InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) has announced that its IHG Translator App will be available for the newly launched Apple Watch, allowing travellers to access to on-demand translations, virtually anywhere in the world.

The app allows users to ‘travel like a local’, whatever their choice of device. By speaking directly into the watch, or selecting from a range of pre-loaded common phrases, travellers will be able to translate from English into 13 different languages. The app will cover the nine initial launch countries for Apple Watch. Translations will appear instantly on the screen in the chosen language, giving users the chance to read the word or phrase, with the help of phonetic spelling. Formal, casual and slang settings will also be available.

Languages include: French, German, Spanish and Castilian Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Mandarin.

IHG is making the IHG Translator App available to all users of the new device free of charge.

Details: www.ihgplc.com

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Published: 11 March 2015

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Perhaps a good hotel is safest place to stay in a war zone even if the rooms do have notices advising guests what to do ‘on hearing the rockets, mines or projectiles coming in towards the hotel’.  See The Times report from the Ukraine below.

 

Grace under fire at the Ramada hotel in Donetsk

The sign at the Ramada alerting guests to the gun ban

Ben Hoyle/The Times

The sign at the Ramada alerting guests to the gun ban Ben Hoyle/The Times

Ben HoyleDonetsk

Last updated at 12:01AM, February 16 2015

Even when there are no gunmen outside, the sign on the doors of the Ramada hotel in Donetsk reminds you that you are somewhere unusual. There’s a picture of a Kalashnikov automatic rifle with a red line through it next to a simple image of a woman with her son and daughter and the message: “There are kids on the premises. Entrance with guns is strictly prohibited.”

It needed saying. Back in the summer, when the city first came under artillery attack, there were far, far too many separatist fighters drinking beer and clowning around with loaded AK-74s on the Ramada’s pleasant veranda.

Evening firearms etiquette seems to have improved though. The cold weather has driven everybody inside now. but the Ramada’s restaurant — used by reporters, aid workers, mafia types, overdressed women and separatist fighters — remains a source of indispensable up-to-date knowledge about what is happening in the conflict zone.

It’s also almost possible to forget the war in there. A late-1970s French disco album plays very loudly, drowning out the rocket fire outside. There are cocktails, shisha pipes and good coffee. The chef has concocted a menu of Russian cuisine based on 19th-century recipes. I recommend beef cheeks.

In the hotel trade, of course, it’s the little things that count. Like the note in every room explaining what to do “on hearing the rockets, mines or projectile coming in towards the hotel”. Broadly: get down and stay down. The same action is “also necessary to do when hearing shooting by an automatic weapon nearby the hotel”.

The staff still replace those tiny bottles of shampoo. Wi-fi has, by and large, been superlative. The swimming pool is open, though it did close in August when the city water supply briefly seized up.

It’s not just reporters who appreciate the Ramada staying open. Many of the remaining staff and their families have moved in too — the children mentioned in the sign on the door. In a city drained of jobs and exposed to daily attacks the Ramada offers its employees a salary and better shelter than in most of the suburbs.

Every conflict and revolution throws up memorable examples of the hospitality industry’s resourcefulness, courage and grace under fire, and the Ukraine crisis has been no exception.

To start there were the three Kiev hotels that found themselves inside the protesters’ ring of barricades during the Maidan demonstrations that toppled President Yanukovych a year ago this week.

The story moved to Crimea, where the grand terrace of the Best Western in Sevastopol commanded an impressive view of what rapidly became Russian waters. Hotel space in the Crimean capital of Simferopol was at a premium for months, filled at first with the press and then with Russian businessmen, so a special mention to the Hotel Marakand, a Crimean Tartar place where I found the outspoken political leader of the Crimean Tartars who I’d been trying to interview for weeks. He was living in a top-floor room near mine and had hung a flag over the corridor window to foil assassination attempts, which was great.

Nowhere, though, has said “home” like the Ramada in Donetsk. Last week I bumped into Alexander Georgievich, the franchise owner, in his lobby. A large, bearded man with flowing dark hair and a startling wardrobe of bright jackets and ties, he vowed that “even if they drop a bomb here we will never leave this place”. He had to run to talk to some rebel fighters but added, with a smile: “In stressful times you can see the worst of people, and the best.”

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/europe/article4354944.ece

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Published: 19 February 2015

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I had not heard previously of De Morgan House Conference Centre in London but it is located on Russell Square in Bloomsbury which is a very popular ‘corporate’ district of London with a good range of conference and meeting spaces as well as a selection of reasonably priced hotels, or at least reasonable by London standards. So I thought I would go take a look.

De Morgan House is home to the London Mathematical Society and it is a Grade II-listed house located on Russell Square itself overlooking the Square at the front with its own private gardens to the rear. It is ideally located for day meetings in terms of accessibility -  a two minute walk to Russell Square tube station and not much further to Holborn tube. Euston and Kings Cross St Pancras are within a ten minute walk.

Conference facilities include four contemporary meeting rooms plus a catering area and the garden. The Hardy Room is the largest seating up to 40 delegates classroom with plenty of natural daylight and views over the gardens.  The Cayley Room, Burnside Room and Sylvester Room will seat up to 18, 12 and 10 delegates classroom style respectively. The garden is suitable for reception for up to 70 guests. Meeting rooms are equipped with a flip chart and complimentary wi-fi. There is a full range of av equipment available to hire.

The facilities are available during the day, in the evening and over the weekend and the room hire rates and day delegate rates are very competitive.

De Morgan House Conference Centre struck me an excellent venue, well run with friendly staff.

Details:  www.demorganhouse.org.uk

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Published: 02 March 2015

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I thought that Hotel Gotham which opens this April in Manchester was named after Gotham City, better known as the home of Batman. My memory is vague but the Edwin Lutyens designed building in central Manchester does looked similar to the fictional Gotham City Hall from the Batman comic strip - but no. Gotham City apparently is the name of New York 'by night' and derives from the 1920's when Manhattan night life was renowned for its exuberance as well as its gangsters.
 
Bespoke Hotels have taken the former Midland Bank headquarters in King Street, Manchester, kept and enhanced the wonderful art—deco style of the building and added the influences of New York in the 1920's minus the gangs. It opens 9th April 2015 and it promises to bring a different style of hotel to central Manchester.

Site visits were outlawed the day I visited because a delicate part of the building’s restructure was taking place and it was deemed too dangerous - so I viewed it from the comfort of a restaurant across the road.

First Hotel Gotham in numbers: Hotel Gotham is aiming for five-star status. It will have 60 bedrooms in six room categories spread over seven floors with reception on the sixth floor and a prohibition-style bar and members’ club on the seventh. The bedroom stock includes six junior suites and five inner sanctum rooms - inner sanctum will be rooms without windows but with a decor to more than compensate plus with their own internal gardens.

The bedrooms will all have king beds. Take your cotton thread counter with you when you visit - I am told the reading for the sheets and towels will be off the scale. Room extras will include a hangover kit, an intimacy kit (don’t ask), a mobile charger kit. Rooms are shower-only but they will be top of the range monsoon-style showers.

At reception you will discover little touches which ‘set the scene’ such as a martini tray on an upended 1920's trunk, bell-boys in period outfits and special ‘Hotel Gotham umbrellas’ for residents’ use. In the restaurant breakfast will be cooked to order - no self-service buffet style eating at Hotel Gotham. There will be a restaurant and the former bank boardroom will be available for private dining and for small private gatherings. There will be no conference and banqueting suites and no leisure facilities.

Hotel Gotham will concentrate on offering a five star deluxe hotel experience with the emphasis on comfort and style. Their 'afternoon tea', I was assured, will be the talk of the city. After all, Hotel Gotham will be rubbing shoulders with boutiques in Manchester’s most upmarket shopping district including:  Hermès, Whistles, Emporio Armani, Agent Provocateur and Mulberry. It is also right at the heart of corporate and financial Manchester.

There are no parking facilities at the hotel although valet parking can be pre-booked. Hotel Gotham is just a five minute walk from Manchester Piccadilly station or a short taxi ride.

Hotel Gotham doesn’t officially open until 7th April 2015 yet it is already attracting a great deal international coverage possibly as a result of its well-publicised desire to be the 'sexiest hotel in Europe'. It will certainly be a unique hotel and will further enhance the reputation of Manchester as a must-visit destination. I will be back when it opens.

Details: www.bespokehotels.com

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Published: 12 February 2015

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