by Happy Hotelier on Tuesday, March 17, 2009 · 7 comments
in Bed and Breakfast, Blogging, Design, Germany, Hip Hotels, Hotels, Inspiration, L-List, Luxury, T-List, UK, Web 2.0, Websites, Weekend Hotels
It is really refreshing when you are sitting at a conference with presentations and discussions of travel and hospitality and tech types who only seem interested in their good self or their own product or service and are not outgoing and not interested in the guest, their clientèle, or only maybe in the money of the guest, to get a presentation of a really passionate couple. James Lohan and Tamara Heber-Percy (see also my interview with Tamara) , the husband and wife who founded the Mr and Mrs Smith Collections under the caption: Luxury and Romance meet Technology.
Yes, I agree. It’s all about Respect!
They both come from a completely different background than travel and hospitality. Again their success shows that innovations in this industry frequently come from those outside the industry.
They started out with the production of the Mr & Mrs Smith guides. They described their difficulties with getting the guides published. Never before was a guide produced with one editor and one photographer for all properties. Eventually they decided to pyblish the guide all by themselves. The interesting thing is that added to the guides is a Mr and Mrs Smith membership card which gives the holder some extras as upgrades or a little present from their shop. That gives the brand a tremendous crowd to source from.
They are adamant about the properties being inspected by themselves or a member of their team of +40 in the meantime, because they strongly believe you cannot review a hotel properly without having experienced the look and feel of the place. In addition they sometimes team up with unusual partners for the hotel industry like lingerie brands. They also understand that you sometimes want to stay in a self catering accommodation or luxury chalet, rather than a hotel.
They seamlessly have merged their Blog (in the air since July 2005) into their main site. However Tamara was already out there scoring whatever was said about the brand in 2004: Shortly after I became aware of their guides via a post of my fellow editor Willem Vos at the Dutch language Weekend Hotel Blog she already commented there – note the date of the comment is not correct, as Willem had some problems in 2008 to migrate the blog to his new platform running on Ruby on Rail…whatever that may be, but I know I made the comment already in 2004-.
Here you see some footage of one of the rather unconventional and hilarious ad they presented at the keynote.
If even Gesa Noormann of Escapio says in a comment under Kevin’s Travolution coverage of the presentation:
Thanks Kevin for the fab article. Despite the fact that Mr and Mrs Smith are Escapio’s UK competitor, I can’t deny that their presentation was fantastic!
then you know your presentation was good even if you were dead tired.
Some personal notes:
I don’t understand jot from what Kevin’s caption means: “Corporate Barbarism does not begin at home say The Smiths”, but that could be my Dunglish.
If you are curious to see who the guy behind Escapio is look here. Even if I say it myself, I like the picture.
I think Willem should start talking with the two portfolios mentioned here, Mr & Mrs Smith and Escapio, or alternatively they should start talking with Willem, to see if there are possibilities to team up to cover The Netherlands and Belgium better than they do now separately.
Added March 24, 2009:
Via twitter I got the link of the same video on their site: Mr & Mrs Smith | Get a Room!. It has a bit better quality than the YouTube one
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It was Wendy Perrin’s post Hotels I’d Pay not to Stay in that pointed me to this fairly new Blog on the Block: Unfortunate Hotels Hotel websites begging to be mocked.
It started in November 2008, but seems getting momentum with more posts now. In a witty way the websites are taken apart.
What to think of following quotes?
The website might fool you at first – beautiful color scheme, high-end photos, flash galore. The dining room is fit for a wedding reception, and the lobby has obviously had a makeover in the last decade.
But not even the fade-in on the artfully cropped photos can save these sad, sad rooms.
Paper-thin bed cover, now in baby spew green
Or this one:
The home page of the website for the Silver Reef Hotel states,
Just completed, a totally new hotel with 20 tastefully decorated rooms located in the downtown area of Udon Thani. Convenient for all your business and leisure needs.
We’ll see about that:
I’d like to discuss the merger with you. Shall we get a drink at the bar?
If this happened to me as a hotelier I would fire my photographer or web designer.
I have a feeling this could become a similar big hit as another Hoteliers’ Horror: (originally) Chris Clarke’s Bed Jumping….still alive and kicking.
BTW: Where the Hell is Chris?
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Just click the site and have fun, like me:-)
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The inside of a switch
Some progress, some thoughts and some experiences with WordPress to share with you:
XAMMP
XAMMP is an open source program under which you can run a PHP mysql server on your own computer and test WordPress (and other web applications that generate dynamic web pages).
Stats
I have been tracking my stats in two ways: All over I use a paid for stats program. Not only for this blog, but for all sites I manage. It is versatile and useful.
For this Blog I used a dedicated WordPress stats plug in, until my service provider banned me, because the plug in caused a hung mysql process….
In addition the plug in caused an enormous overhead in this blog’s mysql database.
In May, 2008, I installed Woopra. With Woopra the necessity for the old stats plug in slowly, but gradually faded out.
Backups
Earlier, when I tried to emulate a disaster by backing up the database and loading it in a Wordpress version running under XAMPP on my local computer, I had the problem that in XAMPP the maximum size of a mysql database is 16 MB. With the dedicated stats plug in I easily had 250 MB in the database and I couldn’t find a proper way around this. For a long period I luckily could rely upon the safety and stability of my internet provider. With over 450 posts now, that can be a bit of too much trust…Now I have decided to rely only on my Woopra stats and overall stats program and discontinue the use of the dedicated stats plug in.
If you backup a Blog operating under Wordpress, you not only have to back up your database, but also your uploaded media files and your pages (assuming you have created pages).
The DB Backup plug in for Wordpress does only the DB part and not the rest.
However, with the current version of Wordpress, version 2.6.2, it is reasonably easy to export all posts of a blog and all uploaded media content (in my case thus far only photos) as an XML file via the Wordpress Dashboard. Same file can be easily imported into another blog.
This is also a better option for me than simply downloading the WordPress database via the PHP mysql interface, because then all links are links to the site and not links to my local hard disk.
The only problem I encountered with exporting posts via creation of an XML file is that not all pages, not all links and not all categories are exported properly, or imported properly into the version of this Blog that I have created under XAMPP. However my main goal of putting all posts and uploaded media in a “safe” place could be reached now. For one reason or another I seem not be able to detect the media directory on the server of my internet provider….
Themes and Theme Switcher
Now I am able to fulfill an old wish: To have a theme switcher installed to play around with themes and to enable readers to choose their own favorite theme.
Recently I started to test out various new plug ins and WordPress theme templates and adjusting them to my wishes.
I have some specific wishes for themes:
- I want a two column lay out with the sidebar on my right side. With the sidebar on my left side I (and my readers) would always have to cross the reading field of the posts.
- I believe a two column layout is simpler to look at, simpler to maintain and nice for the eye.
- The posts must be readable. So the size of the characters must be sufficient. In addition there must be a reasonable distinguishable difference in color between character and character background. Therefore I hate themes, although trendy, with dark background colors. Moreover the difference in size of characters of headings and main text must be proportionate.
- Websites have to be easily navigable. I want to be able to browse posts from a certain period and posts of certain categories. I like to see how many posts there are per period and per category.
Why change a good theme?
I believe the Misty theme does and did a good job in this respect. It actually still is my favorite.
However, as an avid photographer I would like to have a bit more space in the posts to show photos.
In reviewing many themes I have now come up to 8 or 9 themes I like.
Next to now the latest version of the Misty theme (3.6.2) I have now up and running the Wordpress Default theme, the Intense theme and the Newspaper theme. I still have to ad some widgets to the last two mentioned.
I noticed that the newest Misty theme doesn’t have the problem anymore that when you look at a page cached in the Google search engine, you only see the header and not the body of the post. This is especially important if people are searching photo’s. Without the body of the post You’ll have no clue as to what the post is about and you’re clicking away. I tend to believe I get now more traffic from Google searches now.
More to follow soon, but in the meantime you can look for yourself and switch theme via the side bar.
Whether you like it or don’t like it, please give me some feedback.
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About the Blog and More
Cleaning up and publishing some old drafts:
As some readers may know: I am a fan of Philippe Starck, not in the last place because he, like yours truly, is from the very good Bordeaux wine vintage year of 1949:-). Didn’t I promise yoo to pay more attention to Wine?
Lately you don’t seem to see the usual stream of new ideas and new inventions coming from him.
Probably this is because he teamed up with UK property tycoon John Hitchcox and others and formed Yoo. Yoo is mostly about development of residential property, but is also engaged in new Hotel developments.
Granmercy By Starck is one example. Back via the back door in cooperation with his old buddy Ian Schraeger? Oops, Tamara of Mr and Mrs Smith had a Lunch with John Hitchcox who stated there is no connection with this Granmercy and Ian Schrager’s Granmercy.
‘We want to offer democratic, high-fashion living.’ – PHILIPPE STARCK
Well this post is also meant as a rant. Those apartments don’t come cheap. In addition, like many designers, Mr Starck likes Flash for his sites. I don’t like Flash, not in the last place because it prevents poor Bloggers like myself to pinch nice photo’s from a site. (Even if you know how to do it, it is cumbersome) Therefore this silly picture…..
Last upgrade August 5, 2008
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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:-)
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