New York A-Rated Eateries Won't Pay Fines .

Restaurant owners can relax: Those whose establishments earn an A grade at their first or second inspection under the city's letter grading system will no longer pay fines.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the change in his State of the City speech Wednesday, eliciting instant praise from the restaurant industry, which has complained about what it viewed as excessive fines.

"The cost of fines cuts into the tight profit margins that small businesses run," said Mr. Bloomberg during his speech. "So from now on, we will add a new incentive: any restaurant that earns an 'A'—either on its initial inspection or on a re-inspection—will not have to pay one penny in fines for any violations found on that inspection. Not one penny."

Read More:

Tucson restaurant to sell African lion tacos

In the six months since it launched Exotic Taco Wednesdays, Boca Tacos y Tequila has served up python, alligator, elk, kangaroo and rattlesnake.

Frog legs, turtle, duck and Rocky Mountain oysters have also made appearances.

"We've done just about anything we can get our hands on," said owner Bryan Mazon. "Every Wednesday we do something a little bit different."

Last week he announced on Boca's Facebook page that the UA-area taco shop was accepting prepaid orders for African lion, to be served on Feb. 16. Orders must be placed by 3 p.m. Feb. 7.

"I've gotten a lot of questions, like if it's legal," said Mazon, adding that a few lion tacos have been reserved so far. "We're still a month out, too."

Read More:

Accor CFO Says Weaker Euro Lifted 2010 Results

French hotel group Accor SA's (AC.FR) 2010 results benefitted from the lower value of the euro against the dollar, Brazilian real and Australian dollar, its financial chief Sophie Stabile said Wednesday.
The exchange rate boost, along with improved business in Europe, prompted the company to increase its full-year guidance for earnings before interest and tax to around EUR440 million, from a previous target of between EUR400 million and EUR420 million.

Business could be mixed this year, with a recovery underway in the hotel market, but lingering macroeconomic risks, especially in Europe, Stabile added.

The company said full year sales rose 8.4% to EUR5.95 billion as the recovery in the hotels business expanded throughout Europe over the fourth quarter.

Stabile also said that 11% of rooms bought by Accor last year are operated under fixed rents or owned outright, and that 78% are managed under franchise or management contracts. The company is seeking to reduce the proportion of property it owns.

LodgeNet says outlook unchanged as some customers start to phase out Adult content

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--LodgeNet Interactive Corp. (LNET) said Wednesday that it "stands behind its guidance" and doesn't expect to see any impact on debt repayment, following an analyst report that said a hotel-chain customer is phasing out adult video offerings in its rooms.
LodgeNet's shares pared their losses in recent trading, down 17% to $3.42 after earlier falling as low as $2.88 on more than 12 times the average daily volume.

The company, which provides television and Internet services to hospitality and health-care businesses, said the hotel customer's policy change isn't expected to have any impact on its compliance with its debt covenant. A note from Craig-Hallum Capital Group Senior Research Analyst Frank McEvoy said there is an increasing likelihood the company could violate the covenant.

In the note, McEvoy said the firm had learned that one of LodgeNet's largest hotel customers has implemented a policy that prohibits adult video-on-demand movie offerings in its new hotel properties and bans the offerings at existing properties after its contracts with LodgeNet expire.

The firm said that, assuming about 50% of LodgeNet's guest entertainment revenue at these hotels is from adult titles, it estimates the annualized loss of revenue would be about $25 million, a small portion of which may have affected the second and third quarters of 2010.

Read More:

Eat and Run Crimewave Hits London Restaurants

MORE London diners than ever are doing a runner from restaurants without paying the bill, newly uncovered Metropolitan Police figures show.

According to the statistics unearthed by The Independent newspaper, police were called to 330 eat-and-run incidents in London in 2010 compared to 249 in 2009, a rise of some 33%.

It's the first time the 300 barrier has been broken and follows a stable period when, for five years, the figures for restaurant-bill escapees hovered around the 250 mark.

Though the real eat-and-run figure is

Read More:

Yum Brands seeks to sell Long John Silver's, A&W

Louisville-based Yum Brands announced Tuesday that it's seeking to sell off Long John Silver's, which was founded in Lexington, and A&W.
In a statement, the company said it's focusing on its core brands of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC and its international expansion.
"We do not believe Long John Silver's and A&W ... fit into our long-term growth strategy," said CEO David Novak in a statement.
While Yum's brands have more than 37,000 restaurants worldwide, Long John Silver's and A&W account for just 1,630, or 4.4 percent. All of the latter are owned by franchisees, a point that was raised as part of a lawsuit by one of them last year.

Read More:

Red Lion Seattle, Denver hotels for sale

Red Lion Hotels Corp. has hung “For sale” signs on its Denver and Seattle properties as it shifts to a more franchise-based network, President Jon Elliasen said Tuesday.
But he said the company plans to retain management responsibilities for the 297-room Red Lion Hotel Fifth Avenue in Seattle, which will also keep the Spokane-based chain’s brand.
“It’s an important site for us,” he said.
Sale of the hotel was timed, in part, to coincide with a previously announced effort to sell its hotel in southeast Denver, Eliassen said.

Read More:

Bay Area hotel union agrees to pay back benefit funds

Hotel workers enmeshed in an 18-month-long labor standoff agreed to stop diverting money from a union benefit fund to subsidize their longstanding boycott campaign against five of The City’s most prominent hotel chains, a hotel spokesman said Tuesday.

After the National Labor Relations Board brought a legal case against Unite Here Local 2, which represents 12,000 hotel employees in San Francisco and San Mateo counties, the union agreed to reverse its actions and restore the monies to the proper funds with interest, hotel spokesman Pete Hillan said in a written statement.

Read More:

Times are still tough - Oakland hotel owner accused of soliciting arson

The owner of a downtown Oakland residential hotel has been charged in federal court with conspiring to have someone burn it down for insurance purposes, records unsealed Tuesday show.
Richard Earl Singer, 44, was charged Friday in U.S. District Court in Oakland with soliciting an arsonist to burn down the Hotel Menlo at 344 13th St.
Singer told an informant Dec. 28 that he wanted the seven-story hotel "completely totaled to maximize the insurance payout," Special Agent Cynthia Cunningham of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives wrote in a court affidavit.

Read More:

DiamondRock to buy N.Y. hotel

DiamondRock Hospitality Co. of Bethesda has agreed to buy a hotel under construction on West 42nd Street in New York's Times Square.

The company (NYSE: DRH) will pay between $112.5 million to $135 million, or about $450,000 a room, depending on the final number of rooms in the hotel. The numbers of rooms is expected to range from 250 and 300.

If the developers obtain additional permits, the number of rooms could reach 400, and DiamondRock would pay $178 million, or $445,000 per room.

Read More:

Harrogate hotel named best in UK

A Harrogate hotel has been declared the 'Best of British' for the second year running.

Rudding Park was voted the best hotel in the UK at the ninth annual Travellers' Choice hotel awards.
The awards are based on the ratings that individual properties have received on the TripAdvisor website which includes reviews by customers.
The independent hotel was the only property in Yorkshire to make the top 25.

Read More:

Baseball player, 14, dies after leaping from tenth floor of Sheraton

A freshman baseball player stunned his team-mates by jumping to his death from the 10th floor of a hotel.
Matthew Mezza, 14, suddenly left in the middle of baseball practice and dashed across the street to a nearby hotel in Santa Monica, California.
The next thing his shocked friends saw was the teenager throwing himself off the balcony of the Sheraton-Delfina Hotel.

Read More: