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Resorts Online Newsletter - Winter 2007 Visit our website for links to the best resorts around the world. http://www.resortsonline.com/ ROL Update It has been too long since our last news letter but I have been traveling so much there was little time to actually get it out: I think it has been over a year!! First of all let me wish all our visitors and clients a wonderful Holiday season, Merry Christmas and happy and successful New Year!!! We have just added to ROL five travelogues from my Africa trips over the past year or so that I hope will be of interest. The first is a trip in August 06 with some friends and family to some of the luxury lodges that are part of the private concessions in the Kruger Park in South Africa, followed by a visit to some of the private reserves of the Sabi Sands adjacent the Kruger Park and ending with a trip to Cape Town, the vineyards and the Garden Route. The second, and most memorable, is from October 06, when, during part of the trip, we took a group of orphans from Nairobi on safari in the Masai Mara. This was an incredible experience that has since grown to become an annual October trip but more of that later. The next trip was in May of this year when I visited South Africa for the Indaba trade show and, as usual, added on a trip before and after to visit other parts of South Africa. (Previous add on's to Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia and Zambia are all found on ROL also). The first part covered the coast of Natal north of Durban where Indaba is held and then a safari trip to several of the private reserves boarding the Kruger National Park: Sabi Sands, Timbavati and Thornybush followed again by Cape Town and the wine route. Anyone in the travel business interested in Africa should attend Indaba; it is my favorite trade show and always a lot of fun. And anyone interested in wine should visit the Cape Town area and tour the wine country. The 4th travelogue covers a trip took to Madagascar in October. I had not been there before and it turned out to be a fascinating experience in a country not many people have visited but is no doubt a destination that is up and coming very rapidly. The 5th travelogue covered a trip I did with some friends on safari in Northern Tanzania, also in October, starting in Arusha and going to Tarangire, the Ngorongoro Crater, the Serengeti and Lake Manyara. This was in part some of the same group, with a few new additions, to the trip last October in Kenya when we took the orphans with us. I hope you will enjoy these experiences and be sure to visit the hotels we stayed at, they are all terrific and all can be found on ROL. After another successful trade show in London in November at the World Travel Market, as well as Indaba in May and ILTM (International Luxury Travel Market) in Cannes, ROL has added hundreds of beautiful new properties this year. We now have over 6700 of the world's most luxurious properties in our database. For any hoteliers wishing to target the luxury segment, ILTM is certainly unique opportunity to meet the top agents selling luxury travel. All meetings are by appointment only and only the top travel agents and tour operators from around the world are invited and hosted for 4 days in Cannes early in December each year. As always ROL is designed to help you find the best places to stay around the world as quickly and easily as possible under our 13 icons: golf, spa, beach safari/wildlife, diving, riding, fishing, skiing, marina, lake, chateau/castles/palaces and our city icon which now also includes destinations, towns, villages and islands where the hotels would not normally fall under any of our other activity icons. This allows them to be included on ROL increasing our ability to bring as many of the world's luxury hotels under one site. All our properties are available via our search engine where any combination of keywords and a location can be used to refine a search for the perfect property. New Affiliate relationships allow us to include several chains such as Sofitel, Marriott, Radisson, Intercontinental, etc. as well as provide online reservation options for many hotels that do not wish to subscribe to ROL. While we prefer to offer a direct link to each hotel's home page and stay out of the reservation business, we feel that if we can include an information/reservation link that helps our visitors to find hotels that would otherwise not be featured on ROL it only makes us more complete and your experience more rewarding. Our Concierges Services section has well over 1000 additional listings for a variety of travel and activity related sites including airlines, rental cars, publications, etc. In addition to the properties featured in the new travelogues, I had the opportunity to visit several other clients since the last newsletter. I spent a fabulous weekend in Florence, Italy at the Palazzo Magnani Feroni, an over the top luxury Palazzo just off the Arno near the Ponte Veccehio. The equally charming owners, an old aristocratic Italian family, have converted the family Palace into a superb luxury hotel with 9 beautiful suites. There is a gym, billiard room, Internet and roof top bar. They have their own garage so you only have to pull up and they take your car which in Florence is a necessity I didn't get a chance to visit their other property, Relais Villa L'Olmo, just outside of Florence, but I have no doubt it is equally very special. It is a collection of private villas located on a vineyard with a swimming pool and near to golf and horseback riding. Another beautiful Italian property I visited was l'Albereta, owned by Alain Ducasse and located also on a vineyard just outside of Brescia (about an hour+ from Milan) near Lake Iseo. A member of Relais & Chateau, it has an award winning Michelin restaurant, as you might expect and one of the most beautiful spa facilities of any hotel I have seen. In addition they offer horseback riding, fishing, biking, hiking and full conference facilities I hope this year to be able to visit the sister property in Tuscany, L'Andana, a member of Leading Hotels that also offers golf, riding and has full spa facilities. I can only imagine how beautiful it is! I can highly recommend these beautiful properties to anyone visiting Italy. So I hope you enjoy the world of Resorts Online and hopefully the next newsletter will not be so long in coming. One theme that ran through the World Travel Market in London last week was how socially and environmentally conscience the travel industry has become something we can all be proud of. One very interesting seminar was entitled: Luxury Travel with a Conscience that talked about the way luxury travels can give back to the world community that is less fortunate. A perfect example of this is the project I mentioned with the orphans in Nairobi. As I said earlier the highlight of this past year was the trip with the orphans into the Masai Mara and you can read about that in the Kenya October 06 Travelogue. The program, started by my girlfriend, Linda Lockhart, has now grown to over 100 young girls from three orphanages/schools in Nairobi. The basis of the program is that each girl is taken on by one of her girlfriends (most of which are very successful businesswomen) on a mentoring basis. The original name, Big Sisters has now given way to the Global Give Back Girls (www.globalgivebackgirls.org) as not only are the mentors giving back but each of the girls understands that she will be asked to eventually give back when the time comes. While there is no obligation on the part of any "big sister" many of them are taking a very special interest in their 'little sister". Some have actually visited the girls in Nairobi and went on safari with us last year and again this year in Tanzania. Linda now, with the help of ROL, organizes three trips a year a year to bring as many of the mentors as would like to come to Nairobi. I would extend special thanks to all the hotels that are working with us to facilitate this program, especially The Sarova, Serena and Heritage Hotels as well as Abercrombie & Kent in Nairobi. We hope to one day be able to place some of the girls as they graduate with these hotel and travel organizations. Linda is looking to expand the program into the Philippines and Cambodia next year. If anyone would be interested in more information on the Global Give Program please let me know or check out their web site at www.globalgivebackgirls.org. Their site was just launched and we are adding a feature in the Travelogue section that Linda has written to describe the program in more detail and no doubt more intelligently! So please have a look I am sure you will find her work in Kenya fascinating. Thank you for supporting Resorts Online and we hope to continue to be an important part of your marketing or travel planning programs and experience.
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