Hotel employee jailed for having Sex with guest

(Hospitality Business News) December 30, 2010 - According to local reports a South African hotel employee who was working in Dubai was sentenced December 28, 2010 to six months in jail for having sex with a guest and getting an abortion when she became pregnant.

The woman was charged with committing zina, the Sharia offence of having sex outside of wedlock, and of aborting a 4 month old fetus. The maximum sentence is 100 lashes and five years in prison.

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Court detains three in hotel fraud

 (Hospitality Business News) December 30, 2010 - - - According to reports a Nigerian court has ordered three persons remanded in custody for their alleged involvement in a failed deal to construct a 5-star hotel in Minna.

The accused persons, Tanko Angulu, Mohammed Balaba, and Musa Wara, through SOCACIC West Africa Ltd, signed an MOU with the Niger State government to build a 5 star hotel with a total cost of N25 billion (US$ 165,000,000).

The Commissioner of Justice stated that once the MOU was signed the Government released it’s portion of the “counterpart fund” to the contractor. An amount of N500 million (US$3.3M). The Commissioner further explained that the contractors failed to start the project.

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Hard Rock Hotel hit with $500,000 fine over drugs

Even after Nevada casinos were warned that drug use and other illegal activity wouldn't be tolerated in nightclubs and other venues, Las Vegas Hard Rock hotel-casino employees and supervisors broke the law by selling drugs and providing private restrooms so patrons could have sex and take drugs.
That's according to the state Gaming Control Board, which filed a complaint against the hotel-casino Wednesday.

Without admitting or denying the allegations, the Hard Rock agreed to settle the matter by paying a $500,000 fine and paying $75,000 apiece to the Gaming Control Board and Metro Police to cover investigative costs.

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Police suspect a second case of arson in less than 24 hours

Police are investigating a suspicious fire at an Italian restaurant in Saint-Leonard, the second suspected case of arson at a restaurant in less than 24 hours.
The first floor of a commercial building housing Ristorante Rimi at 8760 Pascal Gagnon St was apparently set ablaze at around 8:45 p.m. Wednesday evening.
Firefighters found two broken windows in the rear and Montreal police say the back door of the building was broken into.
A resident saw smoke coming from the restaurant and called the fire department, allowing them to quickly get the fire under control before it spread to the second floor of the building.
The incident came one night after another suspected firebombing at Café Calypso in Montreal North just after midnight very early Wednesday morning.

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Primm hotel furnished from bankrupt Vegas casino

Dressers, chairs and night stands once destined for the Las Vegas Strip have been moved to a casino near the California-Nevada border after its owners bought the furnishings from billionaire Carl Icahn.

Furnishings sold from the shuttered Fontainebleau Las Vegas project are now in Buffalo Bill's, a casino-hotel along Interstate 15 in Primm. Even some of the carpeting intended for the Fontainebleau has been installed in the corridors of the 1,242-room hotel at Buffalo Bill's.

The furniture cost about $1.5 million, part of a nearly $3 million remodeling of Buffalo Bill's, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The casino about 40 miles southwest of Las Vegas shut down last month to remodel guest rooms, add a Denny's Restaurant and introduce an energy efficiency program. It reopened Dec. 23.

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Elbit Imaging sells stakes in 3 London hotels

Elbit Imaging Ltd. (Nasdaq: EMITF; TASE: EMIT) today sold its holdings in three London hotels for ₤21 million to its partner in them, Park Plaza Hotels Ltd. (AIM:PPH). The deal comes a day after it bought seven shopping centers in the US.

Elbit Imaging, controlled by chairman Mordechai Zisser owned 45% of the Park Plaza Riverbank Hotel and the Park Plaza Sherlock Holmes Hotel and 50% of the Park Plaza Victoria Hotel. Park Plaza, controlled by chairman Eli Papouchado, manages the hotels. Park Plaza will also assume Elbit Imaging's ₤11.9 million guarantees to Aareal Bank AG.

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London's Grosvenor House hotel sold for GBP 470M

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Private-equity firm buys controlling stake in Noodles & Co.

Broomfield-based Noodles & Co. has sold a controlling stake in the chain to private-equity investment firm Catterton Partners of Greenwich, Conn.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Restaurant analysts said the deal will allow Noodles, already on a fast growth curve, to open more outlets.
The chain operates in 18 states with 255 locations — more than twice the number of restaurants it owned five years ago. The first Noodles outlet opened in 1995 in Cherry Creek.

The company will continue to be based in Broomfield and will operate with the same management team.

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Restaurants won't be celebrating this New Years

The bubbly may sparkle on New Year's Eve at the nation's restaurants, but business itself is expected to be essentially flat — despite signs the economy is improving.

Nationwide, restaurants are expecting a 1% drop in patrons Dec. 31 compared to last year. That's about the same amount of decline in business for all of 2010, according to the NPD Group.

Todd Johnson, general manager of Lawry's the Prime Rib in Beverly Hills, said his restaurant is offering patrons a champagne toast at midnight, but no extravagant party.

"Eating out is for the most part discretionary income," Johnson said. "And discretionary income is pretty discretionary these days for many of us."

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Judge narrows Hilton race discrimination suit but allows it to move ahead

A federal judge has allowed the heart of a racial discrimination lawsuit by dozens of black guests against the Hilton Scranton & Conference Center to move forward.

The Dec. 20 ruling by Senior U.S. District Judge A. Richard Caputo granted the hotel's request for immediate dismissal of three civil rights claims, but left intact one claim because the 68 plaintiffs produced enough evidence to show they might have been victims of discrimination.

A trial is expected to start in February.

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Police seize 'tomahawk' suspect at Sydney Hilton

Police have arrested a man inside an upmarket Melbourne hotel who was earlier seen blood-soaked and allegedly carrying a tomahawk.
Heavily armed police wearing bullet-proof vests and helmets entered the Hilton Hotel on South Wharf this morning and arrested a 45-year-old Melbourne man who was staying as a guest.
The blood-soaked man holed himself up in a room at the Hilton after he reportedly attacked a car with a tomahawk.

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Police standoff at Oklahoma Clarion

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Oklahoma City Police are still trying to convince a man barricaded inside a hotel room to surrender, more than 12 hours after a standoff began.

The standoff started just after midnight Wednesday when officers went to The Clarion Hotel at N.W. 63rd Street and Robinson.  They were searching for a fugitive from Cleveland County, but it turned out that suspect was already back in jail.

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LaSalle bails on Chicago hotel plan

Bethesda-based LaSalle Hotel Properties has sold several floors in a landmark Chicago skyscraper it bought two years ago with the intention of converting it into a luxury hotel and will take a loss on the investment.

LaSalle, through a joint venture named Modern Magic Hotel LLC, acquired 12 floors of the 52-story IBM Building at 330 N. Wabash Ave. in March 2008 from Prime Group Realty Trust for $46 million. It was the majority stakeholder in the joint venture, with Oxford OG Hospitality Chicago holding a 5 percent stake.

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Baltimore Four Seasons hotel project moving ahead

Baltimore's $197 million Four Seasons Hotel is on target to open by late 2011 with partial financing from the proceeds of $45 million in tax-exempt bonds issued by the Maryland Industrial Development Financing Authority.

Representatives for the state and the hotel developers said PNC Bank is purchasing the state-issued bonds and that the proceeds will be loaned to the developer so that it can complete the 18-story, 256-room luxury hotel in Harbor East. Affiliates of John Paterakis' H&S Properties Development Corp. are the developers.

MIDFA held a public hearing on the bond sale Wednesday morning, and the settlement is scheduled for Thursday. According to H&S Vice President Michael Ricketts, the hotel project is expected to create 1,273 construction jobs and 577 full-time jobs.
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Another Montreal restaurant firebombed

The epidemic of suspicious fires in restaurants and coffee shops continued as the Café Calypso in Montreal North was hit by a firebomb just after midnight very early Wednesday morning.
The café, on Forest St. near the corner of Bellevois St., was empty at the time of the attack and no one was injured.
The attack took place at about 12:50 a.m. when a passerby saw some flames coming out of the building and quickly dialled 9-1-1. Firefighters required little time to get the fire under control, and the damage was limited to the furniture inside.
Firefighters noticed that a heavy object had been thrown through the window of the restaurant to facilitate throwing some sort of firebomb into the restaurant.

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