Mobissimo

Get away, literally from it all with super remote hotels.  Here's a list of top remote luxury hotels.

There was no standing room in second class on my train last week, so I got to stand in first. A real privilege. You overhear a different kind of conversation in first.

“I know, George. You’re so right. A luxury hotel can get soooooo boring.”

“Terribly, terribly so.” “And, ironically, George, it’s all that luxury, isn’t it? The fluffy bathrobes. The massaging. The Jacuzzis. Drives me mad.”

“The breakfasts with the omelette chef and the 20 yoghurts and the champagne. And all the smiling staff. The endless smiling. It gets to you.”

Funky, quirky, elegant.  Usually you just want your hotel room to be functional, but here's a list of cool hotel around the world.  Here's a little more about one in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Hotel Home, Argentina

Situated in the hip district of Palermo Viejo in the party destination of Buenos Aires, the smartly dressed Hotel Home was built in 2005 after British couple Tom Rixton and Patricia O'Shea noticed a distinct lack of stylish hotels while planning their wedding in the city. O'Shea said: "We wanted out friends and their friends to visit this fantastic neighbourhood and city. So we created Home."

Good match, Virgin and cool hotels.  The arbiter of cool, Sir Richard is to launch a new Hotel group, more information here via Marketing Week.

Virgin Group has started building the launch team for its new “urban” hotel brand. The company says it has a development team within its management division that is overseeing the plans.

Virgin’s latest venture was revealed in Marketing Week late last year (MW December 12, 2007). At the time, former Virgin Trains marketer Craig Inglis was advising on the launch but he has since left to join retailer John Lewis.

Oil prices are not just hitting the airlines hard, it's everything commodity related.  Hotels are feeling the crunch as well and passing the costs to the consumer.  Tough times call for tough measures, more here via USA Today.

"Hotel chains are nickel-and-diming people to death," says Sommer, a technology consultant in Jacksonville who spent more than 230 nights in hotels last year. It's particularly annoying, he says, that hotels in the same chain have different policies and don't waive fees for their best customers.

Many business travelers agree with Sommer, and some say that hotels set high prices because they know it's a hassle for guests to find outside vendors for such services. "Hotels, to a significant degree, hold their guests hostage," says frequent traveler Peter Roberts, who works in the banking industry and lives year-round in hotels.

Oceanfront hotels are a dime a dozen, from that modified shack I stayed in Sihanoukville in Cambodia to my villa in Cap D'Ail on the Cote d'Azur, they can be anything and everything.  Here's a great list of 20 top hotels that may pique your interest, more here via the Guardian UK.

Villa Val Des Roses, Cap D'antibes, France

You could drive here, park the car and not touch it until you leave: a sandy beach with a view to old Antibes is a minute away, the old town and market 10 minutes. Brothers Frederik and Filip are Flemish, in their twenties and found the Val des Roses after searching for the 'perfect place'. They put on an excellent breakfast, which you can have in your room, on the terrace or by the pool. The gracious white house is enclosed in its garden by high walls in a quiet little road. Fabrics and walls are mostly white, cool and tranquil.

Let the lists begin.  Here's a list of Hot Hotels for 2008 via the Times.  What does hot mean?  Read more here to find out, here's number one, albeit in France.

Le Couvent d’Hérépian, Languedoc Roussillon, France
Elegantly chic, wonderfully quiet, but not bank-breaking – it’s not often that you get that combination. But that’s what’s on offer at this converted convent with 13 suites in Languedoc Roussillon. Rooms are from £78 a night, yet they look as if they’d cost double that. The hotel, which has just completed its soft opening, has a laid-back atmosphere, with a small bar serving local wines and tapas.

Many travelers accrue tons of Hotel points via business trips and leisure trips, but often redeeming them is another question.  How best to use the precious points is best explained here via CNN.

Hotel loyalty programs have come a long way since they were introduced a quarter century ago by Holiday Inn. Initially viewed as the ugly stepsister of airlines' frequent-flier plans, they have shed their dowdy image, and points have become highly desirable.

What's changed? The value of a free airline ticket -- the ultimate reward offered by carrier loyalty plans -- has not risen significantly, while reward-point qualifying seats have become troublesomely scarce.

While I usually sleep on someone's floor, others may prefer something a little more luxury, check out the whole article here.

If I have $4 million in pocket change AND bored with terrestrial vacation spots, I may consider getting off the planet. Galactic Suite, a Spanish venture, will meet my needs. They seek to open a hotel in space by 2012.

"Before the flight, guests would get 8 weeks of intensive training at a space camp on a tropical island."

NYC. Everything, nothing happens in New York City. While you can party all night and spend the night at the library or Balducci's in lower Chelsea, most likely you need a place to sleep. You could stay at the Y for $120 or for $625 you can hang at the Hotel Gansevoort. A great semi-boutique hotel in the Meat Packing district, the Gansevoort has all the amenties needed for summer fun. Rooftop deck with pool? Rooftop bar with loungey sitting on thingies? Spa and exclusive lounge area below? Japanese style adjacent restaurant? Check to all of those. You can usually get a really good rate, i.e. $300 per night through Tablet Hotels, which Mobissimo will shortly search. Give it a shot, until then, you can visit the hotel site directly.

There are so many awards in the travel industry. Best Airline. Best Hotel. Best Place To Have An Illicit Affair. You know, the important stuff. We usually skip these  awards since they're just fluff. But this one caught our eye, because it's about the opposite. It's not about the fluff, at all. It's about, well getting naked. And there's not fluff there. Well, unless....Oh never mind. Back to the topic at hand, the world's best clothing optional resort, the Terra Cotta Inn. Some place in Palm Springs haunted by the ghost of Sonny Bono it appears. Don't be afraid, turns out clothing optional resorts are one of the fastest growing segments of the travel industry. And why not, you don't have the packing headache like you do with other vacations. Plus it's a very egalitarian environment:

The Terra Cotta Inn is called the most mainstream nudist resort in America and is perfect for couples trying nude sunbathing for the first time. This is why guests from around the world and especially from the U.S., Canada, England, and Australia fly there for their first clothing optional experience. Of course it also helps that Palm Springs has the best weather in America for nude sunbathing.

Who visits the Terra Cotta Inn? Everyone! You will see democrats and republicans, ministers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, police and firefighters, school teachers, military personnel, stressed out executives, retirees, and young newlyweds. You name the job and someone in that career has probably stayed at The Terra Cotta Inn. And all ages stay there too, from age 21 to the 80's.

Best Sellers

Alice Walker
Dr. Seuss
E. B. White
Edgar Allan Poe
Emily Dickinson
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Hemingway
Herman Melville
Jane Austen
Lincoln Steffens
Meridel Le Sueur
Sigrid Undset
Tennessee Williams

Classics

Agatha Christie
Colette
Mark Twain

Novels

Gertrude Stein
Oscar Wilde
Robert Louis Stevenson
Willa Cather

If you're looking for something different on your next trip to Berlin, consider staying at the Arte Luise Kunsthotel, an art themed hotel in Berlin where each room has been decorated by a different German artist:

All rooms were decorated by a renown artist, whereby the entire room was included in the concept. Thus, every room is an original, and all rooms are only united by the high artistic standards with which the concepts have been carried out. Sculptures in the lobby and philosophy in the stairwell accompany guests en route.

This Forbes article has a list of several strange hotels.  Undersea, treehouse, theme-inspired, you can stay in one of them tonight.

When the Smith family decided to build an exclusive resort in the northwestern Connecticut hills, they wanted to create something different. Really different.

They wound up with Stonehenge in the bathroom, a beaver lodge in the bedroom and a 17,000-pound helicopter in the living room.

I think a better article would be where's the strangest place you've slept for free.  Fire escape?  Parking garage?  Toilet on the TGV?  The stories abound.