I thought you would all be interested in an update on the Hotel Bel-Air. As you know, Global Traveler held many events at the property, and it become our home-away-from-home. It closed this past October for massive renovations, including the completion of the spa.

The Hotel Bel-Air refurbishment is still in the design phase, and I am told it will be spectacular. The owners are bringing the property up to the standards of today’s guest while still maintaining the residential feel for which the HBA has been known for many years. Those of us who frequented the property are anticipating the changes as well as looking forward to what will remain the same.

The swans are still on property and are very happy to be home throughout the refurbishment. As those who have been to the Hotel Bel-Air know, the swans are a signature of the property. They make their home in the little pond over which guests cross to enter the hotel.

Alexandra Champalimaud, the famed designer of other Dorchester Collection properties as well as Boston’s Liberty Hotel and the American Airlines Arena skyboxes, is the interior designer. She just won an award for “Interior Designer of the Year.” David Rockwell, the HBA restaurant designer, was just awarded, for the second year, the opportunity to do the 82nd Academy Awards production. The Hotel Bel-Air definitely has the top people on this project!

The Bar will be also be upgraded, yet the area’s illustrious history will be maintained, which I think is very important. Overall, I am told the process is going well, with an anticipated completion date in mid-2011. That might be a bit optimistic, but one never knows.

– Fran Gallagher, publisher and CEO

I was quite the celebrity this past week as I traveled to and from and around the West Coast. Bill Noonan, our experience-laden new vice president of the western region, and I flew up to San Francisco (SFO) on Wednesday night on United (one of GT’s award winners). We were flying out of the United concourse, from gate 75, and I suggested we check out the first-class lounge. As all the international flights were leaving slightly later than us, the lounge was completely empty.

We were able to chat about the industry with UAL Global Services Manager Rebecca Frazier. Rebecca is a warm, wonderful person who welcomed all the lounge guests as if they were entering her home. She also told us how valuable the placement of Global Traveler is to guests who frequently read GT in the lounge or take the lounge copies with them on their trips around the world.

Bill and I settled down with a cocktail and discussed the day’s meetings while working on proposals in the comfort of the lounge prior to our San Francisco-bound flight.

On my return east, I flew Continental Airlines‘ red-eye flight on Friday. I got to the airport at about 8:15 p.m. and passed the time before my departure at the Presidents Club Lounge. There I also had fun talks with the managers on duty, who were thrilled to meet me, as Global Traveler is a must-read for their guests. GT was prominently displayed on their shelves and was the only business-focused publication for lounge guests.

Global Traveler’s lounge placement is only a fraction of our circulation, but I feel it is important. With placements in Delta Sky Clubs, Continental President Clubs and United Red Carpet Clubs and first-class lounges — as well as a host of others — GT really reaches out to business travelers. I was treated like a real VIP, not because of me but because of the magazine.

Just so you know where you can get your GT fix while traveling, you can always find us in the following lounges: Air France, Alitalia, Asiana, Continental, Delta, EVA, Finnair, Korean Air, KLM, Kuwait Airlines, Lufthansa, Royal Suites, SAS, Singapore Airlines, South African Airways, Turkish Airlines, United, USAirways and Virgin. Some are placed system-wide, while others are in selected lounges. Enjoy reading GT!

Display of  Global Traveler in United’s LAX lounge.

– Fran Gallagher, publisher and CEO

Robinson Ranch was the perfect venue for a golf outing between Global Traveler’s own Bill Noonan and Fran Gallagher and Ken Bright, of Singapore Airlines, and John Jackson, of Korean Air. Actually, it was a split team — Fran and Ken on the back nine (which we played first) and Fran and John on the front nine. Bill took the opposite for a game of competitive skins.

My first nine was deplorable, but my partner was able to win eight of the holes against the Jackson/Noonan team. When we switched teams, I was determined not to let John down, so I summed up all my golfing experience to card a 43 and clean the clocks. Everyone was surprised by that score due to my poor play in the first round.

It was a glorious day and a bit cold, much to the shock of this Philadelphia boy, who showed up in shorts and a golf polo. A quick pro-shop purchase turned me into the Robinson Ranch “poster boy,” with a logo pull-over and hat. I stayed in the shorts out of defiance. The temperature dipped close to 50 degrees on the last two holes.

I have had the pleasure of flying both Korean Air and Singapore Airlines, and both are top-notch, comfortable carriers. Singapore Airlines has a fantastic all-business-class flight from Newark, which I flew last year. They also offer this service out of Los Angeles. Korean Air has dramatically improved over the past five years. They rival every carrier on the planet. I flew the airline just four weeks ago and found their first-class product tops. It was the best caviar service I have ever had.

– Fran Gallagher, publisher and CEO

I am always amazed when I happen upon an old friend or business associate while traveling. Last week, I attended the Motivation Show in Chicago and used the opportunity to have a staff meeting, including our representative from Mexico City. That evening, the staff had dinner at Rosebud Prime. When I was returning to the Park Hyatt, I ran into the former marketing director for Finnair, Antero Palo.

Antero now lives in Shenzhen and was in Chicago for business. We were both shocked to run into each other. Just one second difference in time would have meant we would have passed right by each other. We had a cocktail in the Park Hyatt and talked about the good ol’ days when we would play golf and travel the world — from Midnight Sun golf in Finland to West Coast junkets on courses like Via Verde, the Eisenhower and others.

I remember traveling to Los Angeles some years ago and bumping into Jean Sherman Chatzky on a US Airways flight from Philadelphia. You see, I gave Jean her first job in publishing — although she does not list that job in her biography, I did!

So, keep your eyes peeled. You never know who you will run into while traveling the world . . .

– Fran Gallagher, publisher and CEO

This week as our high temperatures have hovered around 100 and it’s been weeks (well, more like months) since we’ve had measurable precipitation, I’ve watched the news stories of the torrential rains and flooding in the South. My friends on the East Coast and my daughters in Chicago have bemoaned the fact that it seems as if summer hardly visited them this year, and I’ve thought more than once that it would be nice if we could somehow stir the weather up a bit and give them a little of our heat while we got some cooler, damper days. 

For most of us, unpleasant weather — whether too cold, hot, wet or dry — is merely cause for small talk or minor inconveniences, but as we’ve seen this week, it can be cause for severe economic loss and death. Too little rain and farmers lose crops to drought; too much, and they see those crops swept away or rotting in the fields. Either way, production costs go up and income drops. Transportation and shipping face delays and expensive interruptions, and damage is visited upon infrastructure. In the case of wildfires, such as those Southern California has been battling for nearly a month now, the cost of fighting those fires must be added to the losses of homes, businesses, crops and forests. The human loss, greatest of all, comes to those who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and those who seek to protect the rest of us from the fires, floods and winds; and those who experience the loss of their homes and sense of security.

All of that came a little closer to home for me this week as we saw not one but two large wildfires in the Rogue Valley this Monday, one at the edge of Ashland and one only three miles from my home here on the east side of Medford. Firefighters, facing 100-degree temperatures and 30-mile-an-hour winds, had barely begun to get a handle on the Ashland fire when a fast-moving blaze sprung up on a hillside adjoining several housing developments in Medford. With the airport between my home and the towering pillar of smoke across the valley, I watched throughout the afternoon as four airtankers repeatedly landed to refill with fire retardant and immediately took off to drop their loads. While I knew our home was in no immediate danger, even as ash and charred oak leaves drifted into my backyard, I couldn’t help but feel dread and anxiety for those who lived on that hillside and those fighting the flames and wind. And knowing how quickly that fire sprung up, I also knew it could just as easily happen in the field across the street from my home.

Happily, in this case, no homes were lost and no one was injured in the 600-plus-acre fire that scorched that Medford hill, and it was contained by the next day. Over the last three days, though, we’ve sat under a pall of smoke from two fires burning in forest lands several miles north of here. With the heat expected to continue into next week, no rain in sight and everything as dry as tinder, we know we aren’t out from under the threat of more fires yet. We wait and watch and hope for cool, fall weather and a good drenching rain.

–Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader