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The Disney company has given the media a first look at the construction of its $600 million (£389 million) beachside resort in Hawaii.

Aulani will sit on 21 acres of Oahu’s Leeward Coast in the Ko Olina development about an hour west of Waikiki. It will have 359 luxury hotel rooms, 481 time-share units, restaurants, a convention centre, a 15,000-square-foot spa and a massive water play area that includes a volcano tube slide and snorkel lagoon.

This is Disney’s first ‘stand-alone’ resort away from a theme park and analysts say it could serve as a model for future projects as the company diversifies and expands its vacation offerings.

The President of Disney’s time-share operation, Jim Lewis, said Hawaii made perfect sense with its rich culture, traditions, warm greetings, family values, friendships and storytelling. “Those are also terms synonymous with Disney,” he said. “And by the way, Hawaii also happens to be one of the most popular vacation destinations on the planet, and that’s the business we’re in.”

Aulani is scheduled to open in August 2011. Luxury hotel reservations will begin next month; time-share sales started four weeks ago.

by Andy Moreton

Check out Luxique’s range of luxury hotels in Honolulu, Maui and Hualalai.

The full roll-out of London’s much anticipated bicycle hire scheme has been delayed.

Most Londoners and visitors to the capital will now have to wait until the end of August before being able to use the new bikes. They’ll be available only to pre-registered members when the £140 million ($213 million) scheme is launched on Friday.

The original intention had been to allow casual users to hire a bike simply by inserting a credit card at one of 400 ‘docking stations’ in central London. But there are concerns that there will not be enough bikes on the streets to meet demand after problems installing these stations. Around 100 sites had to be abandoned or were refused after battles with local councils.

The project has been a flagship of the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson – himself a keen cyclist – who sees it as rivalling Paris’s extremely successful ‘Velib’ scheme.

by Andy Moreton

Sightseeing by bike (eventually) is just one of the experiences awaiting you in London. Luxique’s Top Destination guide will help you get the best from your visit and we have a hand-picked selection of the finest luxury hotels in London.

Bullfighting has been banned by the parliament in one region of Spain.

Catalonia, an area in the north-east of the country with a strong separatist movement, has become the first part of the country’s mainland to outlaw the centuries-old tradition. It’s been banned in the Canary Islands for some years.

The ban, which will come into force in 2012, has been actively sought by animal rights activists, who want it extended across the whole country. Some have confronted matadors inside the ring or staged naked demonstrations.

Alessandro Zara, from the Spanish animal rights group Equanimal, said a worldwide ban would one day be a reality. “We will see it in our lifetime. One community after another will accept that bullfights are barbaric and have no place in a modern and ethical society,” he said.

However, some Spaniards see the vote as having more to do with Catalonia’s drive to reduce Madrid’s political influence than with the protection of animals.

The number of bullfights across Spain has dropped by a third in recent years, mainly because of the budget constraints of local governments, which often fund the spectacles. In Catalonia, there are now just over a dozen fights a year and the Monumental bullring in Barcelona is about the only place in the region that still stages them.

by Andy Moreton

Luxique offers a selection of luxury hotels in Barcelona and  throughout Spain – city and seaside.

Extreme heat and smog has left residents and tourists in Moscow gasping for air.

The smog has been fuelled by dozens of forest and peat fires, which have been burning outside the Russian capital amid soaring temperatures. Even famous landmarks such as Red Square have been enveloped.

The temperature has hit a record 38 degrees Celsius (99F) in a heatwave that’s said to have wrecked a fifth of Russia’s arable land. The month of July has been the hottest since records began 130 years ago.

As harmful impurities in the air exceeded normal levels by up to eight times, doctors advised people to stay indoors as much as possible with windows shut, and cover their faces with scarves or masks when out in the street.

Moscow is home to about ten million people and has about 4 million foreign visitors a year.

by Andy Moreton

Most of the time, the Russian capital is a cool place to visit! Have a look at the two luxury hotels in Moscow on Luxique’s list.

I wrote in January about the ESPN sports reporter, Erin Andrews, who was videotaped nude in various luxury hotel rooms by a stalker.

Ms Andrews has now filed a lawsuit against two luxury hotel chains, Marriott International and Radisson Hotels International, for negligence, emotional distress and invasion of privacy.

The lawsuit comes four months after Michael David Barrett, a 49-year-old former insurance salesman from Illinois, was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail after pleading guilty to a number of stalking charges. He admitted renting luxury hotel rooms next to Ms Andrews in three cities, altering door peepholes and shooting videos on his mobile phone, which he then posted online.

Ms Andrews is asking for more than $1.2 million (£784,000) from the hotels and also from Barrett for ‘severe and permanent emotional distress,’ according to the complaint which was filed in the Cook County Circuit Court in Chicago.

The lawsuit alleges that hotel management confirmed to Barrett where Ms Andrews was staying, disclosed her room number without permission and then allowed the stalker to stay in adjacent rooms.

In a statement, Ms Andrews said: “I’ve filed this lawsuit to hold accountable those who put my personal safety at risk and who allowed my privacy to be invaded while I was a guest at their hotel, as well as for actually stalking me and making my most personal moments public.”

by Andy Moreton

A luxury hotel in northern Cyprus is threatening to sue the singer Jennifer Lopez for pulling out of a concert there.

On her 41st birthday, J-Lo had been due at a gig to mark the opening of the $220 million (£143 million) Cratos Premium Hotel and Casino in Kyrenia on July 24th, but cancelled her appearance citing the ‘political realities’ of the region.

Protesters had called for her to withdraw because the north of the island has been occupied by Turkey since a 1974 invasion which displaced about 200,000 Greek-Cypriots. Turkey has unilaterally claimed sovereignty for the region.

Media reports say she would have been paid $3 million (£1.95 million) for her appearance, but a statement on her website said: “Jennifer Lopez would never knowingly support any state, country, institution or regime that was associated with any form of human rights abuse.”

However, the owners of the luxury hotel and resort say she’s bound by a contract, and if she doesn’t show up, they will start proceedings to recoup $35-40 million (£23-26 million) in damages.

by Andy Moreton

Holiday companies do organise trips to Northern Cyprus, but the region can be accessed only through Turkey. However, Luxique offers the best rates at three fine luxury hotels in the south of the island.

There’s been a big fall in the number of British people going abroad for their holidays.

Last year, there were ten million fewer trips – a drop of 15 per cent, the biggest annual reduction since the boom of cheap package holidays in the 1970s.

According to the Office for National Statistics, the deciding factor for many was the fall in the value of the pound against the euro and the dollar. Many opted to stay in Britain for what’s become known as a ‘staycation’.

Visitors to the most popular foreign destination, Spain, fell by 2.2 million to about 11.5 million last year. France was down 1.1 million visitors to 9.8 million, Italy down 760,000 to 2.6 million, and Portugal down 720,000 to 1.8 million.

Trips to the U.S. slumped by 20 per cent – 820,000 – to 3.2 million last year, while the most dramatic turnaround was the 41 per cent fall in visitors to Mexico after it was identified as the source of the global swine flu epidemic.

Trips to Spain have been falling steadily since 2006, and separate research predicts that Mediterranean resorts will no longer top the destination league table for Britons by the end of 2011. It’s thought they will be overtaken by those in the ‘Mett’ – Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia and Turkey.

by Andy Moreton

When these stats appeared in the national press, many people posted messages to say that there were bargains out there ready to be snapped up. Start with an affordable luxury hotel from Luxique!

A flight attendant has been arrested by police investigating the theft of cash and jewellery from Air France long-haul business class passengers (see Valuables Take Flight post January 12th).

The police said they’d identified the suspect, a 47-year-old woman referred to only as Lucie R, after cross-checking crew manifests for 142 Air France flights on which passengers had reported thefts this year.

It’s reported that she’s confessed to 26 separate offences. She’s said to have had jewellery, a Cartier wedding ring and another diamond-encrusted ring in a safe deposit box at a bank at Rouen in northern France. Credit cards and travellers’ cheques were reportedly found at her home.

The woman is in custody awaiting trial and faces a maximum 10-year prison sentence if convicted.
Theft by one of its own staff was clearly far from the thoughts of the Air France spokeswoman when she made this quote in January: “Cabin crew are not mandated to query passengers [my italics] on which bags they are opening or if they are the rightful owners.”

Air France continues to maintain that it is responsible only for belongings checked in and stored in the hold. Anything stolen on board was a travel insurance matter.

by Andy Moreton

Plans have been approved for a £40m ($61m) luxury hotel in London’s Mayfair, which has been designed in collaboration with the sculptor, Antony Gormley.

The 75-room hotel will feature a bedroom suite enclosed in a huge Gormley sculpture of a crouching man. The artist described the work, called Habitat, as ‘both playful and serious, both pragmatic and idealistic’.

One of the developers, Jeremy King, said: “Too many of London’s hotels have become homogenised, chain driven, luxury bed-factories lacking in character, individuality or, indeed, charm. This is not the plan for 8, Balderton Street.”

It’s thought the luxury hotel will open in 2013.

Gormley has become one of Britain’s most celebrated and controversial sculptors, with almost all his work taking the human body as the subject. His most famous structure is the huge Angel of The North on top of a hill in Gateshead in north-east England.

by Andy Moreton

We like to think the luxury hotels in London offered by Luxique are a bit more than bed-factories. Check out our unrivalled selection and see for yourself!

The collapse of the British package holiday company, Goldtrail, has sent shudders through the travel industry, which has been struggling to emerge from the recession.

About 16,000 holidaymakers were left stranded when the company, which specialised in budget holidays to Greece and Turkey, went into administration last Friday. The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has arranged flights to bring them back to the UK, and two-thirds have already arrived.

Some people have complained that hotels have been trying to make them pay extra money or be thrown out of their rooms. It was reported that at one hotel, staff confiscated guests’ passports and refused to return them unless they paid an extra £400. The CAA says any additional hotel bills will be covered by the ATOL emergency scheme. This, though, doesn’t help the 50,000 people who’d booked with Goldtrail and whose holiday plans have been left in tatters.

Travel law expert, Nick Harris, says there could be further travel company failures. “Although a growing number of small holiday firms have gone belly up, the peak of the holiday season usually goes some way in postponing these failures,” he said.

“It is usually in the autumn when travel firms go bust. The timing of the Goldtrail failure is concerning but I doubt it will be the only travel business to face closure in 2010.”

by Andy Moreton