Laurence Geller
Outspoken, very relevant and always ready with a congent message for and about the global hotel industry, Laurence Geller, president and CEO of Strategic Hotels & Resorts, uses humor and controversy to get hoteliers to listen. His HOTELS' Insider blog is intelligent and revealing.
Gas at $76 a barrel;

airlines overbooked;

private plane travel reaching new highs;

GDP remaining healthy;

Wall Street bankers licking their lips over this year’s anticipated gargantuan bonuses;

transient travel strong;

families loading up the cars for trips;

exotic locations flourishing;

safaris so overbooked that the overtaxed animals are perhaps unionizing to try to get a day off from posing for the endless stream of amateur digital photographers;

room rates of US$1,000-plus not unknown;

house prices in the Hampton’s rising as arguments as which family has the best live-in chef rank high on the worry list of the investment bankers who have their obligatory South/East/West Hampton place;

the Dow Jones hitting 14,000;

Gen-X’ers traveling with at least one nanny;

celebrity chef restaurants in hotels flourishing;

boutique hotels becoming so commonplace that all of their design differentials no longer surprise, amaze, excite or even amuse;

a venerated global icon; Hilton, about to be in Blackstone’s stable (even if it is just for a relatively short term);

new lifestyle brands proliferating with the speed of summer allergies;

announcements of endless lists of franchised hotels about to be built numbing the senses;

the words sub-prime being a harbinger of doom for the housing market rather than a quality level for meat;

care for the environment and conservation the new watch word (does this doom designer water in an endless sea of plastic bottles?);
endless money raising for endless presidential primaries;

the Fed Chairman warning about inflation;

the dollar hitting new lows against the pound and the euro;

China and India being touted as the new Nirvana;

and the compound average growth rate for lodging supply being lower than most can remember.

Oh by the way there is still a war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Well, it must be the lazy, hazy, crazy days of a slow summer.