Disney Cruise Line names new ships
Disney Cruise Line will name its two new ships the Disney Dream and the Disney Fantasy. Construction of the 128,000-ton ships, set for deliveries in 2011 and 2012, began this month at Germany’s Meyer Werft shipyard. Disney called the names “a natural choice for our ships.”
W brand debuts in Middle East
Starwood’s W brand made its debut in the Middle East with the opening of the W Doha Hotel & Residences in Qatar’s capital city near the City Center mall. The W Doha has 291 guestrooms and 154 residences. Amenities include a Bliss spa, a poolside shisha lounge and a champagne bar.
Oceania lays keel of first newbuild
Construction began on Oceania Cruises’ first newbuild, the 1,252-passenger Marina, at a Fincantieri shipyard near Genoa, Italy. Frank Del Rio, CEO of Prestige Cruise Holdings, Oceania’s parent, welded a U.S. silver dollar and a pre-Castro silver Cuban peso into the keel for good luck, a maritime tradition. The Marina, the first of the line’s new Oceania-class vessels, will have six open-seating restaurants.
Sabre deal adds GDS hotel content
Sabre is boosting its global GDS hotel content under a deal with German hotel aggregator hotel.info (hotel.de in Germany), bringing Sabre and GetThere users direct access to 210,000 hotel properties via a new XML connection.
Moscow to host Holiday Inn giant
InterContinental Hotels Group signed a deal to open the world’s biggest Holiday Inn in Moscow in 2014, a 1,000-room hotel in the city’s developing Krasnogorsk area. The hotel will have 27,000 square feet of meetings space. The biggest Holiday Inn today is the Chengdu Century City in China with 965 rooms.
Firms offer agents hotel payment tool
TravelClick, a provider of hotel e-commerce systems, and Worldwide Payment Systems, a travel-industry payment processor, teamed up to offer a system to track payment of commissions earned on GDS hotel bookings. The partners said the service will include automated payment processing, tracking and reconciliation for agent commission payments through TravelClick’s iHotelier res system. Hotels will handle payments through the WPS Web portal.
American to Love: Yes, but not now
American signed a 17-year lease at Dallas Love Field. However, American Eagle will suspend its Love Field-Chicago (Midway) service June 11 due to terminal renovations, due to be completed in 2013.
Accounting vendor adds pay tracking
TravCom, an agency accounting vendor, said it would give its customers access to eCommission Solutions’ Kalypso commission consolidation, recovery and reporting program for hotel, car and other nonair sales. Kalypso captures GDS data and integrates with TravCom.
Friends & Colleagues
Hotel industry veteran Michael Leven has been named president of the Las Vegas Sands Corp. Leven, a board member, was tapped after William Weidner resigned from the troubled company. Leven has spent near half a century in the hospitality industry. He was president and CEO of U.S. Franchise Systems, the company he founded in 1995 that developed and franchised the Microtel Inns & Suites and Hawthorn Suites hotel brands. He previously was president and COO of Holiday Inn Worldwide, president of Days Inn of America and president of Americana Hotels. • • • Langham Hotels International appointed Brett Butcher CEO. Butcher’s international hospitality management experience spans 30 years. For the past seven years, he has held several senior roles within Langham Hotels International including those of senior vice president of sales, marketing and brands, as well as senior vice president of Langham Place Operations. • • • Norwegian Cruise Line has named Camille Olivere vice president of sales. She replaces Terri Burke, who is leaving NCL. Olivere joins NCL from Travelport, where she was vice president of sales for the company’s global e-commerce division. • • • Carlson Wagonlit Travel announced the retirement of two executive vice presidents, Rob Deliberto and Scott Guerrero. Deliberto joined Carlson Travel in 1990. Guerrero joined CWT through its 2004 acquisition of Maritz Corporate Travel. • • • Intrawest has named John Russell senior vice president of operations at Sandestin Golf and Beach Resort in Destin, Fla. He will be responsible for all aspects of Sandestin’s resort operations. He will also oversee Intrawest’s management of the Marriott Courtyard and Marriott Residence Inn in Sandestin as well as Cottage Rental Agency in Seaside.