Hot from the block: This certificate proves that I know a little bit about wine and spirits. I found I had to study a bit more in order to be able to serve our guests at Haagsche Suites better.
It also goes together with my aim to cover the categories “Food”, “Wine” and “Wining and Dining” more seriously here, rather than setting up a separate blog.
I found that it the Wset course is a decent course. It was given by a very enthusiast couple, Henriëtte Bastiaans and Jeroen Bronkhorst of Wijn studio NL who used to run a restaurant around the corner and who gave the course in a wine shop, Haags Wijnhuis, also around another corner here. So it was very practical: after the courses and wine tasting I could easily crawl back home.
About Wset
Wset stands for Wine and Spirit Education Trust Limited.
The Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) was founded in 1969 to provide high quality education and training in wines and spirits. Since then, WSET has grown into the foremost international body in the field of wines and spirits education, with a suite of sought-after qualifications. We now even have a membership body – the Institute of Wines & Spirits – for those who have passed the WSET Diploma, our top qualification.
About Level 2 Intermediate
This qualification offers broad coverage of all product categories in the field of alcoholic drinks together with basic wine tasting technique.
Overview
This qualification is accredited at Level 2 in the UK National Qualifications Framework. It is also approved as a Technical Certificate for the Advanced Level Hospitality Modern Apprenticeship.
Qualification objective:
Provide vocational training in the broad range of alcoholic beverages to underpin job skills and competencies in the customer service and sales functions of the hospitality, retail and wholesale industries.
Who it is aimed at:
• People employed in the drinks and hospitality industries with little previous knowledge of alcoholic beverages.
• Wine enthusiasts who wish to acquire in-depth knowledge of wines and spirits and want to obtain an internationally recognised wine qualification.
Entry Requirements:
Students and candidates who are under the legal minimum age for the retail purchase of alcoholic beverages in the country where the examination is being held will NOT be allowed to sample any alcoholic beverages as part of their course, but this is NOT a barrier for successfully completing the qualification. (Entry requirements may vary according to Approved Programme Provider)
How to gain the qualification:
You must successfully complete a multiple choice paper of 50 questions.
More at Qualifications
Heading for the Advanced Course by Frank Smulders (site is currently and I hope temporarily not working).
Apparently super yacht A, named after current billionaire owner Andrey Melnichenko’s wife Alexandra, has been delivered: According to a Times Online article, it sneaked to Norway to take three Monet Paintings on board as extravaganza decorations reportedly to avoid some taxes, but I suspect also to avoid some legislation that prohibits export of art.
The Internet works very fast because here you see a photo posted by a Norwegian as a comment to the Times article to prove A actually was in Norway. Note its razor sharp bow.
At first glance I thought it was a big white submarine.
Philippe Starck conceived the yacht in 2003.
However, more than with a submarine there are similarities in design, especially en profile, with the Zumwalt Class Destroyer. The US Navy is developing this new destroyer class for delivery in 2013. It is named after US Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr..
Here it is at a sea trial
Some YouTube footage from a sea trial.
Modeling super yachts after commercial vessels was already a trend in super yacht design, but now it becomes more and more apparent that modeling your super yacht after men of war is the new trend in Yacht Design.
I wonder what kind of weaponry the owner has installed in order to fence off pirates and art robbers….
via Monaco Eye
Found Happy Hotelier among Joe’s Blog list. Wow!
Blogistan @ JoeSentMe.com
HOW TO USE THIS PAGE TO FIND TRAVEL BLOGS
We’ve come a long way from the Rosetta Stone to the Internet blog. Whether blogs help us decipher the intricacies of travel, however, is an open question. Blogs are the ultimate expression of free speech for everyone. But when everyone speaks, clarity is often a casualty. What we’re attempting at the JoeSentMe Blogistan page is to bring some order to the cacophony. A selection of the best-known (and, we assume, best-read) travel blogs appears in the left column. By executive fiat, we have excluded the promotional blogs penned by travel-industry corporations. We’ve also excluded destination-specific travel blogs. Many are wonderful, but it would be impossible to list even a representative sample here. What appears in the column below is our assessment of some of the best blogs and bloggers in their respective categories. It is, by definition, brutally selective and highly subjective. If we have missed a blog that you think should be listed here, drop me a line. (By the way, if you are looking for a travel columnist–you know, the folks who write on a set schedule in a more traditional format–please consult our Fellow Travelers page.) — Joe Brancatelli
Discovered recently started Drop In To The Wyland Waikiki, written by the hotel’s GM, Robin Graf, pictured here below (left) together with artist and self proclaimed celebrity Wyland (right) after whom the hotel is named. Am curious whether Robin will keep up with the usual Blogging requirements. Success!
I was busy, on the road, looking after our hotel guests and trying to revamp my other Blog, Chair Blog, therefore a little less attention here.
The revamping of Chair Blog is sticky: I went backward and forward with the theme and am back to square 1: Same old Misty theme, but a lot of more posts thanks to a nifty Tumblr inspired WordPress QuickPost Plugin. At the same time Chair Blog was accepted by Woopra. Hence I have decided to terminate my Tumblr activities and fade the Tumblr posts out by gradually deleting them and incorporate them into my main blogs…. My main problem with Quickpost is that my provider somewhere hides the MySQL database of WordPress in a way I can’t figure out…have to dig much deeper into PHP/MySQL. In addition I have to find a way to present photos in a consistent way… Maybe a reader has some clues for me.
In the meantime, rather than hiring writers as I see some of my fellow Bloggers do, I am trying to get my two daughters – Yes! Happy hotelier is also a Happy Father! – FilmGirl and DanceGirl, the former works at the Rotterdam Film Festival and the latter works at the Holland Dance Festival, involved here as they do travel a lot and could have a lot of content to offer..to no avail at this moment. I know they are sometimes readers here and hope they take the bait.
So I came across Bicycle Film Festival, a festival I wasn’t aware of, but that FilmGirl probably knows of. Quite interestingly it is featured in many cities: 17 in total acros the world, and probably a cheap thing to do in these miserable economic circumstances.
I am curious why we here in The Netherlands, as one of The Bicycle Countries don’t feature it. Therefore: Amsterdam, Rotterdam or The Hague Mayors be alert to get the 2009 edition in house!
Via Living in LA Without a Car
The original Vermeer painting “The Girl with the Pearl Earring” is to admire here in The Hague in the museum Mauritshuis. It is featured on their homepage as well.
Not until he used this example, I noticed Scott Wade’s Dirty Car Art.
Like any reasonably creative and curious human, Scott can’t resist a dirty rear car window. We suspect that Scott started off with clever sayings, like, “wash me.” Probably his first image was the ubiquitous smiley face. Unlike most folks, however, Scott lives on a mile and a half of dirt road – caliche, as the locals call it, road-base: a blend of limestone dust and gravel and clay. Driving over this surface results in a fine, white dust that billows up behind any vehicle driven faster than a galloping turtle, coating the rear window. Being an experienced artist (and let’s face it, a little … different), it wasn’t long before Scott was experimenting with techniques to achieve these amazingly detailed and shaded drawings.
To see on his site are many photo’s of his Dirt Art applied on a Mini, also our favorite vehicle.
Just by coincidence I noticed someone landing here via Jumeira Knowledge base
I already knew a lot is going on at High Syndicate, sister of WiWiH: Many Hoteliers use it as as a closed group repository. I assumed access only for the insiders of the big hotel chain in question and I had never imagined the wealth of knowledge available for the hotelier and how easy it is to navigate:
On the landing page you get :
the 5 last
- Tripadvisor Reviews of your hotel Portfolio, so you don’t have to click through The Tripadvisor site
- Items of Industry News, and I know High Syndicate has a good portfolio of industry news
- Posts of Travel Bloggers who syndicate their content with WiWiH
and a
- Google enabled search function dedicated for the knowledge base of the hotel chain in question
Then you have separate tabs for:
- “Tripadvisor” with a great submenu per property
- “In the media”, i.e. what others write about your hotels
- “News” i.e. Travel and Hospitality Industry News from the High Syndicate news portfolio
- “Blogs” for Travel and Hospitality blog content
- “Documents”, mainly Travel and Hospitality Industry studies, like HitWise reports for travel sites
- “Events” related to Travel and Hospitality that are upcoming
Knowing the two sites High Syndicate and WiWiH, I knew about all those functions and possibilities, but I had never seen them grouped together in such clever and easily navigable way.
It is not a loud screaming design.
I wonder how the hoteliers would do themselves, if they would apply the same simple principles for their own websites instead of those bleary screens with pop ups and a lot of clutter.
Guest Reviews do not only tell you something about the hotel, but also about the reviewer:
Apart from all, I was very interested to be able to quickly flip through their Tripadvisor guest reviews, because Jumeirah is the operator of the famous Dubai flagship hotel (7* they claim) Burj Al Arab. They get good reviews but amazingly also some very negative reviews and some that say more about the guest than about the Hotel. For Example:
- BAD
i thought that one’s stay at the burj al arab would be rather splendid and i was extremely foolish to think so. as i arrived at the airport on first class from emirates we were taken by helicopter to the hotel. My gucci gown was ruined on the arrival and the sun was to bright so i had to close one’s eyes for much time when we arrived we were handed oil in our hands that wouldn’t come off for a while and our butler got in the way. the room was poor and the building and rooms bog standard. One would never go there again and would compare it to the dorchester hotel in london which is utterly ridiculous.never shall i set foot here again.
.
Seems like a bogus report to me. The reviewer has no other reviews
- Awsome, but dissappointing
I’ll start by saying the room and building itself are just an awesome site – don’t get me wrong. And just to say that I’ve stayed at the Burj Al Arab will be something that I really don’t ever anticipate knowing anyone else will be able to match in my group of friends. However, I was disappointed by some of the service provided. For the money paid – I was expecting to be wowed! The check-in was a bit of a cluster and the check-out was as well. In fact, the entire stay went to h#$% once we recieved our checkout bill. They have no real organized way to control the madness down at the entrance and they are trying to get people onto shuttles/taxi’s/incoming passengers/etc and you are in the middle of the maddness. The fitness center was lacking as well for such a nice place! It was nothing better than a hilton fitness center. All in all we don’t regret staying there – but we will never do it again – merely for the price.
An Hilton Aficionado who wanted to buy bragging rights, but found out he paid dearly. Which makes me think that this is an example of the Long Tail effect of a really loyal guest. If they stay somewhere else they will thumb it down!
- An outcry about Al Qasr at Madinat Jumeirah Dubai:
My husband and I arrived at Al Qasr on 7th June and were to check-out and depart on 9 June from Al Qasr at Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai on an Emirates flight to Paris scheduled for 08:20hrs. In order to save time in the early morning before our scheduled departure from the hotel, we completed check-out formalities and settled our hotel bill just before midnight on 8 June 2008. We also requested a wake-up call at 05:00am the following morning as we had an Emirates limousine scheduled to pick us up from Al Qasr at 06:00am for our 08:20am flight (as we had already completed the online check-in procedure, we were required to arrive at the airport 90 mins before departure).
We promptly received our wake-up call from the hotel staff at 05:00am as requested and waited patiently in our room till 06:15am for a call from the hotel staff to announce the arrival of our pick-up and finally called Emirates to find out why the car had not yet arrived. We waited another 5 mins on the phone till the Emirates representative made inquiries about our scheduled pick-up and came back on the line to inform us that the limousine had in fact arrived at the hotel as scheduled at 06:00am and that the driver had also requested the concierge on duty to inform us of the arrival of our Emirates pick-up. Unfortunately, the concierge a gentleman by the name of Mr. Rauf refused to inform us about the arrival of the car and told the driver that he was not allowed to disturb his guests at that hour and therefore sent the driver away! The driver left the premises and reported the incident to Emirates airline, making sure to mention the name of Mr. Rauf for the record.
We immediately called Service One from our room to inform them of the incident and asked for Mr. Rauf to ask him why he had done such a ridiculous thing! As we were already late for our flight, I told Mr. Rauf to meet me downstairs. Upon meeting Mr. Rauf at the entrance of the hotel and demanding an explanation for his actions, we were treated with complete indifference and not even given an apology! We also asked how he could do such a thing when we had asked for a wake-up call from the hotel at 05:00am, to which he shrugged and mumbled something about not being able to trace the wake-up call. To make things worse, he did not even have the courtesy to arrange for a complementary airport transfer for us considering it was clearly his fault that the limousine had left without us. He asked the doorman to get us a taxi for the airport for which we ended up paying Dhs 95 upon reaching the airport.
Needless to say, the experience has been shocking and pathetic coming from a hotel of it’s repute and will prevent us from ever returning at any of the Jumeirah properties. The unprofessional behavior of Mr. Rauf indicates a serious deficiency in the training of the hotel personnel and even a lack of common-sense amongst it’s employees. I believe that if a prestigious hotel like Al Qasr is unable to meet such basic expectations of it’s guests (that even a 3-star property would definitely see to) it is simply not worthy of it’s reputation and definitely not worth paying big buck for!
.
Poor Mr Rauf was a bit sleepy and didn’t want to disturb his guests. I have the feeling the guest in question is to blame as well. If time is of essence, I would check and double check and would certainly not wait as a lamb in my room, but at the front desk to wait for my driver. Secondly I wouldn’t waste time by telling Mr Rauf he was such a dumbass. I rather would request an immediate solution…..I believe the Hotel should politely but resolutely point that out. Probably the lady is still simply mad about her own mistakes.
Worth a closer look! I am wondering whether they will make it password protected after this post.
Update
And Yes! Soon after publication of this post, they put a relocation to Jumeirah’s main site in the High Syndicate landing page: Henri Roelings was watching me :-)
When, after a long flight, you are awaiting a bit groggily at the airport luggage check out for your luggage to appear, it can happen that your suitcase travels three times the carousel without you noticing it. At least that has happened to me. That won’t happen anymore when you apply the “Pop Top personalize your luggage idea” of Public, a British design studio working in a range of fields from graphic design to product design.:
PopTop is a new type of hard-shell luggage. Using a matrix of multi-coloured dots to create a glossy surface graphic, the further one gets away from the piece, the clearer the image becomes. Lines will initially be limited to a few designs, but PopTop hope to make a web-based design-it-yourself range in the future. Public was charged with delivering the concept as well as a PDF presentation to take to retailers.
Love the idea.
Here are Happy Hotelier’s High Five (3) for:
- 10 Internet Statistics You Need to Know by Vicky Brock
- The Value of Social Networking for a Large Business by Ken Burgin who refers to a slideshow in a style I like from Sacha Chua. Ken has a keen eye for the unusual and a lot of experience
- Office Worker Going Insane and Office Worker Goes Absolutely Insane. There is a petite histoire here that I will disclose in a separate post if I can remember what I thought when I wrote this.
- 7 Types of Hotel Complainers. Which one are You? by Amy Bradley who is the only contributer to Tripso without a reference to her own website
- Not all Hotel Rooms are created Equal where Hotel Marketing reviews Trip Kick, another user generated hotel review site. The idea is great when hotels will be more and more apt to publish their floor plans and detailed room lay out, so that you can really can make a choice. In my experience the best site with a real choice is that of Propeller Island City Lodge
About Happy Hotelier’s High Five
Happy Hotelier’s High Five is a meant as a gesture of appreciation to fellow Bloggers who blog about travel and are sometimes referred to as members of the “T-List” or other interesting Bloggers or Web Personalities.
The arms are usually extended into the air to form the “high” part, and the five fingers of each hand meet, making the “five”, hence the name, although Happy Hotelier’s High Five will always be a left handed one.
I will not publish it on a scheduled date. I will publish it each time when I have found five persons or sites or posts that I deem worthy a High Five. It even may imply me echoing old news here.
If you want to draw my attention to a post you may e-mail me at gje[at]hetnet.nl or give me a message at Twitter
The Category Tag here on Happy Hotelier is High Five.
About The High Five Logo
I borrowed the photo of a sculpture from Lisa Roet, a sculptor born in Australia and currently living and working in Melbourne, Australia, because one of the main items on my passport is that I miss a big chunk of my right thumb, so my right hand is much alike that of an ape:-)
