Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has a habit of acquiring and nationalizing various businesses from gold mines to factories. This week he ordered the "acquisition by force" of a the Hilton Hotel on Venezuela's Margarita island. The resort hotel includes a 590-foot freeform swimming pool, casino, gym and a white sand beach.The hotel also includes the La Scala Restaurant and a bar. It has 280 rooms and 154 time-share suites. The hotel was recently the site of the Africa-South America Summit which was attended by Muammar Gadhafi (who set up his often controversial luxury tent on the beach), Robert Mugabe and others.

A few years ago, the government seized and rebranded a Hilton in Caracas. Now known as Hotel Alba it has been used to entertain Chavez supporters from around the world. The Wall Street Journal quotes Karla Visconti, a spokeswoman for Hilton Worldwide, who said the company "is evaluating how the Venezuelan government's action affects its interest in this hotel." While the Hilton manages the hotel, it does not own it. Last year, a law in Venezuela was passed which referred to the tourism industry as "public interest," setting the stage for nationalization efforts when it comes to hotels and resorts.

It looks like corporate espionage has sunk the fledgling Denizen Hotels brand. Hilton Hotel Corp. has announced that it has received a federal grand jury subpoena for documents regarding two former employees of Starwood hotels who switched camps and brought their trade secrets with them. Starwood has sued Hilton saying that Hilton used privileged information in the development of the Denizen brand. The employees, Ross Klein and Amar Lalvani have been placed on paid administrative leave pending review. The Denizen Hotel website is down and Hilton has announced that the development of the brand has been "temporarily suspended." Will the brand be resurrected after the case sorts itself out? My guess is that Hilton will rebrand the hotels as something else.

Wealthy socialites in London love to party just as much as those here in the U.S., but now it seems they've found a way to step things up by getting around that pesky "closing time" obstacle: they hop into a private jet and fly to a different time zone. What makes this interesting is that they aren't hopping into their own personal private jets, they're "jet-pooling" in planes operated by The Private Jet Club that are coordinated through Whisky Mist, a new club at Hilton's Zeta bar.

Even if they're continuing to party on the planes I can hardly imagine still being up for more by the time the plane lands in New York or Rio (the most popular destinations), but then I'm not a wealthy socialite with nothing else to do but fly around the world looking for a good time!

Usually children follow in the footsteps of their parents, but in the case of the Hiltons one parent is following in those of her children: Kathy Hilton has her own fragrance. Called "My Secret" it comes in a very pretty jewel-like bottle (a pink heart though? Come on) and has top notes of mandarin, freesia, and peony, middle notes of rose, jasmine, and apricot leaf, and bottom notes of sandalwood, vanilla musk, and sandalwood. Available at Macy's for $52-$68 (FYI this version of the bottle featuring Kathy's signature is a limited edition).

BONUS: Register at KathyHiltonFragrance.com to win one of 20 vintage roller-ball heart 1.0 fl oz bottles of the Eau de Parfum or the Grand Prize of a Mother's Day brunch for you and your daughter with Kathy Hilton and her two daughters.

While not as dramatic perhaps as other city skylines, Boston's view from above has its own charms. Experience them with the new Fly Above Boston package from Hilton hotels. The package is available through five different Hilton and Doubletree hotels in the Boston area and includes an overnight stay, transportation to the Aquarium for pick up, then a helicopter ride above Boston and an 11 Lighthouse tour for two followed by dinner for two at a hilltop golf club overlooking Boston. The package starts at $1,600 per couple.

With airline miles the rewards are pretty clear, more miles generally equals free trips or the highly desirable first class upgrades, but what do you get for hotel reward points? The answer is more complex than you might think. The Wall Street Journal recently chronicled some of the more extravagant offers available to those with a large amount of hotel points. For example, Michael and Georgia Soares used their huge amount of Starwood Hotels & Resorts points to spend one night with John Travolta and the cast of the movie "Hairspray" at the film's New York premiere.

Loyal hotel chain customers sitting on a stack of points are in a good position as major hotel companies such as Starwood, Global Hyatt Corp., Hilton Hotels Corp., and InterContinental Hotels Group now offer customers enrolled in their loyalty programs the option to spend their points on "unique experiences" rather than just getting free nights or room upgrades.

Why are hotels offering these types of programs? One reason is that they want to create more loyalty and good publicity for their programs. Another reason may be that these once-in-a-lifetime offers often use up a lot of points. As customers rack up more points. hotels lose more money on points programs. As the WSJ article explains it, hotel companies often don't own many of their own properties, an independent party owns the building and manages the property under the hotel brand. The independent party must be paid for all of those free nights . A special fund is set up to pay the costs of potential redemptions of points and a hotel brand must make sure that the fund has enough money if all points get cashed in. Of course the VIP experiences also cost the hotels money.

The Starwood program is unique in that they have an online auction system that lets members to bid for experiences in online auctions. It's a pretty clever gimmick since it combines the "something for nothing" feeling of redeeming points along with the competitive thrill of online bidding. These types of experience trips also may help lure the traveler who earns his points on business travel into spending his points and his vacation time with the same hotel chain.

When is the last time you took a bath in a hotel room? Not a shower, but a real down-in-the-tub bath? I appreciate a good soak as much as anybody, but with the busy schedules we all have, showers just make more sense. And when you're traveling, something most people don't have is all kinds of time to waste in the bathroom. The statistics agree, saying that for whatever reason, only 2% of people ever use the tub in hotels.

Now resorts are another story altogether, but I totally get why many hotels (the Hilton is one in particular) are looking at doing away with the bathtub altogether. What do you think, should high-end hotels continue to offer them just in case, or is it reasonable that they do away with them?

When most average people think about where they're going to spend their birthday it's usually about finding the right balance between somewhere special but still affordable. We all love to splurge and spend extra money on special occasions to have a great party, but what if the parties were offering to pay you to come celebrate with them? That would change things, wouldn't it?

Such is the life of Paris Hilton. For her 24th birthday 3 years ago she was reportedly offered $200,000 to spend her birthday celebration at PURE, a nightclub in Caesar's Palace. That offer trumped the deal she'd been taking advantage of in previous years to spend her birthday at a rival club in the Bellagio hotel-casino, where they provided her with free private jet transportation to and from, a free room, a free gourmet meal, and of course free drinks.

Must be rough.

So what hasn't Paris Hilton done yet? Designed her own shoe line! The heiress will soon be adding one more industry onto her "been there, done that" list (it's gotta be a novel if she actually has one), and that's footwear. Early next year Paris Hilton Footwear is scheduled to launch thanks to a recently signed licensing agreement with Antebi Footwear Group. Paris was quoted as saying "My goal is to create a stylish and fun fashion line from head to toe."

Alrighty then. I'm curious to see what she comes up with, although I'm sure they'll be cute and stylish. The Paris Hilton Footwear collection will supposedly include something for everybody, meaning everything from stilettos to wedges to flats.

Whether she's doing it by accident or it's all part of some carefully calculated master plan I have no idea, but whatever Paris is doing it's working! She really has built herself an empire, and (gasp) now has the opportunity to teach others how she did it. The Learning Annex has reportedly offered Paris $1 million dollars to teach a 1 hour class called "How to Build Your Brand." That much money puts her behind only Donald Trump ($1.5 mil) in the company's history of paid guest teachers.

I guess here is where 'by accident' or 'carefully calculated' really becomes important -- can you tell us how and why you do what you do, Paris? I'll grab my notebook.

The Lake Las Vegas Resort is expanding by leaps and bounds. Already home to a Ritz-Carlton, the Loews Lake Las Vegas Resort and the charming MonteLago Village Resort, the resort will now have a 200-Unit Hilton Grand Vacations timeshare resort and a 50-Unit Waldorf=Astoria fractional project. The project will be developed on a 17.5 acre lakefront parcel overlooking the 17th hole and the 18th tee of the Jack Nicklaus-designed Reflection Bay Golf Course. The Waldorf=Astoria project at Lake Las Vegas Resort is the first fractional lodging product to be developed by Hilton (we mentioned the creation of this brand last year). Development of the project is currently in the design phase, with groundbreaking targeted for early 2008 and an opening date projected for fall of 2009.

We already knew that Nicky Hilton was planning to launch her own hotel chain, but now the hotel heiress officially has an opening scheduled for the first in a chain of boutique hotels. Nicky O (her middle name is Olivia) will open its doors this November in South Beach, Florida. Hilton is a self-described fashionista and her intent is to have her hotels focus on design and designers. In keeping with this, she has had several famous designers decorate the suites. Roberto Cavalli will be doing the 5,000-sq. foot penthouse in the SoBe hotel in a gold theme that mimics his retail stores.

A second location is tentatively scheduled to open in Chicago in December, with 3 or 4 more locations to follow.

[via WWD]

Paris Hilton just purchased a Tuscan-style home in the Hollywood Hills for roughly $3.1 million. The house, in a gated community not too far from Cameron Diaz's pad, is loaded with posh extras, including a $43,000 Baccarat crystal chandelier in the lounge, a very classy $20,000 mirrored, four-poster bed and a 400-sq foot closet for her vast wardrobe.

The most unusual part of the home is actually the pets' living area. There is a special gated section inside the house where Paris's dogs will sit on pink pillows and drink from pink bowls. Each dog has its own personal crown, as well. Not one to exclude any of her pets, Paris has also commissioned a custom cage for her monkey, though the last time we heard about the monkey, it was supposedly being confiscated by Los Angeles officials.

Not content with making handbags and clothes for her Chick by Nicky Hilton line, Paris's sister Nicky is thinking of getting into the hotel game. Nicky is planning her own boutique hotel line. The NY Daily News reported that the hotel heiress has been in talks with promoter and former Madonna gal pal Ingrid Casares and interior decorator Faye Resnick. Hilton's manager, Paul Fisher has said that she is checking out locations in Miami, Chicago and San Francisco. Given that Nicky's fashion designs are generally glittery T-shirts, hoodies and sweatpants it will be interesting to see what her visions for a hotel are.

Though there is still time to spare before summer, it might be difficult to get a reservation at one of the Travel Channel's picks for most expensive hotel suites. When you are spending upwards of $4,000 a night, however, the "necessity" of reservations may just turn out to be a minor inconvenience. Here is the list, with the rates listed per night:

10. Coco Chanel Suite, Hotel Ritz, Paris - $4,300 to stay in the room that Coco herself lived in for 37 years.
9. Presidential Suite, Beverly Hills Hotel, Beverly Hills - $4,700 for a chef, butler, kitchen, grand piano and a chance to live like the stars
8. Peninsula Suite, The Peninsula, Hong Kong - $4,875, including butler service and a chauffeured Rolls Royce
7. Royal Suite, The Lanesborough, London - $5,837, with private security and personal butlers for the 3 bedroom suite with a floor-to-ceiling view of Hyde Park
6. Royal Suite, Burj Al Arab, Dubai - $6,800 to stay in the world's tallest hotel, with a private screening room, views of the ocean and use of the hotel's helipad