Melia’s contemporary city-centre Innside brand, which it acquired in 2007 has signed its first hotel in the UK. Construction is set to begin on the four-star, 208-bedroom Innside Manchester Hotel during the second half of 2012. The hotel will form part of the new multi-use First Street North development. Innside by Melia currently operates nine properties in Germany and one is set to open in Barcelona.

The Rezidor Hotel Group and Al Jassim Group have announced a 2015 opening for the Hotel Missoni Doha (Qatar). The luxury lifestyle hotel will be exclusively designed by Rosita Missoni and feature approximately 200 rooms and 70 serviced apartments. The hotel will be built along the C Ring Road in the heart of Doha, just 10 minutes from the International Airport. The extensive food and beverage outlets will comprise Hotel Missoni’s signature restaurant “Cucina” with a traditional yet creative Italian menu, a second all-day-dining restaurant, Bar Missoni, a pool bar and a lobby lounge. Guests will benefit from an 800 square meter Spa- and fitness area, an outdoor swimming pool, approximately 1,500 square meter conference- and banquet facilities including ball room, and a business centre. Hotels Missoni are operated in Edinburgh and in Kuwait; further properties are under development in Oman, Turkey, Brazil and Mauritius.

Rezidor also announced this week the rebranding of the 583-room Ramada Plaza Doha Hotel into a Radisson Blu Hotel in the third quarter of 2012.

Even more Qatar hotel news: the June, 2013 scheduled Nikki Beach Resort & Spa, The Pearl-Qatar has already won an AAA five-star diamond award as best design for a boutique beach resort in the Middle East. That is slightly odd for a hotel which even has opened yet. Designed by the award winning Singapore-based ECO ID Architects with interior design by Gatserelia Design, the Nikki Beach is a $45m boutique beachfront resort with 47-luxury villas and spa suites. The development will include Satine, a pan Asian specialty restaurant, NikkiSpa by Espa, Envy, the Ultra VIP lounge, a signature Nikki Beach Club with private plunge pools, a Tone Fitness Center and many other guest amenities.

HotelChatter reports that an offshoot of the Soho House Group will open in Chicago’s West Loop/Fulton Market area inside a vacant warehouse. Soho House would install about 50 rooms, a signature restaurant and a rooftop pool.

Our December 26 report on the Clark Hotel in Los Angeles suggesting that King & Grove was to be the new operator of New York’s Chelsea Hotel was right. This month comes the news that King & Grove are also taking over the management of the brand-new opened Hotel Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York. The Chetrit Group, owner of the Clark Hotel and the Chelsea Hotel is close to an agreement buying the Hotel Williamsburg, currently operated by Graves Hospitality from Minneapolis.

The ill-fated Cipriani hotel project in Miami Beach finally is getting afoot. Only no longer under the Cipriani name, but under its original name, The Saxony. Argentine hip hotelier Alan Faena of Buenos Aires’ Faena Hotel fame is taking on the project. A condo tower by star architects Foster and Partners is being added and the Faena Saxony Hotel as it is called now is “coming soon” we see at the Faena website.

The Spanish mission styled 97-room Canary Hotel in Santa Barbara, now with The Leading Hotels of the World, is being sold to Kimpton Hotels for $40m.

Scheduled to open next month (though that seems a little optimistic with recent construction work still going on), Hotel Williamsburg, is yet another hotel to cash in on Brooklyn’s rising popularity.

With the Aloft Brooklyn also opening next month and hip hotels Le Bleu, NU and Le Jolie already open, Brooklyn is – dispite the crisis – seeing a wave of mainly boutique hotels coming to the this vibrant area which is not a traditional tourist zone.  Hotel Williamsburg takes the name of the north Brooklyn district where it is located. Now an area of old manufacturing plots without a rezoning or variance, this is a rapidly changing area just 10 minutes from Manhattan on the L train.

“It’s not just inhabited by a bunch of hipsters, but now you’re starting to see a stroller city,” said Benjamin Graves, president of Graves Hospitality, a Minneapolis company that is  on the development team and will operate the hotel. He sees his property as doing for Williamsburg “what the Gansevoort did for the meatpacking district or the Rivington did for the Lower East Side, which was to solidify the neighborhood.”

Hotel Williamsburg will have 64 rooms and 57 residences, a restaurant serving “urban rustic” fare and a rooftop top pool with bar overlooking three New York boroughs: Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens. Despite its four bars, the hotel will have a sophisticated lounge feel, rather than a pounding nightclub environment, Mr. Graves said. Designed by Studio Gaia and architect Gene Kaufman, Hotel Williamsburg will incorporate a veritable ‘dream team’ of local Brooklyn purveyors in its amenities line––including chocolatiers, cheese mongers and designers. The hotel has just signed on with New York City apothecary Malin+Goetz to provide the in-room bath amenities. Keeping with its downtown cool charm, the hotel will offer an imaginative assortment of in-room offerings––such as a Crosley record player with a record rental station in the lobby.