Highlighting its French roots and esteem for international cinema, Sofitel Luxury Hotels is proud to present “BB Forever – Brigitte Bardot, The Legend,” a traveling photo exhibit venerating the legendary French actress, singer, and model, Brigitte Bardot. Showcasing 30 exclusive photographs of Brigitte Bardot’s rise to fame, the exhibit will launch February 21, 2012 during Oscar Week at the Sofitel Los Angeles and continue to Sofitel properties in Chicago, Washington DC, and New York throughout 2012.

This will mark the first time an exhibit featuring the international icon will appear in North America. The exhibit, which was designed in collaboration with Henry-Jean Servat, a famed French journalist and author, retraces the life of French icon Brigitte Bardot with an exclusive selection of photos, following her extraordinary cinematographic experience from teenage dreamer to modern day star. Through never-before-seen snapshots, visitors can admire the different facets of the actress, who throughout her career distinguished herself through her beauty, spontaneity and carefree spirit and whose personality led her to be regarded not only as a legend and sex symbol, but also as the embodiment of women’s liberation. In 2012, the French actress will also be honored at an event at the legendary Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Los Angeles.

Sofitel has also created a special collector’s edition catalogue for the exhibit that includes rare photos, accompanied by commentary and anecdotes by Henry-Jean Servat, as well as an editorial by the legend herself – Brigitte Bardot.

After its departure from Los Angeles, BB Forever – Brigitte Bardot, The Legendwill move to the Windy City and run during the spring months from April 19th to June 7th at the stylish Sofitel Chicago Water Tower. Following Chicago, the tour will continue to Sofitel Washington DC Lafayette Square from June 21st to September 13th and culminate fittingly at the center of international culture at the Sofitel New York from September 26th to December 31st. The exhibit will be open to all hotel guests and visitors.

Sofitel Luxury Hotels

Sofitel is the only French luxury hotel brand with a presence on five continents with 120 addresses, in almost 40 countries. Sofitel offers contemporary hotels and resorts adapted to today’s more demanding and more versatile consumers who expect and appreciate beauty, quality and excellence.

Hotel Matilda, the trend-setting boutique hotel offering a lifestyle-focused guest experience, has become the newest member of Design Hotels, and the only member of the international collection in San Miguel de Allende.

“Hotel Matilda was created with vision and passion, and endowed with a pulsating heartbeat of art and design, making us a perfect match with Design Hotels,” said General Manager Bruce James. “We look forward to a synergistic relationship that powers marketing and sales as well as reinforces our image.”

Hotel Matilda is a cutting-edge boutique hotel with designer rooms and suites, an innovative holistic spa, gourmet dining blending classic Mexican with today’s international trends and tastes, a popular lounge where the latest mixology meets indigenous fruits and herbs, and a vibrant, gallery-like ambiance that is filled with dramatic contemporary art.

Hotel Matilda followed its own original and iconoclastic path. While every other hotel in San Miguel de Allende immerses guests in the town’s famed colonial ambiance, Hotel Matilda created an edgy environment that celebrates the lifestyle of today’s international travel. In an art-gallery-like décor of white- and graphite-colored walls, Hotel Matilda was filled with an eclectic collection of art, with many major works – that frame and define entire spaces –commissioned specifically for the property.

The crown jewel of colonial Mexico, San Miguel de Allende is a UNESCO World Heritage Site celebrated for its intact 500-year-old Spanish architecture, charming Old World ambience and art schools that draw budding artists from many countries. San Miguel de Allende is located in the central highlands of Mexico about a three-hour drive from Mexico City. American, Aeromexico and Continental airlines fly from the U.S. to Leon/Guanajuato Airport, which is a 1.5- hour drive from San Miguel de Allende. Hotel Matilda can arrange airport transfers.

InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) signed a franchise agreement to introduce its newest brand, Hotel Indigo, to Russia next year. The 119-room Hotel Indigo St Petersburg Tchaikovskiy is set to open in summer 2012. Vega Ltd owns the 101-year old townhouse, previously an unbranded hotel, which will also house a restaurant and a bar.

The hotel is on Tchaikovskogo Street in the east of the city centre, just 20 minutes by road from Pulkovo InternationalAirport, and five minutes from Moskovsky train station.  It’s next to the Summer Gardens and the Stieglitz Museum of Decorative and Applied Arts, ranked one of the most important museums in St Petersburg.  A short walk from the Hermitage Museum, the Russian Museum and the Winter Palace, with easy access to the famous street, Nevsky Prospect, the hotel is in an ideal location for guests wishing to take advantage of the city’s heritage.

IHG outlined its growth plans for Russia which included introducing the Hotel Indigo brand to Moscow and St Petersburg where IHG sees significant potential for growth.

Hotel Indigo caters for guests who want a boutique hotel experience without sacrificing the reassurance and benefits of booking with a big hotel company.  The design of Hotel Indigo properties reflects the local area. The hotels combine personal service and a great restaurant offering.

Every Hotel Indigo is unique, making it ideally suited to conversion properties.  Conversions are attractive to developers because they require less financing than new builds and can be up and running in a shorter period of time.

The Hotel Indigo roll out across Europe is gathering pace.  It began in January 2009 with the opening of the Hotel Indigo London Paddington.  There are now four Hotel Indigo properties open in Europe and nine in the pipeline, due to open in the next few years.  The Hotel Indigo Berlin Centre Hardenbergstraße, the first Hotel Indigo property in continental Europe, opens early in 2012.

There are 38 Hotel Indigo properties open across the world and 60 further hotels in the development pipeline.

Morgans Hotel Group and Paula Cooper Gallery are pleased to announce a permanent outdoor installation of photographs by Sol LeWitt at Mondrian SoHo, entitled: SOL LEWITT: On the Walls of the Lower East Side.

The installation on the wall of Mondrian SoHo (150 Lafayette Street) consists of 120 photographs of New York’s Lower East Side taken by LeWitt in 1979. The grid of photographs is grouped in threes that have been printed on vinyl and installed on a wall measuring 20-feet high by 60-feet wide. This marks the first time that this body of work has been exhibited in New York.

In continuing Morgans’ history of collaborating with both distinguished and emerging artists, the Sol LeWitt installation by the Lafayette entrance to the hotel will mark the launch of a new initiative to further enhance the guest experience through their relationship with art, and to embrace the neighborhood’s downtown surroundings.

The project has been organized in collaboration with independent curator Adam Shopkorn, the LeWitt Foundation and Paula Cooper Gallery.

Situated in the heart of London’s Docklands, next to the ExCeL International Exhibition and Convention Centre, Aloft London ExCel features 252 loft-like guest rooms, a buzzing bar scene, a grab-and-go food pantry and industrial design elements throughout.

Aloft London ExCel is owned by ADNEC (Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company) which also owns ExCeL London as well as Aloft Abu Dhabi, the Middle East’s first Aloft hotel, which is located adjacent to the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre.

“The launch of Aloft in the UK underscores the strength of the Starwood network and the power of the Aloft brand,” said Brian McGuinness, Senior Vice President, Speciality Select Brands for Starwood. “Aloft’s emphasis on high design combined with its tech-savvy features and social atmosphere all at an affordable price point translates globally and is attracting a growing group of loyal travellers. Aloft’s international expansion so early in the brand’s life cycle is unprecedented.”

Aloft London ExCel boasts atmospheric public spaces where guests can mix and mingle, read the paper, work on laptops, play a game of pool or grab a drink with friends at the re:mix^SM lounge and w xyz^SM bar. The spacious guest rooms feature the brand’s signature ceilings of nearly three metres high, oversized windows and an ultra-comfortable platform bed as well as large walk-in showers with complimentary Bliss Spa^(R) products. Designed with the digital generation in mind, Aloft London Excel has free wireless internet access throughout the whole hotel, including all guest rooms. Each room is also equipped with a unique plug-and-play connectivity solution which connects most electronic devices to the 42” flat-screen TV, turning the room into a high-tech office as well as an entertainment centre.

Guests will be able to de-stress and re-energise in the re:charge^SMfitness centre and Splash^SM pool and grab a bite to eat at re:fuel by Aloft^SM, a one-stop, 24-hour grab-and-go food and beverage area, offering sweet, savoury and healthy food, snacks and drinks.

For work meetings, training courses and presentations, the hotel’s five Tactic meeting rooms are equipped with the latest generation of audio-visual hardware, providing the perfect creative space for groups of up to 15 people.

The Tides Riviera Maya in Mexico offers a unique signature amenity: the soap concierge, who presents guests with a variety of soaps upon arrival and then slices personalized bars.

The artisanal soaps are made in local Mayan communities following ancient traditions and formulated with organic ingredients found on the Yucatan Peninsula. Varieties include lemon, chocolate, rosemary and oatmeal, and each promises unique properties — oatmeal, for instance, is excellent for exfoliating. Varieties also will change with the seasons — cinnamon in winter and melon in spring, for example.

Soaps are available for purchase in the resort gift shop as well.

Le Royal Monceau – Raffles Paris has opened Spa My Blend by Clarins, which features a new spa concept as well as a design by Philippe Starck.

My Blend by Clarins by Dr. Olivier Courtin offers a range of customizable skin care products for the individual needs of every skin type at every age. The spa also provides Clarins products, body treatments, massages, traditional facials and hair care by Leonor Greyl.

At the center of the 16,146-sq-ft (1,500-sq-m) spa is a swimming pool bathed in natural light. Swimming lessons and aqua fitness are on the spa’s menu as well.

A hotel that suffered millions of dollars in damage in last year’s historic flooding across Rhode Island is scheduled to reopen on Monday, one of the last major businesses to recover after the storm.

NYLO Providence/Warwick has undergone extensive renovations on the first floor, which filled with four feet of water after the nearby Pawtuxet River breached its banks in March 2010. The hotel’s lobby, front desk, restaurant, meeting rooms, guest rooms and information technology equipment were badly damaged, and the facility, which had celebrated its grand opening in September 2008, was forced to close.

Michael Mueller, chief executive officer of the Texas-based NYLO Hotels chain, would not say Wednesday how much was spent on reconstruction. The cost was largely covered by insurance, he said. The chain had hoped to reopen its Rhode Island location within a year but was delayed by in part by a business restructuring.

Susan Shaw, the new general manager, said the 163-room hotel will open with between 35 and 40 employees, down from 60 at the time of the flood. It will add employees and should reach full capacity by early next year, she said.

It will look much like it did before it closed. The restaurant will offer a new menu and have what Shaw described as a more “mellow” feel.

The Warwick Mall also suffered extensive damage in the 2010 floods, with some stores closed for months. It took Macy’s, the mall’s largest anchor, nearly a year to reopen. In total, the mall and its tenants spent more than $100 million on post-flood renovations.

At NYLO, the first guest is scheduled to check in on Tuesday.

“They’ll get a nice warm welcome,” Shaw said.

The hotel is still awaiting delivery of some furniture, completing necessary inspections and doing last-minute cleaning and touch-ups.

During a recent fire inspection test, in which the emergency lighting system was activated, Shaw said it happened to be raining — prompting an unpleasant flashback.

“I hope it’s not going to rain too much,” Mueller said.

Source: The Associated Press, August 10, 2011.

Car hire is as popular as ever with people requiring rental vehicles for a range of activities. This includes holidays, travelling from an airport, moving house or visiting family. With a huge selection of car hire companies, car hire options anda range of vehicles available for hire, it`s worth considering your options first. You also need to take into consideration a few of these tips on car hire.

Car hire doesn`t have to be a huge cost and one way to cut back on the expense is by being economic with your fuel usage. This includes all the normal ways to avoid using too much fuel such as only using your air conditioning when necessary and emptying the car as soon as you arrive to avoid driving round with a heavy load. Plan your journey the night before and make sure you know where you are going. Any missed turnings or mistakes will result in a detour and consequently extra fuel usage. When planning your journey also consider any pick ups or errands that can be carried out on the way to prevent smaller trips later.

More cost saving exercises include cutting back on added extras. If you are travelling with kids you will no doubt already own baby seats and toddler seats. Car hire firms do provide these but usually at an added cost. The same goes for GPS systems. They can charge an additional cost so if you already own one- bring it along. This will also save you learning your way around a new piece of technology.

Flexibility can go a long way when it comes to saving money on the actual price of the car hire. Most car hire is carried out at weekends when people are moving house or enjoying leisure time. If you can go a few days earlier in the week or move on a Tuesday, for example, you can make considerable savings.

If you are travelling abroad make sure you are up to speed with the local driving laws. Obvious factors such as which side of the road you drive on and the local speed limits need to be considered. Many countries have zero tolerance on drink driving and the best way to avoid having alcohol in your blood is to stay dry the night before your journey.

Check the insurance policy before you go. Insurance is always included but you need to make sure you are happy with the excess. If you intend on increasing your car hire frequency many firms operate a loyalty scheme which can end up saving you money in the long run.

Now you are ready to go and hire your car, whether it`s from a city centre, your local town or you are making use of cheap car hire London City Airport offers. Don`t forget your driving license and another form of identification such as a passport.

Chateau Marmont, legendary as a favorite hangout of Hollywood stars for generations, will be the focal point of an upcoming miniseries to air on cable network HBO.

The miniseries will be loosely based on the book “Life at the Marmont,” written by former hotel co-owner Raymond Sarlot, and will be produced by Aaron Sorkin and John Krasinski. Sorkin is the write behind last year’s “The Social Network,” while Krasinski is best known for his role as Jim Halpert on the U.S. version of “The Office.” Andre Balazs, who currently owns the hotel, is also involved in the project.

Krasinski is expected to play a role in the as-yet-untitled miniseries, which will tell the interconnected stories of the people who frequented the famed Hollywood landmark over several generations, according to Deadline.com.