Wedding of The Week (3): in an Irbit Ural Retro Bike

in Wedding

An old post of the blog Retro To Go, “A Guide to All Things Hip and Retro”, reminded me that one couple that honored our premises to start their honeymoon in, got married in a hip Irbit Ural Retro sidecar motorbike. On the European Distributor’s webside you can find all about this retro bike.

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Only One 2011 Resolution: Catching Up on my Eternal Backlog

January 4, 2011 · 2 comments

in 101 Happy Hotelier,Blogging,The Hague,Twitter

1. Backlog I said, not BackClogged…However this photo with two of my travel blogging and Twitter buddies, Darren Cronian (@Travelrants) with Kayt Sukel (@TravelSavvyKayt) in the Clog’s backseat, is symptomatic for my eternal backlog. May 14, 2010, I had organized a small Travel Tweetup in The Hague and the Keukenhof with two additional travel bloggers. I even haven’t reported about it properly. Only by the date the photo has I can remember the date of the fine day we had. And I do have a couple of great photos yet to share of that day…and tons of other photos to address as well..
2. My 2010 sole New Year’s resolution was finalizing the move from a static site to a dynamic site for Haagsche Suites. Even that is not finalized yet.
3. I have around 300 draft posts spread over 2 blogs. So the first step in decreasing the numer is sharing these links of one of my oldest draft posts still viable and maybe worthwhile to browse: Being Peter pointed me to Blog Council Org, what is now Social Media Org a sort of platform for blogging fortune 500 companies.

Happy 2011 to all of my readers!

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Looking Back to 2010

December 28, 2010 · 1 comment

in 101 Happy Hotelier

Photo of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption in Iceland by Örvar-Atli

General
Like in December 2009 I’ll be looking back to the Year 2010 in just one post.
For the blog 2010 was a bit disastrous: I count only 76 posts up to and including this one. An absolute low when compared with 192 posts in 2009, 215 in 2008 and 166 in 2007.

1. The main reason is a disappointing number of issues with my hosting companies. That started already in November 2009.
2. However, on a positive note, the enormous growth of my significant other blog, Chair Blog made me spend more time over there than here.
3. The third reason for the lack of posts is a positive one as well: The enormous growth in nights sold at Haagsche Suites. Although many guests may not know of this blog I would like to thank them here for their visits and great reviews! On the other hand it prevented us from traveling as extensively as we would have wished, so there was less travel content generated by us traveling around.
4. Finally some of my precious time was used for a new venture that I started: Absolutely The Hague!

Although I’ve produced less content, the number of visitors and page views has been growing constantly. Also the average number of draft posts has increased from approximately 70 in past years to 170 right now. So from this you may assume that I anticipate being posting much more in 2011. I won’t let Happy Hotelier die. I don’t believe Blogs are death. I even am planning to start monetizing Happy Hotelier more seriously in view of the rising costs of hosting this blog.
2010 By the Month

• January:
  1. Introduced my own set of Rules of Engagement after some travel blogging friends had experienced “issues”
  2. Unpleasantly surprised that my sites were hacked.
  3. Announced my main project for 2010 to revamp the website of Haagsche Suites into a website with integrated blog. Unfortunately I haven’t finished that project yet, mainly because of my hosting issues.
  4. The end of January brought us the IPad introduction. Yes, I had a feeling this gadget would cause a revolution in the way we are doing things and that feeling proved right and: No I haven’t bought one yet.
• Februari:
  1. Published #TweetupThehaue: Why Attend and How to Host a Tweetup and organized a successful #TweetupTheHague (2)
  2. After considering various options, I decided to introduce a Mailchimp based e-mail subscription here. Did you sign up already?
  3. Was captivated by the American Cup challenge in Valencia that was over very quickly.
  4. Decided to decimate the number of Tweeps I followed dramatically after introduction of Twitter lists. Main reason is battery saving for my Blackberry.
• March:
  1. Formulated my 16 C ‘s to keep in mind when blogging. It developed into 20 C ‘s with the help of my readers.
  2. On March 25, I was asked to give a presentation about social media for a couple of Dutch hospitality types in Amsterdam which reminds me I might have to upload a couple of photos of the event. I didn’t do that until now, because there was a person in the group who doesn’t want photos being published…
• April:
  1. In March I had visited the PhocusWright bloggers meetup at ITB in Berlin. In April I published two impressions: DePhocussing from ITB 2010 (1) basically a video interview with me by the Austrian Tourist board and DePhocussing from ITB 2010 (2) which is more in depth.
  2. Published my March 25, 2010 presentation: A Blog is a Hotelier’s Best Friend.
  3. Off Course the Iceland Volcanic Ash Cloud disruption of air traffic all over Europe kept all travelers’ attention.
• May:
  1. Published Can you Build a Hotel Website solely based on WordPress software (2)? and got some nice feed back. And there and then the issue slipped away from my attention.
  2. Continued my 10 Questions For Series with the interview with Patrick Goff of Hotel Designs
• June:
  1. 10 Questions For Dutch travel writer: Ellie Brik.
  2. Despite my usually neutrality vis a vis football, captivated by the Football (Soccer) World Championship in South Africa where the Dutch lost from Spain in the Final eventually. My attention was fueled foremost by the Dutch Dress Guerrilla Marketing Incident.
• July:
  1. Started with my scare for Google I really hope some counter forces will curb this Moloch in 2011 somehow.
  2. Busy with the launch of Absolutely The Hague!.
  3. Created and incorporated a Tweepml list here in Happy Hotelier. Alas, since November 2010 TweepML is trying to get back online…
• August:
  1. Was a busy moth in the hotel and with Absolutely The Hague! Only post worth mentioning her my interview with Claude Benard.
• September:
  1. Finally Radisson Blu published the winners of their huge Social Media Contest. However, their after contest service is so poor that this SM experiment that started out great ends as a fail in my opinion.
  2. Not one, but two interviews: with Craig and Linda Martin who I had met earlier in the year and with Martin Schobert.
  3. By the end of September our family was enhanced by the birth of our first granddaughter.
• October:
  1. I became Furious when my Dutch provider suspended my accounts and totally unannounced!
  2. I spent most of the month getting the blogs right and back on track.
  3. All the time involved with this mess did cause me miss the TBex Europe event.
• November:
  1. Visited and reported about TBCamp 10.
• December:
  1. As if I hadn’t learned enough, I evoked hosting problems again with a (too) time consuming migration of my sites to a VPS Cloud Solution.

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Nativity Secrets of Hotel Sonne

December 27, 2010 · 0 comments

in Germany,History,Hoteliers,Hotels,Hotels Reviewed by HH

Father Helmut in the middle checking out the terrace in front of the porch to the courtyard

The courtyard with private parking space and the breakfast room at your left.
Here it is clear that the old part of the building is really old.

Nativity in the wood

Roman style Nativity

Close up of another Nativity

The three Kings

For the less religious there is the showcase with a persiflage of the hoteliers family

You may know that I’ve frequently visited Hotel Sonne in Offenburg, Germany. The hotel is operated by Gabi and her husband Horst. However the father and mother of Gabi, Helmut and Brigitte, who must be well in their 80ies still help their daughter out almost every day. The same family operating this hotel already for over 150 years.
In my prior review I’ve just showed one photo. Here I have some more, also to point you to their little secret: One forebear of Brigitte loved to collect little wooden figures and loved to make showpieces of them, mostly with Nativity as subject. Time permitting Brigitte will love to show them to you. They occupy a couple of their hotel rooms, but soon they will disappear as the hotel rooms will be refurbished in due course and be added to their inventory.

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Merry Christmas from The Hague

December 25, 2010 · 3 comments

in The Hague

With this photo of the Christmas tree in the The Hague “Passage” shopping mall I would like to wish everybody a merry Christmas from The Hague.

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