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| Vol. 5 | Issue 19 | May 8, 2007 |    |
How’s this for the ideal retirement scenario: a luxurious Caribbean home,
and no dearth of people who want to honor your contributions and hear your tales
of adventure. That’s the deal for Alpha Echo (G-BOAE), the final British
Airways Concorde to fly supersonically over the Atlantic three-and-a-half years
ago.
The $3.5 million Barbados Concorde Experience, a multimedia display centered on Alpha Echo, opened in April in Bridgetown. The exhibit is temporarily housed in a 28,000-square-foot hangar at Grantley Adams International Airport (BGI). Visitors can participate in an interactive “flight school” and a “flight experience” with surround sound and video, tour the plane and see other historical memorabilia. Eventually, it will become part of a permanent aviation museum and theme park that is to be developed.
Only 20 Concordes were manufactured, six for development and 14 for commercial operation. Among the retirement homes for the British Airways Concordes are a new AirSpace Exhibition hangar at Duxford, England; the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York (temporarily relocated to Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn); the Museum of Flight in Seattle; a new facility being constructed at Filton, England; Brooklands Museum in Weybridge, England; and the Museum of Flight near Edinburgh, Scotland.
Air France Concordes have been retired to Le Bourget airfield; the Auto & Technik
Museum in Sinsheim, Germany; the Smithsonian Museum’s Hazy Center at
Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C.; and the final flight, to the Airbus A380
factory at Toulouse. 
First there were bridal registries at stores; then there were gift registries
at stores and online; and now there’s Northwest
Airlines’ Gift Registry. Anyone whose ideal gift is travel
can register; set up a personal page about their planned honeymoon, family
reunion or other dream travel plans; notify others of the page’s existence
via email or snailmail; track gifts; and send thank-yous. Great idea for your June grad or bride. Gifts, by credit
card, start at $25.
Not only has Hyatt Hotels been increasing its number of on-site destination
spas, but it has begun offering Residential Spa rooms at some of those properties.
At the new Hyatt
Regency Hua Hin, two hours outside Bangkok, the Barai spa extends into Barai
rooms and suites, equipped with massage and aromatherapy capabilities, in-room
spa services, and private steam rooms with baths in the suites. Globally, Hyatt
plans to feature spa rooms in all its new Park Hyatts and some Grand Hyatt
properties as they are developed.
California regions, long in the vanguard of the environmental movement,
are beginning to promote visitor-specific options to driving your gas-guzzler
through their neighborhoods. A side benefit is some new options for business
travelers with a little time to spare. Latest example: You can take a ferry
from San Francisco to Vallejo and be picked up at the dock by the Napa
Winery Shuttle, tour two or three wineries, and be dropped back
at the dock (or at a local inn) for about $50 including round-trip ferry fare.
Hilton Hotels is rolling out a new room category, Sight+Sound Rooms, currently
in test at two U.S. hotels. These upgraded guestrooms have wide-screen HDTV,
digital surround sound, DirecTV, and a connectivity panel for the guest’s
own MP3 player, laptop, videogames and digital camera. The rooms also feature
all-day sports packages on demand and at least five XM satellite radio stations.
The pilot program is being offered at the Hilton
San Francisco on Union Square, and the Hilton
Chicago O’Hare Airport. So far, the Sight+Sound package can
be found in king rooms and junior suites, for a $20 premium over normal room
rates.
Last summer, Air Canada extended its Flight Pass program into the United States,
with passes for small businesses and large companies joining those for individuals.
Now, in a revamp, there’s a simplified new Flight
Plan for Business designed
for companies of any size that allows from one to 25 different people to fly
100 trips in a 12-month period. Price plans include ten different geographic
travel zones.
The Umstead Hotel and Spa
100 Woodland Pond
Cary, NC 27513
tel 919 447 4000; fax 919 447 4100
www.theumstead.com
Raleigh, N.C., was ranked this year by Forbes as the Best American City for Business and Careers. The city continues to surprise many economists with its steady job growth, low business and housing costs, and a vibrant downtown. But the city, with a population approaching 1 million and several corporate headquarters, was until recently missing a key element: It had no deluxe, five-star-rated hotels.
That all changed earlier this year, when The Umstead Hotel and Spa opened in the nearby suburb of Cary. The hotel sits on 12 acres and reportedly cost $75 million to build and decorate. The combination of money and good taste make for a spectacular property.
As I turned into the hotel’s driveway, the six-story building, built with glass and North Carolina limestone, suddenly appeared from a forest of towering pines. The hotel’s exterior blends into the environment like a Frank Lloyd Wright design, while the indoor spaces — which include a lovely Dale Chihuly glass sculpture in the lobby — have the look and feel of a Four Seasons or Ritz-Carlton. The 142 guestrooms and eight suites are similarly deluxe, with high-end furnishings, thick carpets, original paintings and pottery. My room included a flat-screen 42-inch plasma TV, a large work desk, Rivolta Italian linens, and a view of both the heated outdoor pool and the three-acre lake, and was so comfortable that I kept trying to find reasons to extend my stay.
The Umstead’s spa and health club encompasses 15,000 square feet of soothing music, good smells and attractive staff. I’d sometimes use the spa entrance to the hotel, and just walking through the reception area made me feel refreshed and invigorated.
Not surprisingly, the picture is rounded out by The Umstead’s fine-dining restaurant, Herons, already making lists as one of the hottest new restaurants in the country. Herons’ executive chef, Phil Evans, came here direct from the St. Regis Hotel in Aspen. The beignets served at Herons’ Sunday breakfast alone are worth the trip.
With room rates beginning at $349, The Umstead is by far the most expensive hotel in Raleigh, but will seem a great value to frequent travelers used to the staggering prices of major metropolitan hotels.
Score: ••••• Ron Bernthal
If you know seven weeks ahead of time that you need to go to Italy and stay
at least a week, Alitalia is offering big
savings on its Magnifica (business) class fares that amount to
almost 60 percent off. The fares start at under $3,000 round-trip and are offered
between all Alitalia’s U.S. gateways and destinations in Italy, plus
select other European capitals. The deal is good for travel until Oct. 31 and
requires 50-day advance purchase.
Trump International
Hotel & Tower in
Manhattan is celebrating its tenth anniversary this summer by offering a three-nights-for-the-price-of-two
package that can save more than $1,000. Available for Thursday, Friday or
Saturday arrivals, the
deal is for a junior suite — normally $900 a night — at $1,440
for two nights, with a third night free. Additionally, you get a gift card
for nearby
Bergdorf
Goodman, a $50 discount off a spa treatment, and, if available, an upgrade
to an executive one-bedroom suite.
If you fly Austrian Airlines, now
there’s a reason to save your boarding
pass. In a new program, the airline has arranged with various cultural institutions
and restaurants in its gateway cities to offer discounts to passengers who
present a boarding pass that’s no more than 10 days old. So far, participants
include the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the DO&CO restaurant in Vienna,
and the Julius Meinl Café in Chicago; new participants will be added
soon.
L’Auberge del Mar Resort,
just north of San Diego, is offering a phone-only special that must be booked
by May 11. Instead of its normal discount deal that runs more than $300 a night,
the Coastal Escape package is available on some weekends and weekdays during
May and June for $169 a night. Call 800 553 1336 and mention the package by
name to qualify.
Enter by May 31 and you could
win a trip for two to London, three nights’ hotel, and center-court seats
for the men’s singles final at Wimbledon this summer, courtesy of BMI.
As a consolation prize, BMI is offering special
fares to London (LHR) from Chicago (ORD) and Las Vegas (LAS) beginning
at $510 in coach, $760 in premium economy and $1,509 in business class, for
travel June 20-July 10.
