A continuing look on the foray of the hospitality industry into the world of gaming and virtual reality...with Aloft featuring in the game Second Life. Aloft, a product of Starwood Hotels & Resorts made history a couple of months ago when it announced that they'd be building a virtual 'Aloft' hotel in the game. A great resource for those of you interested in following the developments of this fantastic initiative is http://www.virtualaloft.com/

Alex Tew kicked-off the pixel advertising concept and made a million dollars in the process. It's a fact that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery...and successful ideas will yield a ton of imitations. Since the euphoric success of this simple but effective idea, it seems that almost every other webmaster has adopted the concept...perhaps on their way to their dream fortunes. But how many have actually succeeded?

I've even seen hospitality sites starting to adopt the idea, e.g. Hotelier.com (more), some with different approaches like free sections, enlarged views of ads, etc - but overall, most sites that have adopted this technique have very little to show for their enthusiastic efforts. The very reason that the idea was so popular and performed as it did was because no one had done it before...and this generated a tremendous amount of free publicity.

Parsippany, NJ Sep 11, 2006 - Budget Rent A Car System, Inc. today announced that the Dunkin’ Donuts® free coffee promotion is back by popular demand. Budget customers will receive two pounds of Dunkin’ Donuts® coffee free after they’ve completed two qualifying rentals between now and December 15th.

“Last year’s Dunkin’ Donuts free coffee offer was a hit with Budget customers,” said Becky Alseth, senior vice president of marketing for Avis Budget Group, Inc., parent of Budget. “We’re happy to bring the promotion back and reward our loyal customers with something they value and enjoy.”

Anyone who isn't familiar with TED - Technnology Entertainment Design, an annual four-day event held in Monterey, California, attended by over a thosand industry-biggies, movers, shakers, innovators and creative artists. The event is a chance to share ideas, innovations, creativitiy, inspiration and more...all in an effort to build a better future for all of us. Check out www.ted.com for complete details and video snippets. Here is a great video of motivational speaker Tony Robbins at the TED Conference 2006 telling the audience how to unlock your hidden potential.

myTELUS.com and eHotelier report that companies (including Starwood Hotels, Starbucks and Whirlpool among others) are participating in a project called "the Hotel of Tomorrow", to discuss and develop models and ideas for hotel rooms and amenities of the future.

"The hotel of the future may also offer downloadable settings in which guests can choose personalized sounds, aromas and even colours or other visuals. There's even a prototype of a bathtub covered in memory fabric that conforms to your body, and the project predicts that new technologies might create products like regenerating rugs, which repair themselves after guests walk on them.

Another future trend identified by the project involves the construction of pre-fabricated modular hotels that can be embedded in jungles and even oceans, allowing travellers to experience exotic locales without using up or disturbing local resources to create buildings from the ground up."

This is a superb initiative by Gettys, a Chicago design firm, and the Hospitality Design Group and should lead to quite a few interesting concepts and innovations - looking forward to the results of this one! Some of the results will be showcased at the HD Boutique Expo.