Free Republic

Vice President Joe Biden's hotel tab for his recent one-night stay in Mexico City cost taxpayers more than $500,000. Biden, who attended an annual economic summit with Mexican leaders, stayed at the luxury Intercontinental Presidente Hotel. Biden led a delegation attending the summit that included Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, and Interior Secretary Sally Jewell. The trip called for 260 hotel rooms and meeting spaces, according to a State Department contract. The total hotel tab was $538,528.65.

Even if he doesn’t win the Republican nomination and the presidential election, there will be a Trump in Washington, D.C., come November. Located just down the street from the White House, Donald Trump’s new $200 million (£140 million) luxury hotel in the capital is set to open in September – two months before Americans head to the polls to elect a new leader. Trump confirmed the opening date this week, proudly declaring that the five-star hotel, which boasts three stunning presidential suites, will welcome its first guests two years ahead of schedule even though he had already set an opening...

Connor Cummings, of Rockaway, N.J., and an 18-year-old pal managed to get onto an upper floor of the landmark hotel overlooking Central Park with several pieces of camera equipment Wednesday night, despite not being guests there, police said. They then attempted to climb scaffolding in an interior shaft leading to the roof of the 52 story luxury E. 57th St. hotel, police sources said. Cummings and his friend were nearing the roof when Cummings slipped and fell nine stories, crashing onto a 43rd floor landing, police said. He died at the scene.

More than a dozen of New York City's most famed hotels are pledging to get greener. The Waldorf-Astoria New York, the Lotte New York Palace, the Pierre-A Taj Hotel and the Crowne Plaza Times Square are among the 16 city hotels - all currently thronged with tourists visiting New York for the holidays - whose owners have agreed to cut greenhouse gases from their buildings by 30 percent or more in the next decade. ...

Robert DeNiro may be one of the best actors of his generation but when it comes to the hospitality industry, the star apparently has a lot to learn. Nobu Hotel Manila, which is co-owned by the actor, chef Nobu Matshuhisa and movie producer Meir Teper, was named as the worst new luxury hotel of 2015 by Luxury Travel Intelligence (LTI), a members-only group that touts membership comprised of jetsetters and high net worth individuals, on their annual best and worst new hotels list. DeNiro, who has worked with the lauded Japanese chef in his growing restaurant empire, was not able...

The Navy announced Monday that it has reprimanded a two-star admiral for getting drunk and wandering naked around a Florida beachfront hotel while attending a conference with defense contractors. Rear Adm. David F. Baucom, the director of strategy and policy at the U.S. Transportation Command, became so intoxicated at an upscale beachfront resort in April that he struck his head on a barstool, wet his pants and needed an escort back to his room, according to an investigative report by the Naval Inspector General. A few hours later, still in a haze, Baucom re-emerged from his room without any clothes...

Armed jihadists have killed at least three people in a deadly shooting rampage after taking 170 hostages at the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako, Mali. Automatic weapons fire was heard on the seventh floor of the 190-room hotel, where it was thought as many as 10 militants roamed through the building, looking for guests and members of staff. 80 hostages have since been freed as special forces entered the building. Six American nationals have been rescued alive but several other American remain inside with the other 125 guests and 13 employees trapped inside the besieged hotel. The Pentagon revealed that...

Gunmen have taken 170 hostages, killing three so far at the Radisson Blu hotel in Mali's capital Bamako. The gunmen are reported to be releasing people that can recite verses from the Quran. Automatic weapon fire was heard from outside the 190-room hotel in the city-centre where security forces have set up a security cordon, according to Agence France Presse. Security sources told AFP the gunmen were "jihadists" who had entered the hotel compound in a car that had diplomatic plates. "It's all happening on the seventh floor, jihadists are firing in the corridor," one security source said. Malian soldiers,...

Muslim terrorists opened fire on an upscale hotel on Friday in the city of Bamako, the capital of the western African state of Mali. The jihadists used automatic weapons according to security sources, and apparently have taken people hostage in the Radisson Blu Hotel. Some reports indicate that at least three people have died in the attack. The luxury hotel, which has 190 rooms, is a popular site for Western officials according to French-language media. According to the French RFI radio, the attack was launched by three assailants who entered the hotel with diplomatic cars. Security forces have set up...

(Translated) Armed police converging on Hotel Pullman

AMMAN, Jordan — Just after nightfall Feb. 3, a warrant arrived at the city’s main women’s prison for the execution of Sajida al-Rishawi. The instructions had come from King Abdullah II himself, then in Washington on a state visit, and were transmitted from his private plane to the royal court in Jordan’s capital. A clerk relayed the message to the Interior Ministry and then to the prisons department, where it caused a stir. State executions are complicated affairs requiring many steps, yet the king’s wishes were explicit: The woman would face the gallows before the sun rose the next day.

President Obama and his entourage will break with tradition and not stay at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel during the United Nations General Assembly this month, the White House said. The iconic hotel was sold by Hilton Worldwide Holdings to a Chinese conglomerate in 2014, prompting concerns about espionage and security. Obama and his team of advisers will stay at the Lotte New York Palace hotel instead. “I can confirm the report that the president will stay — and the rest of the U.S. delegation will stay at the New York Palace Hotel,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said....

sources headed to the Toronto International Film Festival tell Page Six that some stars may boycott his branded Trump Toronto Hotel, which was buzzing with starry activity just a year ago. “No one’s staying at the Trump” this year, sniffed one showbiz vet. “People are not going back. Talent does not want to stay there. It’s like the Beverly Hills Hotel.” [snip] A Weinstein rep told us of its move: “It was simply based on convenience and logistics” rather than “anything to do with Mr. Trump’s politics.” Harvey Weinstein has joked to the Hollywood Reporter that his liberal mom is...

The sharing economy is changing the way we work, live and play. But nowhere have we better seen the benefits of this change than in our transportation and travel. In just a few years, we’ve added Lyft, Uber and SideCar to our zeitgeist for rides and turned to Airbnb for housing when visiting a city. We’ve lovingly termed this change “disruption.” It’s a disruption of industries that have remained relatively unchanged for decades and a disruption craved by us all. We’re turning our cars and homes into valuable assets and facilitating the type of customer experience we all want. Of...

I will be visiting Standford, CA for a few days while my daughter attends a camp. We wish to stay at a hotel within 10 miles or so of campus. I am unfamiliar with the area and do not wish to end up in a poor section of town. When I search for affordable rooms the service tries to put me in Fremont or near the San Jose Airport etc. AS I do not know these areas, I thought I'd ask the advice of some Freepers.

Plans have been unveiled to build the world's largest hotel, which could be open as early as 2017. The Abraj Kudai, will be located in the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, a city visited each year more than 15million Muslims. With twelve 44-story towers containing 10,000 rooms, the hotel, which is being created by multi-national design group Dar Al Handasah will have a total area of 4.6 million square feet.

The Ninawa International Hotel : ISIS propagandists want us to believe it functions almost like a ‘normal’ state, even opening a five-star hotel. But it’s all lies.

Sign me up for a crying room if we get Obama-redux in 2016. Japan is already bracing for Progressive Doomsday. Sure we got campus Safe Zones but nothing like the comfy cozy niches that Japan offers the weak-kneed, faint of heart, reality-averse denizens of the new millennium. I might even need a cuddle cafe to calm my nerves. There are even exciting extra cost optionals allowing you to lock eyes with and hair-stroke your lady cuddlemate. Or I can wander into the Owl Cafe where I can be soothed by fluttering birds or go to Maidreamin where pretty girls dressed...

If the ghosts of Frank Sinatra and Liberace were still hanging around the Riviera Hotel and Casino on Monday morning, they wouldn't have found a seat at the bar. Crowds squeezed onto barstools and milled about the casino floor saying goodbye to "The Riv," a classic that spent 60 years on the Las Vegas Strip and closed at noon. It's an age reached by few properties along the four-mile stretch of hulking casino resorts mimicking other worldly landmarks or beckoning passers-by with all their wants in one place that have replaced Sin City's recent past.

If you’ve ever wanted to sleep with a giant lizard — and let’s face it, you only live once — one Japanese hotel has just the thing with its soon-to-be opened Godzilla Room. Hotel Gracery in Tokyo’s buzzing Shinjuku entertainment district offers the chance to catch some shuteye under the watchful gaze of a man-sized atomic mutant as he stomps on a miniature version of Tokyo in the corner of your room. For those extra-unsettling dreams, a giant Godzilla hand, complete with razor-like claws, looms over the twin beds to ensure you get maximum value from the ¥39,800 a night...