Marriott has announced a new brand within their global portfolio that will bring distinctive hotels under the Marriott umbrella. The Autograph Collection will be a new brand comprised of upper upscale and luxury independent hotels around the world focusing on major cities and resort destinations. The collection is designed to offer the individuality of an independent hotel with the assurance of the Marriott brand.

The brand plans to add approximately 25 hotels through 2010 with locations throughout the world. Each hotel will go through the same hotel and operator approval processes as other Marriott full-service hotels and the Autograph Collection will be affiliated with the Marriott Rewards guest loyalty program.

USA Today has more details on the collection including the information that Marriott is in talks with 12 to 15 hotels about being part of the Autograph Collection. The brand launches at a time when many great independent hotels are struggling due to the economy so Marriott plans to target higher-end hotels that have opened recently but might be facing hard times. Hotels that become part of the collection will benefit from Marriott's worldwide network.

If you love hotel beds this is your month to buy. Two hotel brands are hosting retail sales. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Heavenly Bed, Westin Hotels & Resorts is kicking off a two-week sale on its entire retail line with 25 percent off Heavenly Beds, travel blankets, new bath amenities, White Tea scent products, and more. The sale runs from August 24-September 7 at www.westin.com/store. Marriott's bed is also on sale for two weeks. It is listed at 20 percent off from August 14-27 at www.shopmarriott.com. Now if only I could find someone to make my bed as nicely as they do in the hotels.

Many hotels are phasing out the Bible in hotel rooms and phone books have been disappearing too. The latest paper to leave is the morning newspaper outside your door. Marriott International Inc. will be changing their newspaper program. Guests can choose if they want USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, a local paper or no paper at all. Marriot Reward members can select their newspaper preference in their online profiles and other guests will be asked when they check in.

The Marriott hotels participating will be Marriott Hotels & Resorts, JW Marriott Hotels & Resorts and Renaissance Hotels & Resorts. Other hotels under the Marriott umbrella including Courtyard, Fairfield Inn, SpringHill Suites, Residence Inn and TownePlace Suites hotels will offer free newspapers in their lobbies. The new program will cut distribution by an estimated 18 million papers a year.

The move will cut down on waste and expense but it's bad news for newspapers, especially USA Today which has long been the paper you are most likely to see when you open your hotel room door. Most people these days are getting their news from their laptops, smartphones or the television before they even head down to breakfast so this may not be a noticeable change for many.

Ahead of its federal bankruptcy hearing the Greenbrier Resort has released financial statements that give an interesting look at the resort. The records reveal personal property totaling nearly $44 million and real property worth $97.6 million. But it's the details that delight. The Beretta white onyx shotguns worth $6,666, the $205 fudge warmer, the $3,740 pig cooker and two white-tail deer heads worth a total of $500 give a picture of the idiosyncratic nature of this resort which has entertained presidents, royalty and the rich for generations. The fact that this is a resort with a collection of linens worth $649,000 and a fleet of golf carts worth nearly $253,000 is no surprise to those who have enjoyed its uniquely aristocratic charms.

Attorneys for the 6,500-acre resort will appear before U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin R. Huennekens in Richmond on Wednesday and railroad company CSX Crop is looking to move forward on the planned deal with Marriott. The deal should help ensure that Greenbrier stays afloat without losing its self-contained, world-apart style.

Back in January, I wrote about the trouble befalling the historic Greenbrier resort in West Virginia. The luxury resort, which is a National Historic landmark property, lost $35 million last year and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy amid heavy debt.

The Greenbrier, which is owned by railroad company CSX has worked out a deal with the Marriott hotel chain. CSX will lend Marriott $50 million to operate the luxurious four-star resort for two years and then Marriott will repay that loan and give CSX between $60 million and $130 million within seven years depending on the resort's financial performance. The deal allows the resort to stay open and saves it from a worse fate, it could have ended up in Donald Trump's hands.

For the last few years it's been build, build, build in growing Austin, Texas but the Austin American-Statesman reports that Austin's biggest hotel project, a planned 1,000-room Marriott on Congress Avenue has now been postponed. The $275 million project is the largest project among eight hotels had been planned for downtown. It's just one of several projects having trouble getting and keeping financing. Construction of the 26-story Marriott originally was to have started this year, was then shifted to 2009 and now there is now start date planned.

The developer, White Lodging Services Corp. had said the 1,000-room hotel would generate 600 jobs and $7 million a year in property and hotel occupancy taxes to the city. The proposed project was the subject of some controversy because it meant closing the popular Las Manitas Cafe.

The article in the Statesman reports that some developers are planning to wait a year or two until the economy improves which may mean a bumper crop of condos and hotels in 2011.

When it comes to fighting global warming and preserving the rainforests Marriott certainly gets points for trying, although how they're choosing to go about that effort is pretty surprising. Instead of doing what most hotel and resort chains do (switch to eco-friendly energy sources and recycle recycle recycle) they've hooked up with the Brazilians and are going to start paying villagers in the Amazon to not cut down trees. Of course it's a lot more complicated than just sending some Amazonians a check for every day they refrain from logging illegally, but apparently that's the essence of the new deal. Strange? Yes. A marketing scheme? Yes. Over-all still beneficial to the environment? Yes. I say good for them.

Chicago's "Hotel of Presidents," has opened as The Blackstone, a 332-room luxury Renaissance brand hotel. The Blackstone has had many famous guests including a dozen U.S. presidents, including Franklin Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman and John Kennedy. The $128 million renovation of the 23-story, Beaux-Arts building includes a collection of over 1600 original artworks, primarily by Chicago artists, is on permanent display throughout the guestrooms and public spaces of The Blackstone. The hotel has updated the traditional lobby rich with gilded details , French walnut paneled walls and brilliant chandeliers with an avant garde video-generated computer art piece. The artist, Lincoln Schatz, installed a robotic camera on The Blackstone's rooftop and programmed it to transmit changing views of Chicago's lakefront on side-by-side 50" plasma television screens located above the guest check-in pods. All rooms are equipped with a flat screen television, two-line telephone with data port, voice mail, mini bar, fine Chaz Stevens linens, complimentary in-room coffee, hairdryer and bathrobes as well as high-speed internet access (for an unreasonable $12.95 per day).

The hotel also includes ample meeting space, a health club, and a business center. There is also a "hotel within a hotel" concept, Hubbard Place, a previously unfinished space under The Blackstone's porthole-accented mansard roof that once housed mechanical equipment was transformed into the 23d floor Hubbard Place, which contains a lounge, two private boardrooms and a series of luxury suites, all overlooking Lake Michigan. Rates start in the high $200s per night for basic rooms.

In a capitalistic market like ours in the U.S. competition encourages industries to try new directions to attract more consumers. The hotel market is no different -- Marriott, Wyndham, Omni, etc. -- they are transforming lobbies into cozy cafes and enticing lounges offering guests a new experience without having to leave the premises. With such amenities as Wi-Fi, appetizers with international flair and cozy leather chairs surrounding posh fireplace settings, travelers no longer have to seek out options away from their lodging. I find this especially appealing as I tend to travel alone and feel a bit sheepish about sitting in the restaurant all alone. Pitiful I know.

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.

The Detroit Free Press has an interesting article on the JW Marriott Grand Rapids, a $100 million, 24-story luxury hotel set to open this week. The hotel has 337 rooms including the Founders Suite which rents for $2,500 a night. it is hoped that the new hotel will help the city compete for convention and meetings business. The Free Press resorts that the hotel had orginally planned to turn the 19th floor into a women-only enclave. The idea was shelved after criticism and the 19th floor rooms which include amenities such as a shaving stool in the bathtub for legs, ionic hair dryers and soft chenille bedspreads will now be open to both sexes. All rooms include a Steelcase office chair and a technology pack so that the 37-inch flat screen TV in the room can be used as a computer monitor or gaming screen.

The main theme of the hotel relates the the five cities of Grand Rapids: Omihachiman, Japan; Perugia, Italy; Bielsko-Biala, Poland; Ga District, Ghana, and Zapopan, Mexico. The rooms and public areas feature photographic images of these cities as well as artwork created by artists from these cities. The Mixology lounge on the 23rd floor which will feature an iPod DJ some nights and the Six One Six restaurant offers gourmet fare. Other amenities include a fitness facility with a heated pool, a helipad,a ballroom, board rooms and a business center. Rooms start at $229 per night with rooms on the concierge floors going for $40 to $50 more.

The Marriott Vacation Club has opened a new resort in the scenic location of St. Kitts in the West Indies. The vacation ownership resort currently has 22 two- and three-bedroom villas, and will ultimately be home to 88 villas. The villas are in three-story garden houses and each villa has a full kitchen, LCD televisions and washer/dryers. The vacation club shares amenities with the St. Kitt's Resort and the Royal Beach Casino which means that golf, gambling, multiple restaurants and several pools are at your disposal. Prices starts at $17,500 per deeded week.

Mancation, baby! How much do you love your guy friends? Enough to spend nearly $50,000 with them in Vegas? The JW Marriot Las Vegas Resort in Summerlin, Nevada has come up with what they call the ultimate mancation. The four-day trip includes $1,000 per person in gaming chips, two oversized two-bedroom suites, the chance to drive a Ferrari 360 Spider, a day at a race track, a day at the golf course with lessons from the pros and spa treatments for all your metrosexual manscaping needds and to top it all off, a seven-course meal on the last night of your stay. Each man also gets to take home a new set of golf clubs worth $2,000 per person. The entire package costs $49,000. Sounds like the the sort of thing Kid Rock needs to help him get over his divorce.