A Luxury Travel Blog

Oh dear… it’s that time of year again.  Excuse me if I take a rest from blogging today.  Shortly I shall be heading into Newcastle-upon-Tyne to take my place on the start line of the Great North Run, billed as the largest half marathon in the world.  This has become a bit of an annual habit for me, and will in fact be my ninth on the trot.  It is probably the one I am least prepared for, however (I’ve had patellar tendonitis - in layman’s terms, a soreness above the knee - which has somewhat hampered any preparations).  The most I have run recently is 5 miles - now I’m off to brace 13.1. Don’t expect any fast times!  If you’d like to sponsor me, that would be greatly appreciated. I’m running in aid of the Royal National Institute for the Blind and have a sponsorship page here. Thank you!

A new site from The Telegraph (new to me, at least!) bills itself as “your guide to heaven on earth”. ultratravel claims to be “unashamedly” catering for those looking for a little luxury in their journey. There is also a quarterly magazine that accompanies the site, available at a cost of £3 per issue.  As well as having special reports on individual destinations, the site also a dedicated ‘ultra experts’ section and a curious photograph collection of English cricketers in far-flung places (Mike Atherton in Vegas and Kevin Pietersen in Kruger).

Go and enjoy two days of fun at this weekend’s Auckland Seafood Festival.  Did you know there are 100 edible species to be found in New Zealand waters?  Learn this and more, and share in some wonderful seafood from the Hauraki Gulf, an exciting street party, some first-class entertainment and a VIP lounge for corporate guests. More than 10,000 people are expected to attend.

Congratulations go to Pan Pacific Hotels & Resorts who recently scooped at the Hotel and Lodging Standard of Excellence at the 2007 WebAwards, for their panpacific.com website. It apparently excelled in design, content, copywriting, technology, innovation, ease of use and interactivity.  The site is clean and easy to use; however, it neglects those using 800×600 screen resolutions.  Although a dwindling per centage of total internet users, it is still significant and should really be accommodated in my opinion.

Pineapples have long been a symbol of hospitality. The rich and aromatic flavors of the mussels and pineapple always fill the kitchen with the essence of sun and sea. This stew is a hearty, tangy treat.

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 tablespoons minced shallots
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• 1 teaspoon grated ginger
• 1 teaspoon red curry paste
• ½ cup fresh orange juice
• ½ cup coconut milk
• ½ cup diced red bell peppers
• 1 cup diced pineapple
• 2 pounds mussels, cleaned
• 2 tablespoons cilantro leaves

Directions:

In a deep stockpot, warm the olive oil over medium high heat. Add the shallots, garlic and ginger, cooking until aromatic. Stir in the curry paste along with the orange juice and coconut milk. Bring to a simmer.

Add the red peppers, pineapple and mussels to the coconut broth. Cover and bring back to a boil, then turn down the heat to a simmer for 4 to 5 minutes, or until all of the mussels open.

Ladle the mussel pineapple stew into 4 serving bowls. Garnish with cilantro leaves.

Serves 4.

Source: Chef Allen’s, Miami FL

Please give this recipe a try and let us know what you think by clicking on the comments link… thank you!

At the moment, Marriott International has some 25 hotels in China, but it’s been suggested by the chairman J.W. Marriott that that figure could rise to 100 in “five to six years”.  No longer is the company focussing on the big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, but instead they’re looking to expand to the smaller cities such as Wuxi and Wuhan.  The company is also said to be planning to triple its number of hotels in India by 2010.

Come 2010 Argentina will be home to the first St. Regis in South America. The St. Regis Hotel & Residences, Buenos Aires will have 160 guest rooms and suites, as well as residences. The news follows recent announcements that St. Regis properties will also be opening in Mexico City, Punta Mita and Costa Rica.

Ever wondered which airlines offer the best in-flight entertainment (known in the industry as ‘IFE’)? The 19th WAEA Avion Awards, the presentation of which was held in Toronto earlier this month, exist to recognise this particular aspect of the airline industry.  The best overall winners, large and small, are as follows:

Best Overall IFE - Large Airlines

Winner: Emirates
1st Runner-Up: Singapore Airlines
2nd Runner-Up: Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd.

Best Overall IFE - Small Airlines

Winner: Jet Airways (India) Ltd.
1st Runner-Up: Etihad Airways
2nd Runner-Up: SriLankan Airlines

(For the purpose of the awards, a large airline is defined as one with more than 25 aircraft.)

The Sofitel Metropole Hanoi has been voted the city’s best business hotel in 2007 by the readers of the Business Traveller Asia Pacific magazine. Each year readers selected the premium hotel of each city in Asia, and base their votes on criteria such as location, room facilities, customer service, food and drink, and technology. The hotel has also been designated as one of the ‘500 Greatest Hotels in the World’ and ‘Best 50 Hotels in Asia’ according to the criteria of Travel+Leisure magazine.

Less than half an hour’s drive from Baita International Airport, Shangri-La Hotels & Resorts has opened  a new hotel: the Shangri-La Hotel, Huhhot.  It’s the Chinese city’s first five star international deluxe hotel, offering 375 guest rooms and suites, as well as 11 spacious apartments for long term guests, some with views of Qingcheng Park. The hotel’s restaurants offer Chinese and Mongolian cuisine from Shang Palace, and a more international range served at Xin Café.

You may recall me mentioning a free helicopter transfer service last month, for passengers flying to JFK with Delta. Now business class travellers flying transatlantic to Newark with Continental Airlines are being offered free helicopter transfers into New York City. The shuttle service runs on weekdays and connects passengers to heliports in Downtown and Midtown Manhattan, once more courtesy of US Helicopter Corporation. I anticipate that this will become a growing trend in other cities before too long.

Luxury travel seems to have prospered in recent years and luxury hotels in the US are enjoying high levels of occupancy, enabling them to push prices up rapidly - up 7.3% this year, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. As Starwood Capital Group develops the Crillon chain and the new Baccarat Hotels & Resorts, Marriott International is bringing us more JW Marriotts and Ritz-Carltons, most notably in China, as well as teaming up with Ian Schrager with an international chain of 100 small hotels.  Can we expect this growth in the luxury hotel industry to continue unabated?

Earlier this year, a dessert that is probably a little too rich for most, and where most are probably not rich enough for it, debuted at a resort in Sri Lanka.  The Fortress Stilt Fisherman Indulgence - as it has been not so succinctly named - is on the menu at Wine3 at The Fortress at a cost of $14,500. It consists of gold leaf Italian cassata flavoured with Irish cream, served with a mango and pomegranate compote and a Champagne sabayon enlighten. The dessert is decorated with a chocolate carving of a fisherman clinging to a stilt, an age-old local fishing practice, and an 80 carat aquamarine stone.  Interest in the dessert as come from as far afield as Japan, but apparently nobody has yet forked over the money to try it. No surprise there, then.

The Telegraph has put together a slideshow of the world’s most perfect beaches. Whether you’re seeking pounding surf, turquoise oceans or pristine sand, I find it hard to believe that Fistral Beach qualifies as one of the best ten in the world - rather, it’s probably just there to satisfy the newspaper’s UK readership. Here’s The Telegraph’s verdict on the best that the world’s coastline has to offer:

1. Cocoa Island, The Maldives
2. Fistral Beach, Cornwall
3. Kommetjie, South Africa 
4. Grand Anse, Grenada
5. Lizard Island, Australia 
6. Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
7. Pipeline, Hawaii 
8. Ocracoke Lifeguarded Beach, Outer Banks, North Carolina 
9. Tulum, Mexico 
10. Messanges, south-west France

According to a new survery carried out by HRG, Moscow has the most expensive hotels in the world for the second year running, with an average room rate of almost $500 a night - some distance ahead of second-placed New York with an average rate of $360. Mumbai, which doesn’t quite make the top 10, has seen the most marked increase in rates - a 30% rise to just under $300 in only 6 months.  Of course, these are just average rates; it would be interesting to note the differences occurring specifically at the luxury end of the market but sadly this doesn’t appear to be detailed.

“There’s nowt so queer as folk” is a common saying from my part of the world and essentially just means “There’s nothing as strange as people”.  And it’s the phrase that immediately sprang to mind when I read about the recent antics of a certain Scott Clark at the Embassy Suites St. Paul in Minnesota; he allegedly ripped the head off a tame duck from the ornamental pool in the hotel’s lobby.  Now the Minnesota Federated Humane Societies are on the case saying that the hotel ought to re-consider having the ducks because of the risk of them being mowed down by suitcases.  I’m sure a duck is more than capable of taking evasive action of a slowly moving suitcase that’s being dragged along. Stopping a stupid drunk behaving like an idiot is a different matter though.