RSS
 

Posts Tagged ‘destinations’

Sydney Harbour Hotel For Seaside Comfort

23 Feb

Sydney Harbour is attractive for so many reasons. The sea brings visitors about to embark on a voyage. Local sites include the cultural, historical and gastronomical. Stay at a Sydney Harbour hotel and find out for yourself what other tourists have been raving about.

The Marriott on Circular Quay gets you about as close as anyone can to the water. Close enough to walk are Harbour Bridge, Aquarium, Opera House Observatory. Take public transport, rent a car or bring your own: valet parking can be arranged. In the mean time, you can always walk from one of more than five hundred rooms. Some have been built for wheelchair users with features such as roll-in showers, grab bars and toilet seats just the right height. Wireless is available in various locations throughout the hotel.

Come with family and request connecting rooms to keep an eye on the younger ones. They might get a bit carried away with twenty-four hour room service and individual air conditioning otherwise. Staff can put up a crib if needed too. Packages accommodate romantic, business or energizing breaks. Take your meals and sip a cocktail at Icons, Macquarie Lounge or Customs House Bar. This last building dates back more than one hundred and fifty years.

Harbour Rocks Hotel offers fewer than sixty rooms for guests, making it an exclusive place to stop. Their restaurant, Lanes, provides indoor and outdoor dining facilities. Stay here for a wine tour package or a ghost tour, each of which includes a buffet breakfast. Staff will arrange for car rental, handle laundry and dry-cleaning, even serve food in your room any time.

A stay at Sebel Pier One places you right against the water at Harbour Bridge. They even have a private pontoon. Their style is a mix of historic and contemporary. What each accommodation contains depends on what visitors book; each design is unique. Enjoy use of a gym, concierge and twenty-four hour room service. Keep tidy with an iron and ironing board, smoothing out travel-wrinkled clothes while watching programs on your flat screen TV or listening to music on your individual sound system.

Go on-line for a good look at what they have to offer. Some rooms provide amenities such as separate living and sleeping quarters. The lounge contains its own day bed. Rooms are large and bright with big windows and beautiful views. Guests can make their own tea or coffee, stir up a cocktail at the in-room bar, even order room service twenty-four hours.

The Park Hyatt is built around class and style. Guests come to expect little extras like feather pillows and the advantages of deluxe rooms like robes, a butler and having their shoes shined. Access to the gym lets you stay trim no matter how much you indulge during your holiday. Three or more phones and dual phone lines let you stay on track with business no matter where you came from or where you plan to go from here. Business services are twenty-four hours, as is room service. Burn some midnight oil over work yet to be completed knowing you are not alone.

There are numerous packages awaiting the tourist with a keen eye for travel deals. Head out with family and enjoy a second room at half price. The Awaken package provides late check-out and breakfast. Pamper yourself with a credit for spa, food or beverage (your choice). A number of establishments on-site make it easy to catch a meal or a quick glass of wine without going very far. Event planners are also available to help you book a social, business or wedding event.

Howard Rudd serves as a experienced blogger that is really a Sydney Accommodation specialist and is also recognised for working away at Sydney vacation and information ventures

 
Comments Off

Posted in Business

 

The History Of Reno’s Mapes Hotel

03 Mar

On a cold, gray morning in late January 2000, the historic Mapes Hotel in Reno was imploded by 75 pounds of explosives tucked into the art-deco structures support columns. The controlled demolition came despite years of effort by a number of groups within the community and nationally to preserve the building with lawsuits, redevelopment proposals, and grass roots lobbying efforts.

While the logic and necessity of demolishing the Mapes is very questionable, one thing that is certain is that the hotel was an important part of Northern Nevada history. The Mapes opened in’47 and with it ushered in a new era for casino gambling and the state of Nevada. Despite some historical revisionism that suggests that the modern era began in Las Vegas with Bugsy Siegel’s famed Flamingo, the Mapes was actually the first building in America to have a hotel, casino and live entertainment under the same roof. The Mapes attracted countless celebrities who’d make it their home when business brought them to Northern Nevada–this included movie stars like Clark Gable, TV stars like the cast of ‘Bonanza’ and political power brokers like infamous anti-Communist crusader Joseph McCarthy.

In the 50s and 60s it became, along with Lake Tahoes Cal-Neva Lodge the place to be seen in Northern Nevada. The top floor, window-walled Sky Room showcased performances by the legends: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Jackie Gleason, Louis Prima, Mae West, Milton Berle, Sammy Davis, Jr., and the Marx Brothers among others. Subsequent years were not kind to downtown Reno but the Mapes continued to do well during the 60’s and 70’s. The hotel finally closed in’82, due more to financial difficulties experienced by the Mapes family caused by one of their other Northern Nevada gaming properties than anything else.

Reno never experienced the massive growth that occurred in Las Vegas and southern Nevada, and for that reason the destruction of the Mapes is more open to debate than the hotel demolitions to the south. Even the demolition of The Sands–perhaps the most historically significant casino in the state–is hard to argue against given the inability of such a small property to compete in the current Las Vegas marketplace and in light of the value of the mid-strip real estate. The old properties may have historic value to pop culture historians, but their survival doesn’t make economic sense. They’re simply ‘analog players in a digital world’.

That’s not the case in Reno, where vacant land and/or buildings ripe for redevelopment are abundant downtown and in the other casino areas of the city. The official reason that the Mapes had to come down was that the city needed the land to expand its vision for downtown redevelopment. While this is certainly a much needed effort, to suggest that the existence of the Mapes was a barrier is absurd. In fact, many of the proposals rejected by the city would have gone a long way to enhance the revitalization of downtown Reno and included artists lofts, office space and other mixed used properties. Despite receiving a number of viable concepts for the Mapes Building, the City Redevelopment Authority rejected all of them and the Mapes was destined for demolition.

The behavior of the City Redevelopment Authority throughout the process has come into question. Overlooking the Truckee River, the hotel was perfectly placed between the downtown casino area and the riverfront district. In’96, the city purchased the htoel and began accepting proposals for redevelopment. Despite receiving a number of proposals that made sense both in terms of their financial workability and positive impact on the downtown area, the City Redevelopment Authority nixed all of them and insisted that the hotel be razed.

Following the 2000 demolition, the lot remained vacant for over a year until a temporary ice skating rink was hastily constructed the following winter. The site now houses a permanent ice skating rink which, while not a bad use for the land, isn’t the sort of game changing improvement suggested by the City Redevelopment Agency and their adamant insistence that the building be demolished. To the contrary, it appears they had no specific plan or even general idea of what to do with the land but for some reason wanted to see the hotel come down. This has led to all manner of speculation, ranging from financial self interest to a rumor that the structure was ‘haunted’ and needed to be destroyed to forestall future paranormal activity in Washoe County. Whatever the reason, the city of Reno lost a valuable landmark that played a significant part in the economic growth of the entire state.

Ross Everett is a widely published freelance writer and respected authority on sports betting odds comparison. He writing has appeared on a variety of sports sites including sportsbooks and betting odds portal sites. He lives in Northern Nevada with three Jack Russell Terriers and a kangaroo. He is currently working on an autobiography of former energy secretary Donald Hodell.

 
Comments Off

Posted in Business