False start to the New Year in Gurgaon Bristol

The Bristol Hotel in Gurgaon on the south side of New Delhi is one of the smartest in India, and it had a big New Year celebration planned with popular DJ rapper Honey Singh. But it didn't happen. At the last minute a complaint about his lyrics was lodged by the writer Kalpana Misra, who got up an on-line petition and sent it to the hotel's management. The petition attracted nearly 3,000 signatories and trended on Twitter. The anti-women sentiments of lyrics sung by the 28-year-old Punjabi singer, who studied music at Trinity Laban in London, were deemed particularly inappropriate after the recent horrendous Delhi gang rape, and a police report has been issued against him.
The event's organisers have not disclosed how much the cancellation has cost them, but it is thought to be no small sum.
The full story is carried in the Times of India.

Accolade for Sarajevo Bristol

The Bristol Hotel in Sarajevo has just been chosen as the leading hotel in Bosnia Herzegovina. The 4-star 186-room hotel operated by independents Shaza Hotels, was destroyed in the recent conflict and re-opened less than two years ago. The award at the World Travel annual get-together in the new Conrad Algarve in Portugal where Hotel Bristol's managing director, Kai Behrens, said, "This prestige world award is extra motivation and challenge for all of us for an even better and more successful business. Our success is due to the great effort and dedication of all staff  and we are determined to continue building a positive image of the hotels – as well as the city – of Sarajevo and Bosnia and Herzegovina as a whole."

Hotel suite for the "unfathomably rich"

When Barbra Streisand stayed in the Prince of Wales Suite (above) at the Hotel Bristol in Vienna, she was dismayed to find that the bed was too high for her small dog to jump onto, so the hotel had some steps built for the mutt. The story is told by Christian L.Wright  in the current edition of Condé Naste Traveler, in which the magazine ranks the eight-room Prince of Wales Suite as one of the eight "most lavish and expensive on earth" for the "unfathomably rich", costing up to $18,000 a night.
The story of the Prince of Wales and the Hotel Bristol is told in High Noon for the King's Moll, just one of the engaging chapters in High Times at the Hotel Bristol. The story can be read on-line. 

Centenary celebrations for Belgrade's Hotel Bristol

Celebrating the centenary of Belgrade's Hotel Bristol, Predrag Najdenov, Front of House Manager, sends these early pictures. The hotel looks hardly changed at all from its bright beginnings. The neoclassical building was designed by architect Nicholas Nestorovic and enjoyed a few brief pre-war years when the Serbian and Austro-Hungarian monarchies set the social pace in the city. In 1924 the exiled Zog of Albania lived here. Today, the two-star hotel is a protected building. Its 62 rooms and suites include the luxury Rockefeller apartment. See their website.

Letter from the hotel to an address in Sarajevo, 1929

The building in 1920 looks just as it does today

The dining room

Where in the world is this Hotel Bristol?

Roland-François Lack, who runs The Cine-Tourist website has emailed this image of the Bristol Hotel from Cloak and Dagger, starring Gary Cooper. In the film, directed by Fritz Lang and made in 1946, Cooper plays a spy who flies to Zurich. "Everything is shot in Hollywood," says Roland-François, "but there is a brief shot of stock footage showing a European-style street with a Hotel Bristol."

He says he spent a "very enjoyable morning" here on the Hotel Bristol Site, but still could not find it.
Well, no, this one hasn't come up before and there is no image of it in the extensive Hotel Bristol archives.

The hotel is clearly not the present Hotel Bristol in Zurich (pictured below)

So where in the world was this hotel? The shop sign beside the hotel is not legible, but the figures above the store may be a clue.

Conrad Uhl's Bristol Berlin

"The Kempinski Hotel Bristol Berlin remains the premier hotel in western Berlin" according to a recent report in Conde Nast Traveller. The Kempinski opened in 1952 as the first modern 5-star German hotel. But it wasn't the first Berlin Bristol, of course. The pre-war Bristol, bombed out in 1943 with the loss of some 200 lives, was in Unter den Linden, where the Russian Embassy now stands. It was very much associated with its owner Conrad Uhl – in fact during the First World War, when all English names were eradicated from German businesses, it was called simply the Conrad Uhl. This pre-war poster, from 1910, recently went on sale at Amazon.

The Bristol was where the rich and famous stayed when they visited the city. Among Conrad Uhl's delicate tasks was to deal with the boys from Capri that arms manufacturer Fritz Krupp brought to the hotel -- the story is told in "Krupp's Dying Shame", one of the tales from High Times at the Hotel Bristol.

Sombre mood in Paris Bristol after Aurora killings

The star-spangled Paris premier of The Dark Knight Rises was cancelled on Friday as news of the massacre by the murderous Batman figure in Aurora reached the city. Staying at the elite five-star Le Bristol, the film's stars, Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway and Marion Cotillard immediately abandoned publicity interviews. According to the rolling news on The Daily Telegraph website, there was "total confusion" at the Bristol where a French journalist reported, "The mood caused complete panic. All the publicists and other movie staff were taking calls and shouting, while actors and actresses returned to their hotel suites."
   Film fans continued to hang around Le Bristol waiting for autographs from the stars, but on Saturday they decamped, according to the NY Daily News, "sneaking out through the parking garage in a fleet of black cars with tinted windows without saying a word to clueless fans cooling their heels on the sidewalk."
   The picture here shows the dismantling of the premier cinema venue. Doubts were raised about the film's planned national distribution, due on July 25.