Archive for June, 2009
W Hotels Gets Its Own Fashion Director and Music Curator
W Hotels is about to announce two new positions: Fashion Director and Music Curator. Two positions that you’d never think to find in a international boutique hotel brand.
13 Story Shanghai Apartment Building Topples Over – In One Piece
A brand new 13-story apartment building in Shanghai toppled over and landed in one piece in Shanghai China this weekend. A remarkable example of the need for strong foundation footings in a building, as well as the fact that the building didn’t disintegrate upon landing.
Red Roof Inn Defaults On Property Loans, Claims Ridiculous Reason For Default
Red Roof Inns defaulted on $367 million of mortgage debt recently. Fortunately this is only affecting 1/3rd of the Red Roof Inn properties, but ironically – its all the company owned properties. And one of the reasons for default is so ridiculous I think it’s a ploy to convince the banks to refinance their loans with better terms.
Dark Side of Dubai
Dubai is one of those places where it seems that nothing in real estate and development can go wrong. Things are slowing down there, but there is still much more optimism in Dubai than there is in the rest of the world – and I think it’s a little too much and the developers, and the government isn’t being realistic enough.
Arrogance Forced Abercrombie and Fitch To Close Ruehl
Abercrombie and Fitch is closing their Ruehl concept stores – one of the best concepts I’ve seen in branding a shopping experience ever.
Extended Stay Hotels Files For Bankruptcy
Extended Stay Hotels filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy yesterday – ending speculation of when or if banks were going to force ESH’s owners, The Lightstone Group to surrender the properties. All in all, this just goes to show how banks were willing to finance almost anything during the highs of the markets.
Metro Bank’s Failed Re-Launch
Commerce Bank Harrisburg’s conversion into MetroBank went live over the weekend – and it was a complete disaster, everything from paychecks not being recorded, tellers breaking down and crying, and debit cards suddenly being turned off. Metro Bank has a big PR headache which hopefully their customer friendly service will be able to recover from.
Metro Bank’s New Website Launched
Metro Bank launched their new website this weekend at www.mymetrobank.com. Nothing major to focus on – but the Vernon Hill marketing machine will be starting up in a big way very soon.
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