THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE I 39 THE REVIEW ›› THE ALTERNATIVE NEWS Shaken, not reserved
James Bond, hotel theft, colonic coffee and much more – welcome to The Business Travel Magazine's Alternative News
HOTEL booking agency HRS has jumped on the Bond bandwagon and compiled a list of the top ten most spectacular hotels to have hosted the spy lothario – and his ‘lady friends’ too, of course. Read on to discover where you can follow in his footseps. Featured in the most recent
Bond episode, Skyfall, is the Four Seasons Hotel in Canary Wharf. Its swimming pool's floor-to- ceiling glass walls offer a spectacular view of the London skyline. Fans of Daniel Craig could also head to Casino Royale settings the One&Only Ocean
Club in the Bahamas, and the Grandhotel Pupp in Karlsbad,
Czech Republic, which was mysteriously re-planted in Montenegro.
TRAVELODGE PROVES ODD
If Pierce Brosnan is your
preferred Bond actor, head for the Kempinski-owned Atlantic Hotel (pictured) in Hamburg, where the suave Bond scaled the rooftop during Tomorrow Never Dies. Closer to home, the Stoke Park
Hotel's gardens played host to the famous golf scene between Bond and Goldfinger which culminated with Oddjob decapitating a statue
with his steel-rimmed bowler hat. If you fancy putting yourself in
the villain’s shoes, how about The Taj Lake Palace? This luxurious 18th century Indian hotel in Udaipu was where Prince Kamal Khan resided in Octopussy. Go on – you only live twice!
Just don’t forget to put your fluffy white cat into quarantine and practice your best one-liners.
GIRLS CONFESS TO HOTEL THEFT
A SURVEY by Holiday
Extras.com has revealed that men and women have very different views on what constitutes 'theft' from a hotel. Nearly two-thirds of men
say pocketing fancy toiletries from your hotel room is not acceptable where as nearly half of the women surveyed admitted to pilfering hotel smellies. Six per cent confess to pinching hotel stationery and a cheeky two per cent to nabbing mini jam jars from breakfast. Matthew
Pack,
HolidayExtras.com's CEO, says: "Hotels factor in the cost of most of these items, and we are actually doing them a favour when we take branded goodies home.”
ALL ABOARD IN ROTTERDAM
WORLDHOTELS has a quirky addition to its property portfolio – its first floating hotel, the Dutch ship ss Rotterdam, located in the city of the same name. The group’s new property
features 254 guestrooms designed to reflect its 1950s origins. Rooms accommodate up to four people with work desks, flatscreen TVs, internet access and air conditioning. Diners can
choose between the lively, all-day restaurant, Lido, and the elegant Club Room, and there are 14 different banqueting rooms and 16 meeting rooms providing extensive facilities for events. Inaugurated in 1958 in
Rotterdam, the ship was the flagship of the Holland America Line fleet and was granted a permanent berth in the heart of the city 50 years later.
COLONIC COFFEE
LUXURY Thai hotel group Anantara now offers a bum deal for caffeine lovers – Elephant Poo Coffee. Officially called Black Ivory Coffee, it's the most rare and expensive coffee in the world, selling for $1,100 a kilogram once roasted. After the elephant eats the
coffee beans, they spend time in its digestive system which breaks down the protein, reducing the bitterness. When the elephant subsequently 'deposits' the beans they are carefully ‘picked out’ by the mahouts and their wives. Happily, the mahouts and their
wives’ digging is not just to serve hotel guests with more money than sense, since eight per cent of all sales are donated to a charity that provides care for rescued elephants.
TRAVELODGE is back in situ on this page with its latest quirky survey, this time polling staff on the bizarre requests of their clearly diverse guests. Among a number of animal- themed requests was one at Travelodge's Manchester Ancoats hotel, where a guest asked for an outside power supply unit to accommodate his refrigeration van housing seven penguins. Meanwhile in Dumbarton one customer with a cage full of mice generously wondered if they needed to pay per rodent. In Fulham, an elderly guest requested a bikini shaving kit, and in Middles- borough one guest asked: 'Can you do anything about the wind? It messed my hair on the way to a meeting.'
52 THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE
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