign, colonial administration. In the process, however, they frequently failed to credit the economic contributions of that government, especially an infrastructure that promoted economic development and international commerce. After independence, evaluations of the new, indigenous government tended to reverse this balance. The post-independence governments, especially the three decades-long administration of President Suharto, 1967-98, took credit for promoting industrialization and economic growth, but they, too, concentrated wealth and power in their own hands. In both cases, the economy flourished but benefits were distributed very inequitably. Despite historical shifts in world markets, global warfare, Japanese occupation, nationalist revolution, independence, and post-independence internal struggle, these underlying continuities persisted.

The major exception occurred during the administration of President Sukarno, 1949-66. Dick praises its relative withdrawal from the global economy, nationalization of foreign owned enterprise, and increasing decentralization at home. Unfortunately these policies were accompanied by economic stagnation, political chaos, and, finally, an orgy of mass killings as the military attacked and decimated the communist party (especially in Surabaya, a communist strong-hold) and people of Indonesian ancestries murdered those from China.

Dick gives only a sketchy account of these Indonesian politics and policies, especially since independence. Apparently Dick believed that anyone reading a book so specialized as this one would already be thoroughly familiar with the political background of the country. He also makes little attempt to place the city in a wider theoretical or comparative framework, except for frequent comparisons with Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital and largest city. A very detailed, “loosely structured and idiosyncratic” (p. xxiii), monographic case study of a single city, Surabaya appears appropriately in a publication series devoted to Southeast Asia.

In a series of long, detailed, analytic chapters on government, industry, land use, and trade Dick traces the ups-and-downs of Surabaya’s twentieth century fate. At the turn of the twentieth century, with about 150,000 inhabitants, Surabaya was the largest city in the country, even larger than Jakarta. Today it is Indonesia’s second largest city with a population of about 2.6 million. In the earliest years of the century, the processing and shipping of sugar and other agricultural commodities of East Java, gave Surabaya its prominence. In the 1930s, world depression undercut this global market and sent the city into an economic and demographic tailspin. Japanese conquest, 1942-45, followed by a guerrilla war for independence, 1945-49, gave no respite in the city’s economic downturn. After dalliances with both the USA and the USSR, President Sukarno ultimately withdrew Indonesia into economic isolation. Jakarta prospered as the political capital, but Surabaya, as a commercial center, continued to stagnate. It also lost much of its earlier cosmopolitan character as a result of “the repatriation of the Dutch [colonials], the partial assimilation of the Chinese, and the near total assimilation of the Arab and other Asian communities (131),” although Chinese entrepreneurs still predominate in business.

Only with the Suharto administration did the economy of Surabaya revive, based now on manufacturing, shipping, some primary crop production, and a flourishing real estate market. Nation-wide prosperity based on oil and international trade also fed the local revival. Surbaya made the “long and difficult transition from plantation to industrial economy” (xix). The most extraordinary and explosive growth took place in the 1990s. Dick, who apparently knows every feature of Surabaya’s architecture and urban design, illustrates the transformation through the new physical form of the city.

As he looks out the window of his 15th-floor room at the Marriott Rivercenter, Fred McAfee gazes down on San Antonio’s famed River Walk, Men, women and children stroll along the serpentine walkways outside the restaurants and shops. A cruise boat filled with sightseers motors slowly down a ribbon of the lime green Rio San Antonio. Arching limestone bridges and a variety of foliage complete the picturesque scene.

“It’s a great view,” says McAfee, the Saints’ special teams star, three days before his team’s opening game.

It is easy on the eyes, especially compared with what McAfee has seen moments earlier. Sitting on the end of his bed, TV remote in hand, he stared at some more disturbing video from New Orleans on the evening news shows.

The city known for its Bourbon Street revelry, Mardi Gras parades and Super Bowls now exhibits a loathsome identity in the devastating wake of Hurricane Katrina. National Guardsmen patrol neighborhoods, looking to evacuate the remaining inhabitants. Water reaches the rooftops of thousands of houses and apartment buildings. Several lanes of highway at the 1-10 and 1-610 interchange collapse. “That’s mind-boggling,” McAfee says. “It’s almost like watching a science fiction movie.”

McAfee and the Saints must feel like they’re living some kind of fantastic journey themselves. They escaped New Orleans several hours before Katrina came knocking. Now, they can’t go back. They aren’t homeless, but they certainly are orphans, having taken up residence in San Antonio–their likely headquarters for the 2005 season–while their long-term fate rests in the hands of NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue, team owner Tom Benson and various public officials.

Their city is flooded. Their stadium, the Superdome, might be destroyed. Their training facility, in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, has been taken over by Federal Emergency Management Agency officials. All of which has turned the Saints into the NFL’s ultimate road warriors.

But they’re winning warriors. John Carney’s 47-yard field goal with three seconds left gives them a 23-20 victory in their opener at Carolina and extends the team’s winning streak to five games, counting their 4-0 finish in 2004. The triumph over a Panthers team picked by some prognosticators to end the Eagles’ reign of NFC supremacy pushes aside the memories of Katrina’s devastation–temporarily, at least–for both the Saints and their legion of fans, many of whom are displaced, too.

“We went out to give the people of New Orleans a break for three or four hours,” left tackle Wayne Gandy says, “and I think we found we had a break. From hurricane conversations, hotels, bus trips. We finally got to play football.”

This is only the beginning of a long road show for the Saints. Next up is a game against the Giants, their “home” opener, which was relocated to Giants Stadium and rescheduled as part of a unique Monday night doubleheader. Then they will journey to Minnesota. Their first game without travel could be against the Bills on October 2 in San Antonio, but that was not final at week’s end.

At points during their 39-year history, the Saints have been called pathetic. Now they can be called peripatetic. In preparing for the Panthers in San Antonio, they hold team meetings at the convention center, dress at the Alamodome, practice at a high school sports complex and lift weights at a Gold’s Gym (their own weight-training equipment was in transit). In their free time, they deal with such pressing issues as where they will live–they must vacate the Marriott by October 1–whether they should move their families to Texas and what to do about insurance, financial matters and clothes.

Most of the players left New Orleans with travel bags containing a couple pairs of shorts, T-shirts, socks and underwear. Among McAfee’s purchases in San Antonio are three pairs of jeans and six baseball caps–”I’m a hat guy,” he says–which sit on the desk in his room. His current wardrobe is contained in a large paper sack and a duffel bag, both of which lie on the floor in his hotel room.

McAfee spends most of the time in his room flipping through news channels and watching the graphic images of Katrina’s fury on New Orleans and other cities along the Gulf Coast. “The scope of this tragedy is so huge,” he says. “Every day, you see a different story.”

McAfee is lucky. Four feet of water had flooded the apartment in Metairie he shares with his brother, Charles, but most everything lost is replaceable. Charles evacuated to their mother’s house in Philadelphia, Miss. And Fred’s two children, ages 6 and 3, are safe in Madison, Miss., just north of Jackson, where they live with their mother.

When the Saints receive a couple days off after their final preseason game, McAfee goes to Jackson to visit his kids. “It was a happy feeling to know they were safe and to see their smiling faces,” he says. “There’s a lot of people who won’t see their kids’ smiling faces.”

COVINGTON, Ky. — Eagle Hospitality Properties Trust, Inc. (NYSE:EHP) today announced it has acquired the Hilton Glendale in Glendale, California, from Hilton Hotels Corporation (NYSE:HLT) for $79.8 million. Hilton will continue to manage the hotel. Featuring 351 well-appointed rooms, the hotel is located in the heart of Glendale, a high barrier to entry urban market and home to many entertainment, health care, manufacturing and financial services companies.

Opened in 1991, the 19-story Hilton Glendale has 351 guestrooms as well as approximately 15,000 square feet of indoor meeting space, including an 8,000-square-foot ballroom and a 3,100-square-foot executive conference area. The hotel features two restaurants, the 150-seat Coffee Garden Restaurant and Lounge and the 82-seat Porter’s Steak House, a new restaurant concept created by Hilton that recently received four-star recognition. The Hilton Glendale also features a business center, concierge services, fitness center, an outdoor pool and Jacuzzi and a five-story underground parking structure with space for over 500 cars. Hilton and Eagle have entered into a management arrangement for this hotel that took effect at closing.

Bill Blackham, President and Chief Executive Officer of Eagle, stated, “The acquisition of the Hilton Glendale is an important transaction for Eagle that matches each of our investment objectives. The hotel is strategically located in the center of Glendale’s burgeoning office market. The region continues to exhibit healthy employment growth. The dynamic greater Los Angeles market is one of our top targeted markets and is consistent with our desire to increase the geographic diversification of our portfolio with high growth urban and resort markets. We are pleased to enter the Los Angeles market with such a strong, high quality, full-service asset and excited about the opportunity to expand our relationship with Hilton, which now includes eight hotels within the Hilton and Embassy Suites brands.”

“Hilton Hotels has a longstanding relationship with Eagle,” said Robert M. LaForgia, senior vice president and chief financial officer for Hilton Hotels Corporation. “Through this relationship we were able to structure a mutually beneficial transaction in a very timely manner. Glendale and the Tri-City markets have experienced strong growth to date, and we look forward to working together with Eagle at the Hilton Glendale to further enhance the hotel’s position in these markets.”

The City of Glendale is located approximately 10 miles north of downtown Los Angeles and is situated just east of Interstate 5 and bisected by Highway 134, a major highway that connects US 101 to Interstate 605. The third largest city in Los Angeles County, the City of Glendale, along with Pasadena and Burbank, make up an area commonly referred to as the Tri-Cities. The Glendale sub-market alone contains approximately 10.6 million square feet of commercial office space and benefits from major demand generators with large offices or headquarters such as Baskin-Robbins USA, Cigna Healthcare, The Disney Store, Glendale Federal Bank, IHOP Corporation, Nestle USA, DreamWorks Animation Studios, Walt Disney Imagineering and Public Storage. Based on statistics provided by Smith Travel Research for the 10-year period ending 2004, the Tri-City hotel market experienced compound annual room revenue growth of 5.2% and compound annual RevPAR growth of 3.8%.

Brian Guernier, Senior Vice President - Acquisitions, added, “The Tri-City hotel market has posted strong, consistent demand for the past decade, and the market is poised to generate healthy demand growth in 2005. We believe a significant opportunity exists to leverage the pricing power and competitive strengths of the Hilton Glendale to take advantage of the improving economic conditions throughout Southern California. We believe the Hilton Glendale is the best overall hotel product in the market. New bedding recently installed by Hilton, as well as other improvements planned by Eagle should continue to enhance the performance of the hotel.”

Eagle Hospitality Properties Trust is a real estate investment trust focused on investment opportunities in the full-service and all-suites hotel industry. The Company owns 11 upper upscale full service and all-suites hotels encompassing approximately 2,900 guestrooms. The hotels are located in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, New York, Kentucky, Ohio and Illinois. More information on the Company can be found at www.eaglehospitality.com.

Hilton Hotels Corporation is recognized internationally as a preeminent hospitality company. The company develops, owns, manages or franchises approximately 2,300 hotels, resorts and vacation ownership properties. Its portfolio includes many of the world’s best known and most highly regarded hotel brands, including Hilton(R), Conrad(R), Doubletree(R), Embassy Suites Hotels(R), Hampton Inn(R), Hampton Inn & Suites(R), Hilton Garden Inn(R), Hilton Grand Vacations Company(R) and Homewood Suites by Hilton(R).

The Vandals were far from unique in their attitude to architectural monuments. Vandalism is a perennial and ubiquitous phenomenon, although possibly cherished by particular cultures and encouraged in particular eras. The 1960s, for instance, was everywhere a difficult decade for historic buildings, when, for example, with a nasty symmetry, two of the greatest monuments of the railway age–the Euston Arch in London and Pennsylvania Station in New York–were demolished. Both fell victim to ignorance and stupidity, reinforced by the obsession with style and image characteristic of that neophiliac decade–underpinned by commercial greed.

At least when historic buildings fall victim to property developers, the motive is comprehensible, if unattractive. Similarly, the destruction of historic buildings and cities in wartime is sometimes inevitable, if desperately sad. Not all bombs or shells hit military targets. At least the damage to ancient monuments and looting of museums that has occurred during the recent thuggery in Iraq would seem to be a product of carelessness rather than design, inexcusable as it may have been.

It is the deliberate destruction of buildings of cultural significance that is so particularly loathsome, and frightening–barbaric acts such as the burning of the library at Louvain and the shelling of Rheims Cathedral during World War I, for instance, although in the latter case the Germans insisted the medieval structure was being used as an observation post by the French army. But all nations seem capable of such wickedness–a wickedness that diminishes the perpetrator and damages not just the enemy but humanity, and posterity, as well. During the next world war, ‘Bomber’ Harris deliberately targeted the historic cities of Lubeck and Rostock for the RAF as they were full of old timber houses that would burn well–and they did. Furious at this apparently gratuitous attack on German culture, Hitler ordered the retaliatory ‘Baedeker’ raids on Canterbury, Exeter, Bath and Norwich. The loss was Europe’s.

The positive, inspiring side to wartime barbarism is the efforts made to restore, or even recreate, historic structures damaged in the fighting. Monuments matter. The centre of Warsaw was rebuilt from rubble after 1945, and, as is well known, the Russians spared no expense in restoring the royal palaces damaged (often deliberately) during the Siege of Leningrad. (How shaming that, in Britain, wartime destruction was so often used as an excuse to redevelop rather than repair historic cities, such as Exeter and Canterbury.) More recently, the historic arched bridge in the centre of Mostar, deliberately destroyed during the conflict in Bosnia, has been rebuilt–ideally as a symbol of peace and reconciliation.

Not that the targeting of cultural monuments on ideological grounds was peculiar to the destructive twentieth century. It has always been a feature of religious as well as of nationalist conflict–as the case of the Mostar bridge confirms. Religious zealots can never tolerate the shrines of infidels, so ancient Orthodox churches are destroyed in Kosovo, and mosques in Serbia. More intelligent missionaries try to incorporate older beliefs into the new religion, so Christian churches were very often built on the sites of pagan shrines, just as the Ottomans made Hagia Sophia into a mosque. Even this, however, can lead to conflict and destruction–as in Ayodhya in India, where in 1992 the sixteenth-century Babri Mosque was violently attacked and demolished by Hindu nationalists because it was believed to have been built on the site of a Hindu temple. Archaeology, therefore, can become a cultural weapon rather than the objective search for historical evidence, as the discoveries can reinforce territorial claims. This is particularly true in Israel, where Jewish, Christian and Islamic claims can and do compete. It is all very depressing.

Religious fanaticism is no respecter of age or beauty. It is, perhaps, difficult in the West now to understand the mentality of those who smashed the heads of every single carved image in the exquisite Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral. But it would be perfectly comprehensible, of course, to the Islamic fundamentalists of the Taliban who blew up the ancient giant figures of the Buddha carved into the rock at Bamiyan (Fig. 3) because they regarded representing the human figure as idolatry. Then there was William Dowsing, the official iconoclast who went around East Anglia ordering the destruction of rood screens and stained-glass windows. Similar destruction went on during the religious wars in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Fig. 1). In the nineteenth century, Pietists in Norway burned some of the celebrated ancient stave churches as their grotesque timber carvings were, again, considered idolatrous. All of which might also suggest that minimalist modernism is another manifestation of religious fundamentalism.

The Vandals were far from unique in their attitude to architectural monuments. Vandalism is a perennial and ubiquitous phenomenon, although possibly cherished by particular cultures and encouraged in particular eras. The 1960s, for instance, was everywhere a difficult decade for historic buildings, when, for example, with a nasty symmetry, two of the greatest monuments of the railway age–the Euston Arch in London and Pennsylvania Station in New York–were demolished. Both fell victim to ignorance and stupidity, reinforced by the obsession with style and image characteristic of that neophiliac decade–underpinned by commercial greed.

At least when historic buildings fall victim to property developers, the motive is comprehensible, if unattractive. Similarly, the destruction of historic buildings and cities in wartime is sometimes inevitable, if desperately sad. Not all bombs or shells hit military targets. At least the damage to ancient monuments and looting of museums that has occurred during the recent thuggery in Iraq would seem to be a product of carelessness rather than design, inexcusable as it may have been.

It is the deliberate destruction of buildings of cultural significance that is so particularly loathsome, and frightening–barbaric acts such as the burning of the library at Louvain and the shelling of Rheims Cathedral during World War I, for instance, although in the latter case the Germans insisted the medieval structure was being used as an observation post by the French army. But all nations seem capable of such wickedness–a wickedness that diminishes the perpetrator and damages not just the enemy but humanity, and posterity, as well. During the next world war, ‘Bomber’ Harris deliberately targeted the historic cities of Lubeck and Rostock for the RAF as they were full of old timber houses that would burn well–and they did. Furious at this apparently gratuitous attack on German culture, Hitler ordered the retaliatory ‘Baedeker’ raids on Canterbury, Exeter, Bath and Norwich. The loss was Europe’s.

The positive, inspiring side to wartime barbarism is the efforts made to restore, or even recreate, historic structures damaged in the fighting. Monuments matter. The centre of Warsaw was rebuilt from rubble after 1945, and, as is well known, the Russians spared no expense in restoring the royal palaces damaged (often deliberately) during the Siege of Leningrad. (How shaming that, in Britain, wartime destruction was so often used as an excuse to redevelop rather than repair historic cities, such as Exeter and Canterbury.) More recently, the historic arched bridge in the centre of Mostar, deliberately destroyed during the conflict in Bosnia, has been rebuilt–ideally as a symbol of peace and reconciliation.

Not that the targeting of cultural monuments on ideological grounds was peculiar to the destructive twentieth century. It has always been a feature of religious as well as of nationalist conflict–as the case of the Mostar bridge confirms. Religious zealots can never tolerate the shrines of infidels, so ancient Orthodox churches are destroyed in Kosovo, and mosques in Serbia. More intelligent missionaries try to incorporate older beliefs into the new religion, so Christian churches were very often built on the sites of pagan shrines, just as the Ottomans made Hagia Sophia into a mosque. Even this, however, can lead to conflict and destruction–as in Ayodhya in India, where in 1992 the sixteenth-century Babri Mosque was violently attacked and demolished by Hindu nationalists because it was believed to have been built on the site of a Hindu temple. Archaeology, therefore, can become a cultural weapon rather than the objective search for historical evidence, as the discoveries can reinforce territorial claims. This is particularly true in Israel, where Jewish, Christian and Islamic claims can and do compete. It is all very depressing.

Religious fanaticism is no respecter of age or beauty. It is, perhaps, difficult in the West now to understand the mentality of those who smashed the heads of every single carved image in the exquisite Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral. But it would be perfectly comprehensible, of course, to the Islamic fundamentalists of the Taliban who blew up the ancient giant figures of the Buddha carved into the rock at Bamiyan (Fig. 3) because they regarded representing the human figure as idolatry. Then there was William Dowsing, the official iconoclast who went around East Anglia ordering the destruction of rood screens and stained-glass windows. Similar destruction went on during the religious wars in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Fig. 1). In the nineteenth century, Pietists in Norway burned some of the celebrated ancient stave churches as their grotesque timber carvings were, again, considered idolatrous. All of which might also suggest that minimalist modernism is another manifestation of religious fundamentalism.