New Bristol in St Petersburg

The new Bristol (left) and the earlier version, hitting the headlines in 1905

A new Bristol Hotel opened in St Petersburg last week. The three-star hotel is in Ulitsa Rasstanaya on the south side of the city, with parking facilities and a shuttle service to Pulkova airport. It has 120 rooms, with all mod cons and a restaurant specialising in game. The first Bristol in St Petersburg was by the Moika River, 4km north of the present hotel. It caught a revolutionary's bomb in 1906, though nobody was killed, but it did not survive the Revolution (See Hotel Bristol News)

Bristol Murano's Gio Ponti chairs for auction

This pair of 1938 Gio Ponti chairs come from the once-famous Hotel Bristol in Murano, Italy, and are up for sale at Wrights auctioneers, with an estimated price of $3,000–5,000. The hotel is the subject of a handsome book called Hotel Bristol, by photographer Elizabeth Holzl.

• The four-star Hotel Bristol in Budapest,  Hungary has just been voted one of Eastern Europe's Top 10 hotels under £30, according to research by Trivago, which carries out price comparisons.

Scandal of the Bristols

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"The disgrace and disintegration of three aristocratic families" is the sub-title of a new book, Spleandour & Squalor by Marcus Scriven, and it is no surprise to see that the Bristols are one of the three. The fortune of the family that gave its name to the hotel trade was most spectacularly dissipated by John Hervey, the 6th Earl, who is said to have spent £7million on drugs, for which he was at one stage jailed. You can read about him in "LL Cool J and the Man who Shot Andy Warhol", chapter 7 in High Times at the Hotel Bristol. He did, however, not stand much of a chance, being the son of the Victor, the 6th Earl, who had also put in time for robbery and was, according to Scriven, the inspiration for Evelyn Waugh's Basil Seal Rides Again: Or, the The Rake's Regress. Victor's story is told in Paris Hilton & Lady Victoria Hervey, which can be read on-line.

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Bristol hotel revived in Romania

Well well, another Bristol hotel has been revived in the east. The old Bristol hotel at 12 Domneasca Street in Galati has returned to its former name after being the Galati for many years under communism. The old building (right), like most in Ceaucescu's Romania, is entirely rebuilt (left) and has added a 'Le' before the Bristol - but then Romania always had pretensions towards Paris. Hotel Le Bristol could provide a pleasant place to stay in the Moldavian city on the banks of the Danube not far from the Black Sea. But somehow the old Bristol looks more inviting.

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Hotel Bristol tales on Twitter

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You can now follow Hotel Bristol tales on Twitter

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Hotel Bristol Opatija for sale

The four-star Hotel Bristol in Opatija, Croatia, is reportedly up for sale. Its Austrian owners, who also own the resort's Astoria and Opatija hotels as well as the Apoksiamen on the island of Mali Losinj, are selling the Bristol either on its own or as part of the four-hotel package. Built in 1906, this elegant, 78-room hotel was fully renovated in 2004-5 and has been on the market for a couple of years. The company has now reduced the price by 20 percent in a bid to find a buyer.

.....In the mild Kvarner Gulf, Opatija was a favourite resort of the Habsburg aristocracy, and the pioneer seaside holiday spot in the Adriatic. "Abbazia, Idylle von der Adria", a guide book to the town then known as Abbazia, appeared in 1863, and the following year the first hotel opened: the Quarnero, now the Grand Hotel Kvarner. The town has a Museum of Tourism.

The Hotel Bristol in Mexico City gets a good write-up in Lonely Planet. Built in 1970 for the World Cup, this central hotel has rooms from $US54 a night. The hotel also gets a mention in "Trotsky and the Hotel Bristol that Never Was", a story in High Times at the Hotel Bristol.

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Bristol Geneva Twitters ahead of the rest

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The World Youth Student Conference (WYSTC) is being held Manchester this week (Sept 22-25) with the theme of ‘Innovation’
Daniel Roberts, Managing Director of Xebidy, adds his thoughts on his website in an article entitled Twitter as the Travel Marketing Tool du Jour.
He writes: "Twitter is a fabulous social aggregator, which can be used to listen to a wide network of conversations. Searches can be run for your keywords against the Twitter stream and when you identify them you can jump into the conversation and help. For example, when I tweeted that I had book my flights from Manchester to Geneva for the weekend to meet a mate. Almost immediately I received a tweet from Hotel Bristol in Geneva asking if I had booked accommodation and would I like help. They would have been running a search against people who mentioned Geneva."

Havana to New Hampshire

A couple of snippets:

Eladio Monroy is the detective hero of the Canarian writer Alexis Ravelo (Tres Funerales para Eladio Monroy etc). Eladio Monroy was the name of the last president and manager of the Hotel Bristol in Havana on the corner of S. Rafael and Amisted Street, an up-market hotel popular with Americans before the revolution.

The first Hotel Bristol (formerly Jurys Bristol) to be so named in Bristol earlier this year was not the first Bristol in Bristol. There was a Bristol Hotel in Bristol, New Hampshire (pictured right). The American town, which was incorporated in 1819, took its name from the deposits of sand and clay similar to "Bristol sand" used in Britain to make fine china, pottery and Bristol Blue Glass. In New Hampshire they used it to make a high-quality brick, sold as "Bristol Brick".

How Villars' Hotel Bristol brought Aitken down

Jonathan Aitken, recently put in charge of the Conservative Party’s task force on prison reform, may reflect that he owes his appointment in part to the Hotel Bristol in Villars, Switzerland (right). In 1993 Mohamad Al Fayad, owner of the Ritz hotel in Paris, told the Guardian newspaper that Aitken, then Minister of State for Defence Procurement, had been staying at his hotel, and his bill had been paid by Saudi businessman Said Ayas, adviser to King Fahd’s son, Prince Mohammed. Aitken denied this, claiming that his wife, Lolicia, had paid the bill, and he sued the paper. The case looked as it was going his way until the eleventh hour, when Al Fayad revealed the log of phone calls made by Aitken from the Ritz on the morning of his departure, including calls to the Hotel Bristol in Villars. A Guardian reporter sped to the hotel where he found its papers in boxes, as it was going through a change of ownership. For three days he sifted through them until he discovered that on the day in question Lolicia Aitken and her mother had been staying at the Swiss hotel – so they could not have been at the Ritz to pay the bill. Jailed for perjury, Aitken served seven of his 18-month jail term, providing him with the basis of his new career.
For the full story, see The Minister Who Didn't Pay his Bill

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Scandal of Victor Hervey, 6th Marquess of Bristol

LORD BRISTOL, 'CUNNING CRIMINAL'
The National Archives have recently opened their files on Victor Frederick Cochrane Hervey, 6th Marquess of Bristol, father of society limelighters Victoria and Isabella Hervey. The report by the Metropolitan Police CID, , dated January 2, 1946, came in reponse to an anonymous letter-writer's claim that he was behind "almost every jewel robbery in the metropolitan area and within areas outside London"and was "one of the most unscrupulous, calculating and cunning criminals at large". No evidence was found against him and the investigating officer concluded. "Although vicious to almost a sadistic degree, I am certain he would not be fool enough to carry firearms.". An account of the court case in which Hervey was jailed for three years for two Mayfair jewellery robberies in 1939 is the background to Paris Hilton and Victoria Hervey, one of the stories in High Times at the Hotel Bristol.

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For a full list of Bristol hotels around the world, visit ALL BRISTOL HOTELS
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Florence, Paris, Rome, Geneva, Sarajevo...

GET A TASTE OF FLORENCE...
The Helvetia & Bristol in Florence is offereing "small, intimate" lessons in Tuscan and Mediterranean cookery under its chef, Enzo Pettè. "Enzo teaches with great passion the simplicity of recreating ancient customs and traditions into a grand contemporary feast," says the hotel where his own preparations can be sampled in the Hostaria Bibendum. The afternoon classes (3–6.30pm) cost 180 euros; 160 if you attend over thee days. For information: Reservation office +39 055 2665554 or email

...and watch the fur fly
Defying the anti-fur lobby, Italian fashion house Fendi showed its winter fur collection at the hotel, with a fur coat as a raffle prize.

WHAT'S THE BEST HOTEL ANNA CHANCELLOR HAS EVER STAYED IN?
"I was filming in Paris and stayed at the Hotel Le Bristol with my daughter Poppy, who was then eight. It was lavish and unexpected and being there with Poppy felt like something out of the book 'Eloise in Paris'." – The actress ("Duckface" in Four Weddings and a Funeral) interviewed in the Daily Telegraph, September 2007
On October 10 Le Bristol was nominated EUROPE'S LEADING HOTEL at the World Travel Awards in Newcastle.

Maybe she should try Rome next...
The Hotel Bernini Bristol in the heart of Rome, has a newly renovated Presidential Suite. On the sixth-floor, it has two bedrooms, two bathrooms, two lounges, a gym and a swimming pool, with a terrace and incomparabvle views over the city, as the picture here shows...

MICHAEL PALIN DIDN'T STAY HERE
The burned out shell of the Hotel Bristol in Sarajevo, not yet recovered from the city's 1,385-day bombardment that ended in 1995, has just been bought by the Malaysian Tradewind hotel group . The company intends to renew the 15-storey 200-room hotel that featured in BBC TV's recent series on Eastern Europe with Michael Palin

MEANWHILE, BELOW STAIRS
Here is a blog about the chambermaids in the smart Hotel Bristol in Geneva where IABC (International Association of Business Communicators) have regular speednetworking evening recently. Hope they have as much fun as the chambermaids seem to have.

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Istanbul Bristol becomes the Pera Museum

The Hotel Bristol in Istanbul was built by the Greek architect Achille Manoussos in 1893. Pera, meaning “beyond” or “across” was the original Greek name for Beyoglu, the area on the opposite side of the Golden Horn from the founding city. It is where foreigners came to live and it is where the Pera Palace Hotel was built, near the Bristol, both favourites for Agatha Christie and other visitors from the Orient Express. In 2005 the Suna and Inan Kiraç Foundation renovated this historical building and turned it into the Pera Museum. It has a permanent collection of Orientalist art, with more than three hundred paintings by European artists inspired by the Ottoman world from the 17th century to the early 19th and including the delightful Tortoise Trainer. Other permanent collections include Anatolian Weights and Measures and Kütahya Tiles and Ceramics, which have lively figurative decorations. The museum also has temporary local and international art exhibitions. If you're passing that way, don't miss it.

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Revolution in Russia

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"A SIGN OF THE TIMES IN RUSSIA:
THE BOMB EXPLOSION AT THE HOTEL BRISTOL, ST. PETERSBURG"
This was a story in the Daily Graphic on March 25, 1905. The report beneath the illustration read:
"The bomb explosion at the hotel here shook the building to its very foundation. Windows were smashed, and some of the walls were cracked. The man who carried the bomb is supposed to have carelessly dropped it, and he paid for his blundering with his own life. At first he was reported to be an Englishman, but it has since been established that he was a revolutionist. A number of people in the hotel were injured by the explosion, and many passers by were hurled to the ground."

The St Petersburg hotel survived, and on the eve of the Revolution 11 years later, "The Bristol, a four-ruble-a-night hotel on an avenue of leafless chestnuts, had been commandeered for the Stavka, the supreme army headquarters. The tsar took his daily walks by the River Moika with his English setters. In the evening he watched movies. His favourite was a 22-reel detective serial called "The Secrets of New York." This come from Brian Moynahan's biography of Rasputin.

The Bristol is no longer there. Other smart hotels like the Kempinski and the Pushkin have taken its place. But in 2012 a new Bristol opened on Ulitsa Rasstanaya in St Petersburg (see New Bristol in St Petersburg).

Before the Revolution there were a number of Bristols in Russia, and in any shtetl you might find a four-rouble-a-night Bristol. The handsome Bristol in Odessa, built in 1899 by the Italian architect Alexander Bernardazzi, changed its name during Soviet times to the Krasnaya, meaning red or beautiful, as in Krasnaya ploschad, Red Square. Recalling its former glory, this grand hotel in the Black Sea resort has now become the Bristol again.

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Coming and going

GOODBYE SHEFFIELD The 111-room Hotel Bristol in Sheffield, which was given its name by the Bristol businessmen who founded it, has just been bought by the fast-expanding Swedish Rezidor Group, and from November 7 it will be renamed the Park Inn.

HELLO RABAT Meanwhile a new Bristol is to be built in Rabat, Morocco, the first overseas enterprise by the Brazilian Bristol hotel chain, which operates 21 hotel and apartment blocks with the Bristol name in the Brazilian states of Minas Gerais, Espitito Santo and Goiás. The north African venture will have 3–4-stars with 96 one- and two- bedroom apartments, and will take around 18 months to build.

GOING UP IN KARACHI Pakistan's first six-star hotel is being built in Islamabad . The Avari Islamabad will be an all-suite hotel, and the first 200 are to be ready by early next year. Making the annoncemen, the Avari hotel group chairman Byram D Avari, said that the Avari family had been known in the hospitality industry since 1944 when his father purchased the Bristol hotel in Karachi.

LEAVING LEBANON "Many clients have left,” says Chantale Zammar, sales manager of the famous Le Bristol hotel in Beirut. “And now we have foreign journalists who always come in times of trouble, like last year during the war between Israel and Hezbollah.”

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