Best Holiday Lettings

Category: News

  • News: Lam takes sales role with Fairmont Hotels

    Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, which counts notable hotels like Shanghai’s legendary Fairmont Peace Hotel and the recently opened Fairmont Makati as a part of its storied hotel portfolio, has named Carmen Lam as vp, hotel sales and marketing, Asia Pacific.

    Lam, who would be based in Shanghai, joins Fairmont during this newly created role to offer sales and marketing direction to Fairmont’s hotels in Asia Pacific and support to the luxurious operator’s burgeoning pipeline of regional development.

    “We’re quickly growing our footprint in Asia and are very fortunate to be adding a frontrunner of Carmen’s calibre to our regional management team,” said, Jeff Doane, Fairmont’s vice chairman, hotel sales and marketing.

    “With her wealth of hotel related experience and firm understanding of the regional marketplace, she’s ideally positioned to lead our sales, marketing and branding activity throughout Asia.”

    With six hotels open and operating in Asia, including three in China, Lam will specialise in maximizing results and driving performance for this dynamic mixture of resort and town centre properties.

    She’ll even be chargeable for executing Fairmont’s regional sales strategy, regional brand management, and awareness and marketing activity for brand spanking new hotels including announced Fairmont projects in Jakarta, Bali and several other cities in China.

    Lam arrives at Fairmont having previously served as senior vice chairman, leisure & brand sales and marketing for Hong Kong/Macau-based Melco Crown Entertainment.

    Over the process a career that has spanned greater than 20 years, Lam has also held a chain of management positions with leading brands in Asia including roles with Shangri-La Hotels and InterContinental Hotels Group.

  • Premier Inn launches new iPhone/iPad app

    Premier Inn has relaunched its award-winning application for iPhone and its first application for iPad. Answerable for over 100,000 room bookings in 2012 alone, the award-winning application have been downloaded over 2,000,000 times since its launch in January 2011 and has become some of the hotel brand’s most significant channels.

  • News: Korean Air takes minority stake in Czech Airlines

    Korean Air and Czech Airlines have formalised Korean Air’s acquisition of 44 per cent of the Czech airline at a signing ceremony in Prague. 

    By acquiring the stake, Korean Air becomes the airline’s second largest shareholder.

    Korean Air chairman Yang Ho Cho expressed his support of the transaction by saying “We have known Czech Airlines for a lot of years, by which we’ve got both been component of the SkyTeam alliance.

    “Our successful codeshare collaboration only confirms that our decision to become a strategic partner of the Czech national carrier, culminating in our signing of the contract, is the suitable decision.”

    Founded in 1923, Czech Airlines operates 24 aircraft to 44 cities in 24 countries and is a member of the SkyTeam alliance, of which Korean Air is a founding member.

    The acquisition of Czech Airline’s stake is an historic moment for the Korean aviation industry because it is the primary time that a Korean airline has taken a stake in a foreign airline. 

    The overseas expansion in electronics and automobiles have been prominent, but this marks the primary within the Korean aviation industry.

    Korean Air passengers would be in a position to enjoy a greater diversity of European routes due to this acquisition.

    Passengers flying to European cities reminiscent of Berlin, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Milan, Brussels, Budapest and Warsaw can easily transfer through Prague’s airport.

    With its perfect location, Prague offers connections to those cities in lower than two hours.

    Korean Air plans to expand its network through Prague airport by increasing its code share flights and improving its connection schedules with Czech Airlines. 

    Also, to assist Czech Airlines operate direct flights between Prague and Incheon, Korean Air will lease the Czech carrier considered one of its A330-300s.

    Czech Airlines plans to function direct flights between Prague and Incheon twice per week – providing their customers a much broader number of schedule.

  • Alta Vista Suites, a new hotel on Santorini

    Alta Vista suites (altavistasuites.com), the beautiful new addition to Santorini’s hotel scene, opens its doors on 1st May.

    The exclusive three suite property is the most recent within the Aqua Vista portfolio (www.aquavistahotels.com), a set of outstanding accommodations in great locations across Santorini and Crete.

    Perched high at the cliffs of Imerovigli, 3km from the island’s capital Fira, the hotel has glorious views of the Aegean and the volcano and belongs to Greek pop star and one time Eurovision song contest entrant Michalis Hatzigiannis.

    The styling and layout are strongly focused towards romance and Alta Vista is predicted to prove very talked-about with honeymooners. The 3 suites, Passion, Senses and Love, each sit all alone level, giving guests complete privacy and seclusion. They’re individually designed and furnished in an effortless, elegant, Cycladic style and decorated with contemporary artefacts by prominent designers consisting of Jaime Hayon and Patricia Urquiola. All have expansive outdoor space with views out over the Caldera and there’s also a stunning pool and cave style eating area.

    Continuing the romance theme, Alta Vista’s 200sq metre patio is an excellent spot for a marriage ceremony and reception, allowing couples to tie the knot in spectacular style. It might host as much as 50 guests and is a really rare space inside the often cramped and impossibly steep caldera cliff edge.

    Alta Vista’s location at one end of Imerovigli means at night there’s also a lovely illuminated view of the village along the cliff edge.

    Room rates start at 180 euros per night including champagne breakfast.

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  • News: Abu Dhabi plans major tourism push in Saudi Arabia

    Abu Dhabi’s tourism industry is planning every week-long promotion of the destination and its expanding offering in Saudi Arabia later this month with a high profile participation at Riyadh Travel Fair to be followed by a 3-city road show.

    The promotion, organised by Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority, is being supported by a number of industry stakeholders including hotels and resorts, Etihad Airways, headline attractions and a novel integrated wellness facility on Saadiyat Island.

    The destination sales blitz begins at Riyadh Travel Fair – the Kingdom’s leading tourism trade event, which runs on the Four Seasons Hotel – Kingdom Tower inside the Saudi capital from April 23rd-26th.

    The Abu Dhabi delegation will then move directly to road show presentations to the Saudi travel trade in Riyadh, Dammam and Jeddah.

    “We have superb airlift from Saudi Arabia to Abu Dhabi with three providers – Etihad Airways, Saudi Arabian Airlines and NASAIR – now servicing a combined total of 68 scheduled non-stop flights per week from the dominion,” said Mubarak Al Nuami, director promotions & overseas offices, TCA Abu Dhabi.

    “This give us huge potential to draw Saudi visitors to our emirate where we believe our product mix will meet their specific needs – certainly one of our main focuses now could be to make this target market fully conscious about the truth that there’s now much more to work out and do in Abu Dhabi and to cajole them to stick with us longer than they currently do on average.”

    Saudi Arabia is currently Abu Dhabi’s sixth largest overseas source marketplace for hotel guests.

    In the primary two months of this year some 12,322 Saudis stayed within the emirate’s 141 hotels and hotel apartments and delivered 27,256 guest nights. They stayed, on average, 2.25 nights.