A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging, usually on a short-term basis. Hotels often provide a number of additional guest services such as a restaurant, a swimming pool or childcare. Some hotels have conference services and meeting rooms and encourage groups to hold conventions and meetings at their location. Hotels differ from motels in that most motels have drive-up, exterior entrances to the rooms, while hotels tend to have interior entrances to the rooms, which may increase guests' safety and present a more upmarket image. Basic accommodation of a room with only a bed, a cupboard, a small table and a washstand has largely been replaced by rooms with en-suite bathrooms and climate control. Other features found may be a telephone, an alarm clock, a TV, and broadband Internet connectivity. Food and drink may be supplied by a mini-bar (which often includes a small refrigerator) containing snacks and drinks (to be paid for on departure), and tea and coffee making facilities (cups, spoons, an electric kettle and sachets containing instant coffee, tea bags, sugar, and creamer or milk). In the United Kingdom a hotel is required by law to serve food and drinks to all comers within certain stated hours; to avoid this requirement it is not uncommon to come across "private hotels" which are not subject to this requirement. However, in Japan the capsule hotel supplies minimal facilities and room space. The cost and quality of hotels are usually indicative of the range and type of services available. Due to the enormous increase in tourism worldwide during the last decades of the 20th century, standards, especially those of smaller establishments, have improved considerably. For the sake of greater comparability, rating systems have been introduced, with the one to five stars classification being most common. "Boutique Hotel" is a term originating in North America to describe intimate, usually luxurious or quirky hotel environments. Boutique hotels differentiate themselves from larger chain or branded hotels by providing an exceptional and personalized level of accommodation, services and facilities. Boutique hotels are furnished in a themed, stylish and/or aspirational manner. Although usually considerably smaller than a mainstream hotel (ranging from 3 to 100 guest rooms) boutique hotels are generally fitted with telephone and wi-fi Internet connections, honesty bars and often cable/pay TV. Guest services are attended to by 24 hour hotel staff. Many boutique hotels have on site dining facilities, and the majority offer bars and lounges which may also be open to the general public. Of the total travel market a small percentage are discerning travelers, who place a high importance on privacy, luxury and service delivery. As this market is typically corporate travelers, the market segment is non-seasonal, high-yielding and repeat, and therefore one which boutique hotel operators target as their primary source of income. A number of hotels have entered the public consciousness through popular culture, such as the Ritz Hotel in London, UK ('Putting on The Ritz') and Hotel Chelsea in New York City, subject of a number of songs and also the scene of the alleged stabbing of Nancy Spungen by her boyfriend Sid Vicious. Hotels that enter folklore like these two are also often frequented by celebrities, as is the case both with the Ritz and the Chelsea. Other famous hotels include the Beverly Hills Hotel, the Hotel Bel-Air and the Chateau Marmont, in California, USA, Watergate complex in Washington DC ,the Hotel Astoria in Saint Petersburg, Russia, the Hotel George V and Hôtel Ritz in Paris, Palazzo Versace hotel on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, Hotel Hermitage and Hotel de Paris in Monaco (in the French Riviera) and Hotel Leningradskaya in Moscow. Many hotels can be considered destinations in themselves, by dent of unusual features of the lodging and/or its immediate environment. Treehouse hotels Some hotels, such as the Costa Rica Tree House in the Gandoca-Manzanillo Wildlife Refuge, Costa Rica, or Treetops Hotel in Aberdare National Park, Kenya, are built with living trees as structural elements, making them treehouses. The Ariau Towers near Manaus, Brazil is in the middle of the Amazon, on the Rio Negro. Bill Gates even invested and had a suite built there with satellite internet/phone. Another hotel with treehouse units is Bayram's Tree Houses in Olympos, Turkey Cave hotels Desert Cave Hotel in Coober Pedy, South Australia and the Cuevas Pedro Antonio de Alarcón (named after the author) in Guadix, Spain, as well as several hotels in Cappadocia, Turkey, are notable for being built into natural cave formations, some with rooms underground. Capsule hotels Capsule hotels are a type of economical hotels that are quite common in Japan. Ice hotels, such as the Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden, melt every spring and are rebuilt out of ice and snow each winter. Snow hotels The Mammut Snow Hotel in Finland is located within the walls of the Kemi snow castle, which is the biggest in the world. It includes The Mammut Snow Hotel, The Castle Courtyard, The Snow Restaurant and a chapel for weddings, etc. Its furnishings and its decorations, such as sculptures, are made of snow and ice. There is snow accommodation also in Lainio Snow Hotel in Lapland (near Ylläs), Finland. Garden hotels Garden hotels, famous for their gardens before they became hotels, includes Gravetye Manor, the home of William Robinson and Cliveden, designed by Charles Barry with a rose garden by Geoffrey Jellicoe. Underwater hotels As of 2005, the only hotel with an underwater room that can be reached without Scuba diving is Utter Inn in Lake Mälaren, Sweden. It only has one room, however, and Jules' Undersea Lodge in Key Largo, Florida, which requires scuba diving, is not much bigger. Hydropolis is an ambitious project to build a luxury hotel in Dubai, UAE, with 220 suites, all on the bottom of the Persian Gulf, 20 meters (66 feet) below the surface. Its architecture will feature two domes that break the surface and an underwater train tunnel, all made of transparent materials such as glass and acrylic. Other unusual hotels The Library Hotel in New York City is unique in that its ten floors are arranged according to the Dewey Decimal System. The Rogers Centre, formerly SkyDome, in Toronto, Canada is the only stadium to have a hotel connected to it, with 70 rooms overlooking the field. The Burj al-Arab hotel in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, built on an artificial island, is structured in the shape of a sail of a boat.

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Also what I like about Poltava the most, as a young man, is Poltava ladies who are, possibly, the prettiest ladies in the world with long blond hair, sunny smiles and hot shapes. However, for me as for a foreigner, it was a real challenge to book a hotel room as I have found a very little information about hotels Poltava in the internet and the majority of them did not speak English. I also found several travel agencies which offered hotel reservation services but I was pretty confused about their 100% prepayment for hotel reservation as Ukraine was a strange country for me and I was afraid to lose my money due to a lot of fraud cases that happened time to time in the internet with all those fake companies.

However, finally I have reserved a nice hotel and spend a beautiful time in Poltava! Now I will try to tell you about all pros and contras of hotel reservation!

Firstly, I would like to start with discussion about what option is better to choose to reserve a hotel room in Poltava: directly or through travel agent? It is a very contradictory question as in case with agents you should provide a full deposit for reservation. Usually you can pay via Visa, MasterCard online or through PayPal which very convenient.

And in case if you reserve hotel directly from the hotel you can pay either upon your check in or just with a money transfer to their bank account. PayPal as well as Visa/Mastercard are not acceptable, only bank transfer which is very time consuming and inconvenient as you have to covert dollars/euros to hryvyas as hotel accept only hryvnyas (national currency of Ukraine). Also you should pay attention that all hotels in Poltava guarantee 100% reservation of hotel room only in case of 100% prepayment which means if they have a client which complies with their prepayment conditions they will give their preferences to him and when you finally come to Poltava you can find that you have no room available at this moment or available but of superior category which is much more expensive. When I examined this issue I found some posts of a guy who reserved a hotel room directly from the hotel as he spoke bad Russian which was enough for reservation but when he came to Poltava he found no reservation for him and had to live in deluxe suite which was only available at that time for 3 days until a standard room was available again, which was twice expensive for him! Therefore, in this case I will personally recommend you to use travel agent and make sure that this agent is a local one as I had a lot of problems with agents which were located in other cities than a hotel.

Another issue is which hotel to choose while traveling to Poltava. To start with, there are two main hotels in Poltava which are both very nice and both have 4 stars. Their names are Palazzo hotel and Gallery hotel. They are both centrally located, both have very comfortable and modern rooms. The initial price for their rooms starts from $70, therefore, if you budget is enough for these hotels I would recommend you to book one of them as they are really the best in Poltava! Another category of Poltava hotels consists of small private hotels which are very nice in general and are worthy of every penny! These are the following hotels: hotel 'Gold', hotel 'Tourist', hotel 'Yavir'. I have personally stayed in Gold hotel and I should say that I really enjoyed staying there: a large room, luxury leather furniture, a/c, king-size bed, cozy location (park zone) and all this for U.S.$ 50 per a night! A big advantage of this hotel is that you pay for a room but not for a number of persons, therefore, you can live their 2 or 3 people and price will be the same!

If you are a budget traveler, I would recommend you to take Yavir hotel as you can rent a nice room per 1 person just for $27 per a night! It is, probably, the best price/quality ratio hotel in Poltava!

And the final question is how to reserve any hotel in Poltava. I have examined more than 10 travel agents which offered hotel reservation and finally gave my preference to Travel agency 'Welcome to Poltava'. Firstly, it is a local agency which means that you will have no problem in case of any force majeure; secondly, their rates are the best comparing to other travel agents; thirdly, I have found them very helpful as they showed me top interesting place in Poltava, gave a lot of valuable tips and even introduced to some local girls with whom (Lena) I still have a romance!

Also these guys picked me up at Kiev Borispol Airport and transferred me with all my baggage to Poltava!

So if you decide to travel to Poltava my recommendation is Travel Agency 'Welcome to Poltava'

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Sweden Hotel Reservations

The beautiful country of Sweden is located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It is a Nordic country which is surrounded by Norway from the west, Finland from the northeast and Denmark from the south. The capital of this country is Stockholm. This place has a temperate climate. This place is famous for its culture, literature, music, cuisine and historic sites.

If you are planning to visit this place then you can find various hotels located all over the country. You can book hotels in this country in the following ways:

1. Riddargatan Hotel

Riddargatan Hotel is a 4 star hotel which is centrally located in the beautiful Stockholm city. There are 58 well furnished and stylishly decorated guests rooms in this hotel. The guests can sit back and enjoy in the cosy and comfortable environment of this hotel. This hotel offers excellent facilities such as non smoking rooms, daily newspaper, television, bathtub, shower, 24 hour room service, elevator, bar, pub, laundry service, dry cleaning and parking. You can make online booking for this hotel. Your credit card details are required in order to guarantee your booking. But the payment is made exclusively to the hotel at the time of check-out. Once you make a booking, it can not be canceled or changed.

2. Attache Hotel

Attache Hotel is a 3 star hotel which is conveniently located in Cedergrensvagen. There are excellent transportation facilities near to this hotel. This hotel offers outstanding facilities such as non smoking rooms, daily newspaper, television, bathtub, shower, 24 hour room service, elevator, safety deposit box, restaurant, video game, hair dryer, coffee maker, AC, bar, pub, laundry service, dry cleaning and parking. The booking procedure of this hotel is similar to the Riddargatan Hotel. You can book this hotel either through any hotel booking website or through the official website of this hotel.

3. Sundets Parla Hotel

Sundets Parla Hotel is yet another famous hotel over here. It is located in Drottninggatan, Helsingborg. The staff of this hotel is extremely friendly and polite. Advance booking is required in this hotel as it is in great demand. You can also book this hotel through phone. You can book this hotel online to avail some of the best rates. This price is non refundable. It is a great place to stay.

The most popular way of reserving hotels in Sweden is through internet. Well, I hope now you will not face any problem in booking a hotel in this country.

A 150 Year History of Hotels in Cuba

Before going deeper into the origins of the Cuban hotel trade, we have to mention certain aspects of the Cuban history that characterized the opening of the first hotels in Cuba.

It was not until 1762, when Havana was taken by the English that the free trade with other countries started. The English left the island around the second half of 1763 in an exchange of lands with the Spaniards, who possessed Florida, but things would not change much for the rich Cuban people in the sense of trading with other nations. From that period on, Havana became a more prosperous city than ever and in 1818 it was already a free port.

It can be supposed that the flow of visitors to Cuba increased a lot as compared with the past and the lodging capacities were not enough. There were only some inns and boarding houses that were not suitable in the sense of accommodation and services for the traveler.

It was then that the first true hotels in Havana appeared. They were no longer mere lodgings and started to offer services that made the guests' stay more pleasant. New concepts were put into practice, for instance: to offer to the guests the new technical advances that the city enjoyed already.

As an example of this, we can mention the Telegrafo (Telegraph) Hotel founded in 1860 which is considered the oldest extant hotel in Cuba at present. This hotel, although in a different place from today, was located in one of the most popular corners of the city at that moment, Prado and Neptuno. In time, the Telegrafo Hotel would offer an excellent communication service with phones in every room and its own telegraphic service.

Next to the Telegrafo there was the Inglaterra (England) Hotel, also one of the oldest in Cuba. This hotel offered, for the first time, the service "a la carte". Before that, even though there was a restaurant and even the choice of trying good Spanish wines, clients had not had the opportunity to choose what they ate.

Among the firsts hotels built in Cuba is the Santa Isabel, founded in 1867 by an American man. He established it next to the Templete (Shrine) at The Arms Square, in the heart of the old city and afterwards he enlarged it to the former palace of the Santovenia Count where it still offers its fineness to the tourists visiting Havana.

The Santa Isabel was considered the best hotel of the city. It had big airy rooms, restaurant service, etc. The additional advantage of this hotel was the fact that the ladies were assisted by a staff of their same sex, that is to say, the hotel had maid service, something still unknown in Cuba. Besides that, the knowledge of the English language was introduced among the employees, a fact that increased its prestige within the emerging hotel business rivalry.

Another hotel that called the attention because of the exclusivity of its services during the last decades of the 19th century was the Miramar hotel, which no longer exists in our days. It was located just at the exit of the Havana bay in Malecon and Prado. This hotel was the first to establish that the waiters had to wear tuxedo and the employees were not allowed to have moustaches.

With the end of the Spanish rule over the island in 1898 and the establishment of the Republic, the hotel trade horizons widened considerably. The growth of the city and its increased urban assessment that intended to open to the modern world, as well as the increase of the Cuban bourgeoisie economic welfare, made possible the construction of new hotel facilities. But sometimes they did not fit the aspirations of certain guests and it was necessary to have a hotel that would please them, it was built then... the first luxury hotel.

The first hotel that had the requirements demanded at that time to be considered luxurious was the Sevilla hotel, founded in 1908. This hotel and the disappeared Almendares Hotel were the only luxurious hotels in Havana until 1930, when the Hotel Nacional de Cuba was built. We have already talked about this last one in our blog.

At the same time that the world interest on knowing the beauty of the island was growing, attracting a lot of visitors every year, there were other historical events that contributed to the hotel construction in Cuba to a great extent.

One of them was the approval by President Mario Garcia Menocal in 1919 of a law that legalized gambling for tourism purposes. The other one was the establishment in the United States of "The Prohibition" for almost 20 years. By that time, rum, the roulette, gambling and horse racing bets, the Jai Alai and cock fights, made the tourists' stay in Cuba very pleasant. As a result, on that period many hotels were built in Havana. We can mention among them the Palace and the Presidente (The President) in Vedado, and the Ambos Mundos (Both Worlds) and the Florida in the oldest part of the city.

But none of the prosperous periods in the island lasted long. The hotel infrastructure was left behind and there are records by the end of the 40's of last century that evidence it. There were a lot of lodging facilities in the capital and hardly any in the rest of the country. As an interesting fact to understand the above, we may say that the lodging capacity in Cuba at that time was about 5 800 rooms, of which 4000 were in the capital. In Matanzas province, including the afterwards famous beach resort of Varadero, there are records of only 504 rooms. Besides, most of them were old fashioned and inadequate as reported in a Presidential Bill of May, 1948. The building of new facilities was stagnant, in spite of the fact that the number of tourists increased considerably each year. A new turning point on the situation was the arrival to power of Fulgencio Batista in 1952.

Romantic Hotels Review in Poltava

Also what I like about Poltava the most, as a young man, is Poltava ladies who are, possibly, the prettiest ladies in the world with long blond hair, sunny smiles and hot shapes. However, for me as for a foreigner, it was a real challenge to book a hotel room as I have found a very little information about hotels Poltava in the internet and the majority of them did not speak English. I also found several travel agencies which offered hotel reservation services but I was pretty confused about their 100% prepayment for hotel reservation as Ukraine was a strange country for me and I was afraid to lose my money due to a lot of fraud cases that happened time to time in the internet with all those fake companies.

However, finally I have reserved a nice hotel and spend a beautiful time in Poltava! Now I will try to tell you about all pros and contras of hotel reservation!

Firstly, I would like to start with discussion about what option is better to choose to reserve a hotel room in Poltava: directly or through travel agent? It is a very contradictory question as in case with agents you should provide a full deposit for reservation. Usually you can pay via Visa, MasterCard online or through PayPal which very convenient.

And in case if you reserve hotel directly from the hotel you can pay either upon your check in or just with a money transfer to their bank account. PayPal as well as Visa/Mastercard are not acceptable, only bank transfer which is very time consuming and inconvenient as you have to covert dollars/euros to hryvyas as hotel accept only hryvnyas (national currency of Ukraine). Also you should pay attention that all hotels in Poltava guarantee 100% reservation of hotel room only in case of 100% prepayment which means if they have a client which complies with their prepayment conditions they will give their preferences to him and when you finally come to Poltava you can find that you have no room available at this moment or available but of superior category which is much more expensive. When I examined this issue I found some posts of a guy who reserved a hotel room directly from the hotel as he spoke bad Russian which was enough for reservation but when he came to Poltava he found no reservation for him and had to live in deluxe suite which was only available at that time for 3 days until a standard room was available again, which was twice expensive for him! Therefore, in this case I will personally recommend you to use travel agent and make sure that this agent is a local one as I had a lot of problems with agents which were located in other cities than a hotel.

Another issue is which hotel to choose while traveling to Poltava. To start with, there are two main hotels in Poltava which are both very nice and both have 4 stars. Their names are Palazzo hotel and Gallery hotel. They are both centrally located, both have very comfortable and modern rooms. The initial price for their rooms starts from $70, therefore, if you budget is enough for these hotels I would recommend you to book one of them as they are really the best in Poltava! Another category of Poltava hotels consists of small private hotels which are very nice in general and are worthy of every penny! These are the following hotels: hotel 'Gold', hotel 'Tourist', hotel 'Yavir'. I have personally stayed in Gold hotel and I should say that I really enjoyed staying there: a large room, luxury leather furniture, a/c, king-size bed, cozy location (park zone) and all this for U.S.$ 50 per a night! A big advantage of this hotel is that you pay for a room but not for a number of persons, therefore, you can live their 2 or 3 people and price will be the same!

If you are a budget traveler, I would recommend you to take Yavir hotel as you can rent a nice room per 1 person just for $27 per a night! It is, probably, the best price/quality ratio hotel in Poltava!

And the final question is how to reserve any hotel in Poltava. I have examined more than 10 travel agents which offered hotel reservation and finally gave my preference to Travel agency 'Welcome to Poltava'. Firstly, it is a local agency which means that you will have no problem in case of any force majeure; secondly, their rates are the best comparing to other travel agents; thirdly, I have found them very helpful as they showed me top interesting place in Poltava, gave a lot of valuable tips and even introduced to some local girls with whom (Lena) I still have a romance!

Also these guys picked me up at Kiev Borispol Airport and transferred me with all my baggage to Poltava!

So if you decide to travel to Poltava my recommendation is Travel Agency 'Welcome to Poltava'