Unique luxury hotels, fashionable travel and much more

The city of Venice – currently being showcased in the Depp and Jolie movie, The Tourist – awoke to warning sirens last week as tides in the famous lagoon reached their highest level this year after a period of heavy rain.

More than fifty per cent of the city was said to be under water. Temporary footbridges in St. Mark’s Square, typically put down for pedestrians when the area floods, were removed by local authorities as the risk rose that they would be swept away by the fast rising waters.

Experts call it acqua alta – which means high water. They think it’s caused by an unusually high tide happening at the same time as heavy rainfall.

by Andy Moreton

It remains one of the most remarkable cities in the world and Luxique has a varied selection of the finest luxury hotels in Venice.

The gondoliers of Venice are in the news again – this time fearing that the centuries-old tradition of crafting the boats in wood is threatened by plans to produce plastic versions.

The gondoliers’ association says it takes months to make an authentic gondola and has described plans by a shipyard in Brindisi to start producing plastic and fibreglass replicas as ‘outrageous’.

Each boat is traditionally made by hand, using eight different types of wood, and costs about £20,000. “Safeguarding the tradition of the gondola, of the materials used to build it, are fundamental,” said Aldo Reato of the association.

Venice intends to apply for the wooden gondolas to be given World Heritage status as part of the list of ‘intangible cultural heritage’. The city’s carnival will also be put forward.

A listing would not stop a private company from manufacturing plastic gondolas, but traditional makers would be able to add a stamp of authenticity to their boats.

by Andy Moreton

Luxique’s travel experts have carefully selected the finest luxury hotels in Venice to make your vacation truly unforgettable.

In the 1980s, one of the most popular TV commercials in the UK was for an ice cream cone. A young couple were serenaded in Venice by a gondolier singing ‘Just One Cornetto’ to the tune of O Sole Mio.

This tune has since become something of a staple request for tourists from Britain who take a gondola ride, but this is not music to the ears of one Venice City councillor, Alberto Mazzonetto.

The problem for the councillor is that the song, written in 1898, is ¬– horror of horrors – from Naples, not Venice. “It’s an insult to our heritage and a real punch to the stomach to have Venetian gondoliers singing songs from southern Italy,” said Mr Mazzonetto, who represents an ultra-nationalist party.

“This is detrimental to tourists as it presents a distorted image of the city of Venice as some kind of new Disneyland, which has little to do with the place,” he added. Mr Mazzonetto wants the Gondola authority to tell its members to sing more Venetian songs.

The President of the Association of Venice Gondola Rowers, Aldo Reato, replied: “We try to open and close the gondola ride with a Venetian song but the problem is tourists only know O Sole Mio.”

As a romantic ride along the picturesque canals can cost as much as £100 for half an hour, I reckon tourists should get whatever song they ask for.

by Andy Moreton

You’ll be singing for joy when you discover Luxique’s selection of exquisite luxury hotels in Venice. All the top names are there.

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.

Back to a recurring theme – the efforts by Venice to cling on to its cultural heritage in the face of all kinds of 21st century threats.

The city council has now outlawed for two years any new takeaway outlets selling pizzas or kebabs in Venice’s historic centre. The Mayor, Massimo Cacciari, said the proliferation of such places was contributing to the ‘impoverishment’ of restaurants and affecting the quality of the architecture.

While Venice is making a specific stand (by including the traditionally Italian pizzeria), Italy is witnessing a national campaign against ethnic food restaurants, led by some conservative local authorities. Earlier this year, the city councils of Milan and the Tuscan town of Lucca restricted non-Italian food outlets.

The Italian Agriculture Minister, Luca Zaia, has applauded these local initiatives aimed at protecting Italy’s culinary traditions. “We stand for the safeguarding of our culture,” he said.

by Andy Moreton

Browse Luxique’s selection of exquisite luxury hotels in Venice. All the top names are there.

A mock funeral was staged in Venice on Saturday with grim-faced residents escorting a red coffin on a gondola through the famous canals.

The demonstration was designed to highlight Venice’s shrinking native population. The number has dropped from about 300,000 in the 1950s to some 60,000 today. The average age is 60. Newsweek magazine recently reported that by 2030 there might not be a single native Venetian left.

There are a number of reasons for the decline. Rents and property prices have become so expensive that many locals are priced out and forced to move to a cheaper location.

Rising water levels have also been a cause for concern, with many Venetians unwilling to buy a home that may not be usable in the future.

While the population has been dropping off, the number of tourists visiting Venice has been soaring every year – about 55,000 arrive each day. Venetian business owners used to charge higher prices to tourists, but are now charging those prices to locals, too, in the struggle to get by.

After travelling along the Grand Canal, the demonstrators left the coffin outside the town hall, hoping the gesture will publicise the plight of a city that’s been described as ‘a museum struggling to survive in a modern age’.

by Andy Moreton

It remains one of the most remarkable cities in the world and Luxique has a varied selection of the finest luxury hotels in Venice.

One of the most distinctive sights in Venice – among many others – is the thousands of wooden navigation poles that dot the lagoon.

They’re used as markers by boats and ferries to prevent them from running aground in treacherous sandbanks, and they’ve been a traditional part of the Venetian scenery for many years.

Now, though, the city authorities have raised something of a storm by proposing that the 100,000 or so wooden stakes be replaced by plastic poles made out of recycled waste. They say these would last much longer and cost less to maintain than their old, barnacle-clad timber equivalents.

“We have hundreds of wooden poles which are rotting away - there are entire forests of them,” said Mara Rumiz, the city official in charge of public works.

However, critics of the proposed move say that it would bring an end to centuries of heritage and that the plastic poles would be much less picturesque. One commented that visitors would have the impression of a plastic Venice, not dissimilar to the one which exists in Las Vegas.

The Daily Telegraph’s correspondent in Italy, Nick Squires, said:

“It is the latest chapter in the decades-old saga over how to reconcile the history and heritage of one of the world’s most beautiful cities with the practicalities of day-to-day life.”

by Andy Moreton

Luxique’s travel experts have carefully selected the finest luxury hotels in Venice to make your vacation truly unforgettable. And if you want to experience Venice Nevada–style, take a look at the remarkable Venetian Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

Venice is again considering radical plans to ease the overcrowding in the city in the summer months.

One proposal being looked at is to ban day-trippers; visitors would have to have hotel reservations to get in. It’s estimated that about 20 million people travel to Venice every year and as many as half arrive and leave on the same day.

Enrico Mingardi, who’s in charge of public transport, said: “There’s a physical threshold above which we cannot go.” He said Venetians could no longer tolerate the discomforts of mass tourism.

The council is to have discussions with tourist organisations and residents’ groups to explore ideas.

The notion of setting a limit on the number of tourists entering Venice has been discussed on and off for the past 20 or 30 years. “It’s always proved controversial because it goes against the democratic principle that anyone should be able to come to Venice,” said a council spokesman.

by Andy Moreton, with Nick Squires in Rome

Book your luxury hotel in Venice through Luxique. Our selection includes three of the classic places to stay in the lagoon city – the Cipriani, the Gritti Palace and the Danieli.

A hundred years ago, the Venice Lido was one of Europe’s most glamorous playgrounds for movie stars and royalty, and there’s now going to be a bold attempt to recapture its glory days.

The Lido is an 11-mile strip of land dividing the Venice lagoon from the Adriatic. It comes alive once a year in September for the Film Festival, when it’s besieged by actors, journalists and paparazzi, but for the rest of the year it all goes quiet.

“The Lido has slowly turned residential and gone to sleep, covered in dust,” said Giovanni Gusso, President of the Lido’s municipal council.

Now, hundreds of millions of euros of private funding are being lined up to restore the area’s Art Deco and Art Nouveau gems. In addition, government money is being spent on a new terminal for the city’s vaporetti (water buses).

But (there always seems to be a ‘but’ in these planning developments) one aspect is meeting disapproval – and it concerns the plans to demolish a group of beach huts. These are not just any old huts – they were famously depicted in the iconic closing scene of Visconti’s 1971 film Death In Venice, starring Dirk Bogarde.

More than 2,000 people have signed a petition protesting at the plans to demolish those and the turn-of-the-century Bagni Alberoni pavilion at the south end of the Lido.

Stefano Bartoli, the owner of the Bagni Alberoni bathing establishment, said:

“If these plans go ahead, we will have to close, it’s that simple. It won’t be possible to stay open. And if we close, lots of jobs will be lost and the local community will die – so, too, will a little piece of history.”

by Andy Moreton

Luxique can offer the best available rates at the pick of the luxury hotels in Venice – including the elegant and tranquil Albergo Quattro Fontane on the Lido.

You had to be quick, but what a deal!

A four-star hotel near Venice mistakenly offered the ultimate low-cost vacation — a romantic weekend for 1 cent – that’s one-hundredth of a euro.

At first, the managers at the Crowne Plaza in Quarto D’Altino - about 15 miles from Venice - thought the offer had been posted by a hacker. But it turned out to be human error at the offices of the parent company, Intercontinental Hotels Group, in Atlanta, Georgia.

Not surprisingly, the hotel received bookings for the equivalent of 1,400 room nights during the few hours the rate was posted on its web-site. Those bookings will be honoured.

The offer was supposed to be for a two-night stay at half price. A night at the 151-room hotel normally costs between 90 euros (£77 / $128) and 150 euros (£128 / $213). The hotel stands to lose 90,000 euros (£77,000 / $128,000) through the slip-up.

“Although a pricing error, IHG is committed to honouring the 1 cent rate for guests who have a valid confirmation,” said Monica Smith, media relations manager for the hotel group.

by Andy Moreton/Associated Press

OK, so we can’t offer you that sort of deal, but Luxique has some tempting prices for some of the most gorgeous luxury hotels in Venice.