Hotel news: £75 Melia cashback with Amex, W Florence, Hampton Venice, Kimpton Frankfurt

Hotel news in brief:

Get £75 cashback at Melia Hotels & Resorts

Via a new American Express promotion, Melia Hotels & Resorts is offering £75 cashback on a £300+ transaction by 31st July. Cumulative spend is OK.

As usual, you need to check the ‘Offers’ tab of each American Express card you hold to see if it is showing, and then click ‘Save to Card’.

The list of participating hotels is surprisingly small – given the size of the chain – but includes properties in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Malta, Spain (lots in Spain, unsurprisingly) and the UK.

Only three of the UK hotels are included. These are ME London on the Strand, image below, the art deco Melia White House by Regents Park and Melia London Kensington, a townhouse hotel which is 30 seconds walk from Gloucester Road tube station.

Some hotels may also appear on the current ‘£100 back on £600’ offer with Leading Hotels of the World, which would allow you to douple dip.

If you have American Express Platinum you can get free Gold status in MeliaRewards.

One of the benefits of Gold status is a number of ‘20% off’ vouchers for cash bookings which are deposited in your MeliaRewards account each year. These discounts would stack with the cashback.

W Florence hotel opening on 15th July

The W Florence hotel has been an ‘under the radar’ project for Marriott – we’ve never mentioned it and I can’t remember ever reading about it until recently. However, the hotel is now taking bookings for an opening in two months.

It is located in the Piazza dell’Unitá Italiana by the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella. If you know Florence, it is a conversion of the Grand Hotel Majestic, although as the hotel had sat empty for ten years it will undoubtedly have seen a top-to-toe renovation.

Looking at the photo below (click to enlarge), this is absolutely NOT the ‘party central’ W of old. With just 119 rooms, it is almost a boutique hotel.

It seems fair to say that the transformation of the W brand into a classy venue for wealthy ‘young at heart’ guests is now complete. It feels very close to an EDITION-branded property. The restaurant, for example, is run by Michelin star holder Akira Back who operates three venues at the new Mandarin Oriental Mayfair in London.

You can find out more, and book, on the hotel website here. We will try to take a look soon – we also need to get to the new W Prague too.

Hilton opens Hampton Venice

Hilton has opened Hampton by Hilton Venice Isola Nuova for anyone seeking a lower cost hotel in the city.

Most new build hotels in Venice are built on the mainland, often in Mestre, and require you to take a short train trip or bus each day across the lagoon. This hotel is different.

It is located near Tronchetto Port, which technically puts it on the main island, close to the railway station. However, it isn’t clear how easy it would be to reach the station on foot. The good news is that a number of water buses stop very close. Take a look at the map below.

If anyone who knows Venice better than me has any further information (there is a B&B Hotel very close which you may have visited) then let us know in the comments.

The Hampton Venice website is here.

Kimpton Main Frankfurt opens

Finally in our new hotels round-up, IHG has opened Kimpton Main Frankfurt.

IHG is known to be doing a bit of soul searching about the future of the Kimpton brand due to concerns that it has messed it up. When it was acquired it was an eclectic lifestyle chain with a hardcore bunch of superfans. Skip forward 10 years and IHG is opening a Kimpton-branded hotel on the site of Deutsche Bank’s old HQ in Frankfurt’s financial district.

Let’s be clear – Frankfurt is not exactly rolling in lifestyle hotels and the Bauhaus design touches used here look good. It could well be the best option in the area. It’s just not clear how it adds to the Kimpton ‘story’. However, I suspect in 10 years time we’ll see Hyatt opening The Standard Frankurt Financial District too ….

If Kimpton Main Frankfurt has the style and looks of Kimpton Paris or Kimpton Fitzroy London then it will be great. If it is like the (converted Crowne Plaza) Kimpton Amsterdam or (also converted) Kimpton Aysla Mallorca then it won’t. The fact that the entry level room category is ‘Essential’ and only sleeps one person, with the sq m size not disclosed, is not promising.

You can find out more on this page of the IHG website.