new trend! _Nickelodeon Family Suites_

Hotels and BRANDED BRANDS are a match made in heaven: hoteliers know hospitality management (not to mention owning the actual venue), with partner brands providing best-of-the-best experiences and product placements. New and updated developments:

Long in the making, Holiday Inn and Nickelodeon are about to open their first Nickelodeon Family Suites in a few months time. Any child's dream (and some parents' ultimate nightmare ;-), this all singing, all dancing family hotel will combine Holiday Inn's hospitality expertise with Nickelodeon's competence in entertainment. Think having breakfast with SpongeBob SquarePants, water slides and lots of noise.

While Bulgari and Ritz-Carlton are still having fun with their first BRANDED BRANDS hotel in Milan, a second, all-villa resort will open in Bali in late 2005. Can't develop an entire hotel with the Hiltons and Starwoods of this world? Why not start by co-creating a room? The two Californian THE BLOCK hotels located at Lake Tahoe and Big Bear, are the first ever snowboarder hotels (can you say NOUVEAU NICHE?). Rooms sport snowboard racks, pegs, boot dryers, and glove drying racks, as well as CD players, Xbox and PS2 game consoles. The real twist? The hotel's signature BRANDED BRANDS rooms, subliminally designed and equipped by the likes of DVS Shoe Company, Napster (shown above), Transworld Snowboarding Magazine, Flow Bindings, Zoo York, Spy Optic, Section Outerwear, Roxy Clothing, Jones Soda Co, Vivid Video and Marc Frank Montoya. Talk about new forms of brand experience!