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All that half-used soap and shampoo that’s simply left in the tub when guests check out of their hotel is being put to very good use by a charity called Clean The World.

The charity is recycling these leftovers into new soap and shampoo, and shipping it to developing countries and homeless shelters in the US.

Clean The World says its primary goal is to help developing countries combat the diarrhoeal diseases that cause nearly 1.8 million childhood deaths a year. Proper hygiene practices can help to eliminate these avoidable deaths.

At its laboratory in Florida, Clean The World cooks the soap to remove impurities and then re-shapes it into two-ounce bars. According to its website, it has put more than four million of these bars – as well as 200,000 pounds of shampoo and conditioner – back into use, simultaneously eliminating more than 380 tons of waste. About 175 hotels, both luxury and budget, are currently involved in the project.

One of the luxury hotels taking part is the New York Palace in Manhattan. Elvir Dervisevic, Director of Housekeeping, said: “Reducing environmental impact is a priority for us, and Clean The World’s ability to recycle discarded soap was a simple solution for our ‘reduce waste’ team.”

by Andy Moreton

The popular Pompidou arts centre in Paris now has a smaller cousin 170 miles to the east.

The Metz Pompidou will have no permanent collection of its own but will show, in six-month or yearly rotations, parts of the vast collection of 65,000 contemporary works held by the Pompidou in Paris, most of which are never displayed.

There are also spaces in the spectacular new building for other contemporary art forms, including cinema, modern music and dance.

Metz, the capital of the Lorraine region, is hoping to recreate the success of the European arm of New York’s Guggenheim museum, which has transformed the fortunes of Bilbao in northern Spain since 1997.

The director of the Metz Pompidou, Laurent Le Bon, said: “For us it’s a little French Revolution – yet it’s such a simple thing. We are just saying that the big collections are for everyone, not just for Paris.”

This is the first stage in a drive to decentralise the French state’s enormous art collection. A branch of the Louvre will follow in 2012 in Lens, a former coal town only an hour from the Channel Tunnel.

by Andy Moreton

Luxique has an extensive selection of luxury hotels in France – including some of the best that Paris has to offer.

The luxury hotel sector in the United States seems to have bounced back strongly from the recession.

America’s luxury hotels sold almost 17 per cent more rooms during the January–March period than a year ago, according to data from industry tracker Smith Travel Research. In contrast, the average hotel in the US sold 5 per cent more rooms during that time.

One key factor is that business travellers appear to be returning to the road. Corporations cancelled lavish gatherings after the financial collapse and government bailout of some companies. CEOs feared a backlash if they sent people to, or met at, luxury hotels or resorts.

While corporate get-togethers are back, the excesses of the past two or three years are less prevalent. “The open bar is a little less open,” said Simon Cooper, Ritz-Carlton’s top executive. “The [former offers of] ‘have a couple of spa treatments’ and the big fruit basket in the room every day are probably something of the past,” he said.

In the depths of the business travel slump, luxury hotels promoted themselves to high-end leisure travellers, many of whom still had money and didn’t have the same hang-ups as corporations about spending. Room rates were aggressively discounted and many package deals were on offer. Even now, discounts are still widely available at most luxury hotels.

by Andy Moreton

The red bus is one of the most instantly recognisable sights for visitors to London, and the image appears on souvenir T-shirts, caps, bags, mouse-mats and postcards.

Many native Londoners look back with fondness at the double-decker variety known as Routemasters – hop-on, hop-off workhorses (with friendly conductors collecting fares) that served the capital for 50 years until they were scrapped in 2005.

Now, the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has honoured his election pledge and unveiled his new generation of Routemasters to replace the much-maligned single-deckers nicknamed ‘bendy buses’.

The new Routemaster is bigger than the old one – people have got larger and there are rules about headroom and gangway widths, plus accessibility requirements. And there are two staircases, with the ‘open platform’ door at the back staying open or closed depending on whether there’s a conductor to collect fares and scan ticket swipe cards.

The Mayor is pretty pleased with his new bus, telling passengers to expect a ‘greener, light and airy’ service when the first of them is rolled out across London in 2012.

The London public, though, are divided. Some love the idea of an iconic favourite working the streets again; others think the £7.8 million ($11.2 million) for five buses could be better spent.

by Andy Moreton

Luxique’s Top Destination guide will help you get the best from your visit to the UK capital and we have a hand picked selection of the finest luxury London hotels.

Pranksters (or perhaps frustrated native New Yorkers) painted a white line down the middle of the sidewalk on Fifth Avenue between 22nd and 23rd. On the shop window side it said ‘tourists’ and on the outside lane ‘New Yorkers.’

Mayor Michael Bloomberg took a laid-back view of the defacement, calling it ‘cute’. “When I saw it I said, ‘Oh, that’s a nice thing to do,’” he’s quoted as saying in the New York Daily News. And then with a straight face added: “But you can’t do that every place for tourists, and we’re not about to go to say to tourists, ‘Well, we’re going to clear off some streets just for you.’”

Some had a less friendly reaction in welcoming the short-lived demarcation. “How many times have hurried city-dwellers run into camera-snapping, finger-pointing and sudden-stopping tourists?” asked one blogger.

Others pointed out that those hurried city-dwellers ought to remember the value to New York of the estimated 45.25 million visitors it welcomes every year.

by Andy Moreton

Let Luxique put you on the right path to a luxury hotel in New York City.

A landmark luxury hotel in Shanghai, which has just been refurbished, has appealed for former guests to get in touch if they have memorabilia from the hotel’s heyday.

The Peace Hotel, on the city’s famous Bund riverfront promenade, is set to re-open shortly, complete with a new museum dedicated to its history.

“To fully showcase the rich heritage of China’s grandest hotel, we’d love past guests to share with us their memories, memorabilia and ‘borrowed’ items so we can record and preserve history for future generations,” said the General Manager, Kamal Naamani.

Wanted items include silverware, china, monogrammed goods, historic photographs, postcards, art, menus, trinkets and anecdotes. Contributors who bequeath items for the exhibition will receive an invitation to a special cocktail reception at the hotel later this year.

Before the outbreak of the Second World War, the Peace Hotel (formerly the Cathay) was one of the most famous establishments in Asia, along with other luxury hotels such as the Peninsula Hong Kong, the Raffles Singapore, the Chosun Korea and the Imperial Tokyo.

Among its early guests were a number of celebrities, including Charlie Chaplin, and the playwright Noel Coward who completed his famous work Private Lives while staying there. It’s now part of the Fairmont Group, which has luxury hotels and resorts throughout the world.

by Andy Moreton

Shanghai is the jewel of modern China – a fascinating and vibrant city. Luxique can guide you to the best of its luxury hotels, including the Four Seasons Shanghai, the Grand Hyatt Shanghai and the J W Marriott Shanghai.

A Soviet–era landmark in the centre of Moscow has re-opened as a new luxury hotel in Moscow after a three-year renovation.

The former Hotel Ukraina was one of the ‘Seven Sisters’, an iconic set of skyscrapers built under Stalin between 1947 and 1953 to rival the structures springing up in capitalist cities such as New York.

Built in an elaborate gothic style with a ‘wedding-cake’construction and spires, they were intended to symbolize Soviet power and achievement.

The luxury hotel, part of the Rezidor Group, is now known as the Radisson Royal Hotel Moscow. The extensive renovation has seen 506 rooms in the building refurbished, along with 36 suites and apartments.

Situated close to Red Square in the commercial centre of Moscow, the hotel has six restaurants and bars, ranging from Japanese to Iranian, Italian to Russian, and a floating yacht restaurant that runs a two-hour trip along the river. There are also 1,200 original works of art.

by Andy Moreton

Luxique offers two fine luxury hotels in Moscow – the Baltschug Kempinski and the Golden Apple Boutique.

It’s been reported here in the UK that tourist attractions are having to spend vast sums of money on compensation claims.

A survey of 24 museums, castles and galleries reveals that more than £2 million ($3 million) has been paid out over the past five years for on-site ‘trips and slips’. It’s fuelled the anger of those who’ve become exasperated by what’s seen as the UK’s growing ‘compensation culture’.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London had to pay out £23,651 ($36,216) and legal fees of almost £30,000 ($46,000) after a woman fell and hurt her hip when entering through a revolving door.

The V&A also had to pay £400 ($612) to a man who put his thumb in hot soup in the museum’s restaurant. The man had found the food counter unattended and helped himself to the soup, scalding himself in the process.

Simon Jenkins, Chairman of the National Trust, which looks after many historic and protected buildings, has previously warned how health and safety rules are making it harder to attract visitors.

In an interview in 2008, he said: “This is a plague and it is not just something that affects the National Trust. It is something I would join as a campaign to see if we can’t get some protocol of reasonableness from health and safety authorities to free people from total risk aversion.”

Arguably the most controversial pay-out was to a woman who fell into a moat while trespassing at Carlisle Castle at two in the morning. She suffered pelvic and hip injuries and received £15,000 ($23,000) from the government body, English Heritage, which also paid her legal costs of £37,250 ($57,000).

A spokesman for English Heritage said: “The woman passed a sign stating that our opening hours were 10am to 4pm, as well as a notice saying ‘Please take care, historic sites can be hazardous.’”

by Andy Moreton

Luxique offers a selection of luxury hotels in London and the length and breadth of the UK.

Turkey has opened its first nudist hotel.

The Hotel Adaburnu Gölmar, at Datça on the south-east coast, is reserved for tourists from abroad. Guests will be allowed to go naked inside the grounds of the family-run hotel; they will have to cover up indoors but can eat au naturel at the pool bar and outdoor dining terrace.

The beach in front of the luxury hotel is public, so guests who want to sunbathe naked will be taken the 20-minute drive to a private beach.

It’s the first such facility in a country where 99 per cent of the population are Muslims, and which nurtures strong traditional values.

Local businesses have welcomed the hotel’s arrival and are looking forward to increased trade. Jeweller Polat Tünçer commented: “The Greek islands in the Aegean attract thousands of tourists from all around the world thanks to their nudist hotels. I think it is time Turkey took its share of this pie.”

There was a bit of a hitch after six days of business when the design of a balcony didn’t satisfy local authority inspectors, who promptly closed the hotel. At the time of writing, the hotel owner was confident all would soon be put right.

by Andy Moreton

Check out Luxique’s selection of luxury hotels in Istanbul and other parts of Turkey.

One of the top tourist locations in the Italian city of Verona – the house and balcony of Shakespeare’s Juliet – is about to become a whole lot more popular.

A new film, Letters To Juliet, starring Vanessa Redgrave and Amanda Seyfried, uncovers the work of a small army of secretaries who answer letters sent to the house from lovers, star-crossed or otherwise.

The volunteers work out of an upstairs office overlooking the balcony on which Juliet was supposedly wooed by her Romeo. The letters arrive by the sack load, seeking advice on relationships and imploring Juliet to cast lucky spells on their love lives.

Some are written on paper meant to look like medieval parchment, while others are accompanied by photographs and drawings. Many are addressed simply to: ‘Juliet, Verona, Italy.’

“When the film comes out: help!” said Giovanna Tamassia, who has spent the past 16 years writing replies. “Almost all of the letters contain the phrase, ‘Juliet, I can only tell you. Only you can help me,’” said Mrs Tamassia. “Even if she is a literary figure, she has become real.”

Verona earns a small fortune from its association with the legend of Romeo and Juliet, despite the fact that there is little evidence that the couple ever existed. The 14th century palace known as Juliet’s House was once the home of the Cappello family – who may or may not have been the model for the Capulets of Shakespeare’s play.

by Andy Moreton

See the film, then visit the city! Luxique can help you arrange accommodation at two luxury hotels in Verona – the impressive Due Torri Baglioni, which is close to the Juliet Balcony, and the elegant Byblos Art Hotel Villa Amista.