BARCELONA -The Hotel Arts, my highrise aerie during my lamentably short recent visit to Barcelona, lives up to its name.
The hotel, a gorgeous seaside property managed by the U.S.-based Marriott Corp. and its Ritz-Carlton hotel group, showcases eye-catching contemporary Spanish art throughout. It makes an art of cuisine, as well. There are five in-house restaurants, ranging from casual outdoor dining by the terrace swimming pool in summer, to year-round fine-dining at Enoteca, whose chef has earned a Michelin star, and classy tapas at Arola, helmed by a two-star Michelin chef. There are no formally awarded stars at Cafe Veranda, as far as I know, but the breakfast buffet there is sumptuous, with the likes of Iberian ham and pork loin, fresh whole figs, a wide selection of cheeses, dishes such as Eggs Benedict with shaved black truffles, and first-class coffee.
The Hotel Arts also benefits from a prime location. It overlooks Port Olimpic, a once-benighted stretch of land along the Mediterranean Sea that was reclaimed for the 1992 Barcelona Summer Olympics. This is now coveted waterside real estate. From my corner suite on the 27th floor, I enjoyed sweeping views of the Mediterranean, the wide, white-sand beach fronting the sea, and - off in the cityside direction - a panoramic view of the Barcelona cityscape, bordered in the distance by dramatic, rugged hills. The suite came complete with two flatscreen TVs, a spacious bathroom with separate shower and bath, an elegant espresso-maker and a bed so comfortable it took a city as enchanting as Barcelona to lure me out of it.
It is something of a cliche to say that the most important asset of a business is its people, but in the hospitality business, it happens to be true. The Hotel Arts has a friendly, efficient staff. They are fluently and smoothly multilingual and ready to help the jet-lagged traveler. They orient you, they help you get grounded and they are a fount of local knowledge about Barcelona.
I stay in a lot of hotels, in a lot of countries, and I like them more often than not. However, few are in the same league as Hotel Arts Barcelona. Highly recommended.
For more information: Web: http://www.ritzcarlton.com/. Telephone in Spain: 34 93 221 10 00.
Showing posts with label Marriott Corp.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marriott Corp.. Show all posts
Monday, November 16, 2009
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Innocents, Again
The Marriott Corp. thought it was winding up a bad week on Thursday when the company reported that its quarterly earnings fell 76 percent from the second quarter last year - a sign that travelers continue to wait out the Great Recession by staying home. Then, on Friday, the news got a whole lot worse: Twin bombings at the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jarkarta, Indonesia, killed eight people and injured dozens more.
Both properties are run by Washington, D.C.-based Marriott, which operates under a number of brands, including Marriott, Ritz-Carlton, Residence Inn and Courtyard.
The Jakarta hotel bombings were the latest travel-related outrage perpetrated by terrorists and the first major attack since last November's seige of two hotels and a railway station in Mumbai, India. This continues a trend in which innocent people - some of them tourists - are deliberately targeted by heartless killers intent on proving a political point.
Travelers have been targeted before, of course - often in states with Islamic military insurgencies such as Indonesia, the Philippines and Egypt - and the challenge of preventing more such attacks frustrates the leaders of the hospitality industry, who, understandably, don't want to weigh down their industry by adopting a fortress mentality.
But something must be done. Terror operatives - most of them hard-line Islamicists who have intensely politicized once of the world's major religions and clearly believe the end of establishing an Islamic caliphate justifies any means of getting it - have attacked tourists at Luxor, Egypt; Bali, Indonesia (twice); Mumbai (several times) and elsewhere. The Jakarta J.W. Marriott has been attacked twice now; a truck bomb killed 12 people at the hotel in 2003.
Those of us who travel in unsettled parts of the world have seen tough anti-terror measures. I have passed through metal-detectors at the entrance to hotels in Cairo and Istanbul and seen armed men with "Tourist Police'' stenciled on the backs of their shirts patroling tourist sites in Jordan. Clearly, however, resurgent and adaptive militants continue to be a threat.
What do do? We may have to embrace security measures once considered draconian, and image be damned, to protect the lives of innocents. Erecting standard metal detectors and searching cars appears to no longer be good enough.
Investigators say a branch of Indonesia's once nearly-obliterated Jemaah Islamiyah terror group may be behind the latest attacks, which were apparently carried out by suicide bombers who booked themselves into the hotels as guests and assembled the parts for bombs inside their rooms. Why those parts weren't flagged by hotel security is unclear.
Chris Brummitt, a reporter who heads the Associated Press' Pakistan bureau and has covered terror groups for some years, wrote in an AP dispatch Friday that "Expensive X-ray machines that detect explosives and intrusive searches of guest luggage may be the only way to stop a repeat attack, but they come at a price: Making properties that are supposed to be welcoming to weary travelers feel like prisons.''
Brummitt quotes terror specialist Paul Wilkinson, director of the Center of the Study of Terrorsm and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland, as saying: "The authorities are not opposed to this, because they worry about the effect of the attacks. But hotel authorities and the tourist industry are a bit reluctant because they don't want the hotels to look like bunkers. But I think the more attacks we have of this kind, the more hotels will have to think about improving the protection.''
I think so, too. The traditional response of the travel industry and various and sundry tourist boards - deploring the violence and issuing a press release saying the trouble is over and everything is fine, come on by - is not enough. None of us would like the stepped-up security measures that may be be needed, but all of us would be better-protected should they be put into place. Being attacked by terrorists can ruin your whole holiday.
Both properties are run by Washington, D.C.-based Marriott, which operates under a number of brands, including Marriott, Ritz-Carlton, Residence Inn and Courtyard.
The Jakarta hotel bombings were the latest travel-related outrage perpetrated by terrorists and the first major attack since last November's seige of two hotels and a railway station in Mumbai, India. This continues a trend in which innocent people - some of them tourists - are deliberately targeted by heartless killers intent on proving a political point.
Travelers have been targeted before, of course - often in states with Islamic military insurgencies such as Indonesia, the Philippines and Egypt - and the challenge of preventing more such attacks frustrates the leaders of the hospitality industry, who, understandably, don't want to weigh down their industry by adopting a fortress mentality.
But something must be done. Terror operatives - most of them hard-line Islamicists who have intensely politicized once of the world's major religions and clearly believe the end of establishing an Islamic caliphate justifies any means of getting it - have attacked tourists at Luxor, Egypt; Bali, Indonesia (twice); Mumbai (several times) and elsewhere. The Jakarta J.W. Marriott has been attacked twice now; a truck bomb killed 12 people at the hotel in 2003.
Those of us who travel in unsettled parts of the world have seen tough anti-terror measures. I have passed through metal-detectors at the entrance to hotels in Cairo and Istanbul and seen armed men with "Tourist Police'' stenciled on the backs of their shirts patroling tourist sites in Jordan. Clearly, however, resurgent and adaptive militants continue to be a threat.
What do do? We may have to embrace security measures once considered draconian, and image be damned, to protect the lives of innocents. Erecting standard metal detectors and searching cars appears to no longer be good enough.
Investigators say a branch of Indonesia's once nearly-obliterated Jemaah Islamiyah terror group may be behind the latest attacks, which were apparently carried out by suicide bombers who booked themselves into the hotels as guests and assembled the parts for bombs inside their rooms. Why those parts weren't flagged by hotel security is unclear.
Chris Brummitt, a reporter who heads the Associated Press' Pakistan bureau and has covered terror groups for some years, wrote in an AP dispatch Friday that "Expensive X-ray machines that detect explosives and intrusive searches of guest luggage may be the only way to stop a repeat attack, but they come at a price: Making properties that are supposed to be welcoming to weary travelers feel like prisons.''
Brummitt quotes terror specialist Paul Wilkinson, director of the Center of the Study of Terrorsm and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland, as saying: "The authorities are not opposed to this, because they worry about the effect of the attacks. But hotel authorities and the tourist industry are a bit reluctant because they don't want the hotels to look like bunkers. But I think the more attacks we have of this kind, the more hotels will have to think about improving the protection.''
I think so, too. The traditional response of the travel industry and various and sundry tourist boards - deploring the violence and issuing a press release saying the trouble is over and everything is fine, come on by - is not enough. None of us would like the stepped-up security measures that may be be needed, but all of us would be better-protected should they be put into place. Being attacked by terrorists can ruin your whole holiday.
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