New, renovated hotels open in Beverly Hills, Miami

By Joe Brancatelli

HOTEL HOT SHEET

Montage, a luxury resort in Laguna Beach, California, has opened a second property in Beverly Hills. The 201-room hotel is the first newly built property in Beverly Hills in more than a decade. … The Fontainebleau has reopened in Miami Beach after a $500 million renovation. The 22-acre resort, famous for its curvy, Morris Lapidus design and as one of the locations of Goldfinger, now has 1,500 rooms and a dozen restaurants and bars. … Among the baker’s dozen of new properties that Hampton Inn has opened in the last few weeks, the most notable are the 146-room property near the Empire State Building in Manhattan and a 119-room branch in downtown Little Rock, Arkansas. …Holiday Inn Express has opened branches in Taichung City and Taoyuan, Taiwan. … Aloft, the newest brand from Starwood, has opened a 186-room outpost in the Haidain district of Beijing. … The Hotel Des Indes in The Hague, Netherlands, is now part of the Luxury Collection. … The once-prestigious Hotel Ambassador on the Boulevard Haussmann in Paris‘ 9th arrondissement, most recently known as the Millennium Opera, is switching to the Radisson flag. It becomesthe Radisson Ambassador Hotel on December 31. … Hilton Garden Inn continues to grow in Italy. Its two newest properties are at Malpensa Airport in Milan and in the San Lazzaro di Savena district on the outskirts of Bologna. That makes five Garden Inns now open in Italy, with three more on the way in the next year

AIRPORT REPORT

New Runways, New Hotels, New Dining Options: Alaska Airlines says it will add a Portland (Oregon)-Long Beach route on February 8. … Mexican food fans take note: La Casita, the much-admired tamale house in Denver, has opened a branch in the Concourse C Food Court at Denver International. … Free, advertising-supported WiFi service is now available at Oakland Airport. … Just in time for the plunge in traffic, new runways opened at Seattle-Tacoma, Chicago/O’Hare and Washington/Dulles airports. … Meanwhile, a $10 million renovation has converted the former Four Points at Newark Airport into the Crowne Plaza Newark Airport. … American Airlines now offers boarding passes on mobile devices. The paperless trial begins at its Chicago/O’Hare hub as well as Los Angeles and John Wayne/Orange County airports.