Bristol's Brigstow for sale

The Brigstow in Bristol is up for sale. The four-star hotel (116 rooms) by the Welsh Back waterfront, has a good reputation under its manager, Tim Howes, who was kind enough to bulk order copies of High Times at the Hotel Bristol when it was first published. His reason for the interest? Brigstow is an old name for Bristol, a Saxon word meaning the place on the bridge. The hotel is on the market through Savills, who are asking for offers exceeding £9m (£77,500 per room). They are optimistic about finding a buyer. "Bristol's hotel market is currently outperforming the UK regional average," says James Bradley of the agent's hotel team. "We have already received significant interest."
We certainly look forward to the Brigstow's continued prosperity.

Russians stick to the Warsaw Bristol

On the tenth day of every month a demonstration takes place outside the presidential palace in Warsaw, to commemorate the plane crash in Russia in 2010 in which President Lech Kaczynski and other top politicians died. A few yards away is the Warsaw Bristol, where the Russian football team have booked a whole floor for Euro 2012.  Poland's sports minister Joanna Mucha thinks the demonstrators might spread to to the hotel and has asked the Russians to find somewhere else to stay. But the Russians are refusing to budge. They play their first game, against the Czech Republic, on June 8, and play Poland on June 12.
The Warsaw Bristol was founded by the piano-playing president Ignacy Paderewski in 1897, and the hotel features in the story "Lady Thatcher's Finest Hour" in High Times at the Hotel Bristol.

Venezuela discovery

Just when I thought I had every Hotel Bristol in the world, I stumbled upon the Hotel Bristol in Barinas, in Venezuela. I should have known – it has been there since two Italian immigrants put up the money in 1979, opening the doors in 1981. It is a three star hotel with 69 rooms and conference facilities. Barinas is in the west of the country, capital of the vast tropical plain called Los Llanos, and has a population of around 250,000. I came across it on Twitter. It was following one person, and had one follower. Now it has two. I have added it to the list of All Bristol Hotels

New EU Thon is not a Bristol

A new Thon hotel is opening in the European Quarter of Brussels later this month, but it won't be another Bristol. Olav Thon, the colourful Norwegian property billionaire, already has three hotels called Bristol, one of them in Brussels – the Hotel Bristol Stephanie, which he bought in 1995. His first hotel acquisition was the historic Hotel Bristol in Oslo (pictured) in 1974, and in 1998 he bought the Hotel Bristol in Bergen. The new hotel in Brussels, the Thon EU, has 405 rooms, which will use mobile phone keys.

The wealthy Mr Thon is reported to have once said that one day he would like to take over the Hilton Hotel chain, which would simply be rebranded as Hilthon hotels.

Jazz on a Cold Winter's Night, a story from High Times at the Hotel Bristol, is set in the Oslo Bristol.

Is this the fifth Bristol Hotel in Poland?

The new Bristol Hotel in Rzeszow (see previous post) is, as far as I know, the fifth hotel in Poland to take the name. The others are in Bytom, Kielce, Tarnow, Warsaw.


The Warsaw Bristol is best known, and features in Lady Thatcher's Finest Hour, one of the stories in High Times at the Hotel Bristol. Revitalised following the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Bristol was re-opened in 1993 by Margaret Thatcher, and the story is based on this event. She and her husband Denis stayed in the palatial Paderewski suite. Ignacy Paderewski, the piano-playing prime minister, was co-founder of the hotel, which opened in 1901. After independence in 1918, the first government meetings were held here. 

Bristol will be Polish city's first 5-star hotel

Another new Bristol Hotel – this time it's being built in Rzeszow, a county town in the south of Poland. Near the market square (pictured), it will be the first 5-star hotel in Rzeszow, with 140 rooms, conference facilities and restaurants. Scheduled to open by the end of 2012, it is already looking for a Director General and a Head of Sales and Marketing. The company behind the project is Aksjon Sp, whose other hotels include the Aurora on the Baltic coast at Miedzyzdrojach - it clearly likes international hotel names.

Le Bristol voted one of eight Palace hotels

Hôtel Le Bristol in Paris is often referred to as one of the city's top "palace' hotels, a denomination created in 2009. Now the title is official. Four hotels in Paris and four others in the rest of France have been designated "Palace" hotels. The award was decided by a jury headed by the writer and member of the French Acdemy, Dominique Fernandez, and included members of the media, architecture, and hotel groups.

The Paris Hotels are:
• Le Hôtel Bristol, owned by Oetker Collection
• Le Meurice, part of the Dorchester Collection
• Park Hyatt Paris Vendome, owned by the Hyatt family
• Plaza Athenée, also part of the Dorchester Collection (their two other top Paris hotels, the Ritz and George V, failed to make the Palace grade) 

Outside Paris:
• Biarritz: L'Hôtel du Palais Biaritz (pictured above), the only one actually built as a royal palace, for the Empress Eugenie
• Courchevel: Cheval Blanc, owned by LVMH, and Les Aireilles, owned by Stephan Courbit, whose superyacht sank in the Aegean last month.

• Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat: Grand Hôtel Cap Ferrat, bought by Len Blavatnik, a Russian billionaire with American citizenship living in London, in 2008. Does he still own it?

Each hotel will receive a special plaque. The first one was fixed onto the front of the Paris Bristol in the presence of Tourism minister Frederic Lefebvre.