Hotels

Even the pros need to take a vacation and recharge. Where do top hotel executives choose to go and why? What are vacation strategies of hoteliers that we travelers can learn from? What draws them to a vacation spot? We asked four top hoteliers to share their thoughts. Michael J. Quinn Complex director of sales and marketing, Crestline Hotels & Resorts What do you seek when you travel for pleasure? Water, history, culture or any of these combined. What are your top priorities?

When Elliot Aleskow recently checked into the Montage Beverly Hills, the Maryland doctor got a room with what seemed to be typical hotel amenities: A bed, a flat-screen TV, curtains, an alarm clock, lamps and a remote control. But there was nothing typical about the room's built-in technology. Using the remote control and an on-screen television menu, Aleskow programmed the alarm clock to play his favorite music in the morning. He also opened the curtains and set the room temperature and lighting just the way he likes it -- all by pushing a few buttons on the remote.

Striking at a prime symbol of the Western presence in Afghanistan, assailants armed with grenades, assault rifles and suicide vests stormed a heavily fortified luxury hotel in the heart of the capital Monday. The carefully coordinated assault killed at least six people, leaving trails of blood in the marble-floored lobby and forcing terrorized guests to cower behind locked doors or in the basement awaiting rescue.

President Bush's accommodations are never shabby when he travels abroad. But consider life at his hotel in Abu Dhabi, where a run-of-the-mill suite can go for $1,595 a night. He was, a White House aide indicated, assigned one of the eight "Ruler's Suites" at the Emirates Palace Hotel on Sunday night. The suites are made available only to those who Sheik Khalifa ibn Zayed al Nuhayyan, the ruler of Abu Dhabi and president of the United Arab Emirates, says may stay there.

The landlord of a residential hotel near downtown Los Angeles who was accused of trying to drive out tenants by cutting phone lines, knocking down walls and ripping out sinks in the rent-controlled building pleaded no contest this week to 10 criminal counts, the city attorney's office announced Friday. Joon Ho Lee, 47, was placed on probation for three years and ordered to repair the building in the 100 block of East 21st Street within a year, authorities said.

Carbon monoxide fumes killed a hotel guest and sickened four others Friday after a construction canopy blocked venting from the building's water heaters, officials said. Levels of the poisonous, odorless gas were so high that rescuers were forced to retreat until the Best Western Allentown Inn & Suites could be ventilated. The dead hotel guest was identified by the coroner's office as Philip D. Prechtel, 63, of Hilton Head Island, S.C.

Check-in at the Cecil Hotel had to wait a few minutes because Kerri Torrance, the clerk working the graveyard shift one night in November, had to deal with a heist. A man staying on the 10th floor had called down to report that a woman had grabbed his money and bolted. After the woman dashed through the lobby and burst out the front doors onto Main Street, Torrance called police while a handful of guests waited. "She's right out there . . . you see . . . well . . .

A fast-moving blaze charred the top of the Monte Carlo Resort & Casino on Friday, forcing thousands of tourists and employees to flee the 32-story hotel as firefighters leaned out windows to douse the flames. Firefighters knocked down the blaze in about an hour by punching through suite windows and drenching the 3,000-room hotel. No major injuries were reported, authorities said, though a dozen people were treated for smoke inhalation.

Marriott is expected to announce plans today for new so-called boutique hotels in downtown Los Angeles and Hollywood as part of a joint venture with hotelier Ian Schrager. The hotels would be two of nine to be built by the unusual partnership of staid industry stalwart Marriott International Inc. and the flamboyant Schrager, one of the founders of the infamous Studio 54 disco in New York in the 1970s.

Shattered glass has been replaced, debris swept away and guests have begun trickling back to the Serena Hotel more than two weeks after Taliban militants killed seven staff members and visitors, sending a shudder through Kabul's foreign community. The psychological damage is proving to be harder to repair.