International glamour will be given to the event due to the performance of Kiera Sunshine Chaplin. Topmodel from Ireland, grandchild of Charly Chaplin and great-grandchild of Eugene O’Neill, Nobel prize laureate in literature, will fly directly from New York to Vienna, where she will attend the event and of course enjoy the city. Star moderator Nazan Eckes from RTL will present the gala.

This year’s highlights will be the fashion shows of the Viennese designers Anelia Peschev, ep_anoui and Elfenkleid. They will present their most actual fashion collections during the Vienna Awards for Fashion & Lifestyle.

At the gala the following categories will be awarded:

1. Stylist
2. Hair Stylist
3. Makeup Artist
4. Fashion Photography
5. Fashion- und Lifestyle Journalist
6. Design Branding
7. Tribute to Fashion & Lifestyle (Label)
8. Accessory Designer
9. WKO Special Award “Go International”
10. Model
11. Designer of the Year
12. Seitenblicke Special Award Lifestyle Icon

Like in 2009, all awards will be designed by CRYSTALLIZED – Swarowski Elements.

The Vienna Awards for Fashion & Lifestyle are supported by Elle, Wien Kultur, Aussenwirtschaft Österreich (AWO), Goldwell, The Ring (Vienna’s Casual Luxury Hotel), Evian, Don Gil, Frey Wille, Luxarella.com, cremesso, Camitz Sparkling Vodka, CRYSTALLIZED (Swarovski Elements and Epamedia).

The result is definitely a vodka like no other. A rare spirit that ranks among the finest and smoothest in the world, Elit! Guest that attended the 1^st “Elit Night @ Drings” discovered this remarkable combination of elegance and mystique. Nobility and purity. Prestige and pleasure.

Sun, lots of music and party. Although the weather is not yet like it should be, we should have a closer look at the festival season for 2010 in Austria. And get really excited and ready to book a ticket. Some events have already been communicated and show their lineups.

The ‘FM 4 Frequency Festival’ in St. Pölten is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, a reason to celebrate to the max. The organization was able to contract the german legend band ‘Die Toten Hosen’. This year from August 19th to 21th a large variety of musical entertainment will be offered on seven different stages (www.frequency.at).

For party people looking for a festival ‘out in the suburbs’ the area ‘Waldviertel’ offers on June 02 ‘Rock am Teich’, a great venue with open-air and Red Bull stage, beach zone and party tents (www.rock-am-teich.at).

A big event is happening from June 11-13 in Nickelsdorf, it is called ‘Nova Rock’ and exists since 2005. This festival draws up to 150.000 people over a 3-day period and is definitely Austria’s biggest rock music festival and also one of the largest in Europe. The confirmed bands for 2010 are Rammstein, Green Day, Slayer, Deichkind, the Austrian upcoming band The Sorrow, Bullet for my Valentine and Beatsteaks. There will also be an unplugged performance of Sportfreunde Stiller and for those who like real hard rock, get ready for Heaven and Hell (www.novarock.at).

A small focus on a new festival called ‘Paradise Festival’, cosmic and trance music to create summer hypnosis. This festival is held from July 01-04 in Falkenstein. Look at their lineup! Some great bands and DJ do perform on a ‘dream stage’, a ‘moon stage’ and a ‘sun stage’ (www.paradise-festival.at).

Again in St. Pölten the next festival is called ‘Beatpatrol’, which will take place from July 23-24, their program shows acts bands & DJ’s like Faithless, IAMX, Felix Da Housecat, The Freestylers, Paul van Dyk, Kosheen and Stereo MC’s. Funny, like the Paradise Festival they also have some nice stages: a ‘sunshine stage’, a ‘good morning stage’ and a ‘samsara outdoor stage’, have a look at www.beatpatrol.at.

Two larger and traditional festivals do boost music & party in Wiesen, the first one is called ‘Lovely Days’, it exists since 2006 and does bring some really big names on stage, confirmed for 2010 are Uriah Heep and the Manfred Mann’s Earth Band (www.lovelydays.at), the second one is called ‘Eristoff Track Urban Art Forms Festival presented by Electronic Beats’, also a promising festival. Moonbootica will perform with their special ‘four-to-the-floor’ sound, a combination out of techno, house and big beat. Friends of Drum’n’Bass are happy to see the following names: Shimon and Dirtyphonics (www.uaf-festival.at).

Surely we will see a few smaller events showing up for 2010 for the larger cities in Austria, but the ones already communicated do promise soft and hard beats, fun, party and a lot of excitement!

There was a time when we were more concerned with the experience of travel and just coming up with decent vacation ideas than we were with what we learned and brought back from it. We rejoiced in the sheer simplistic pleasure of going somewhere new, meeting new people and doing new things. The advent of modern-day technology has ultimately detracted from this enjoyment somewhat.

A few years ago, when we still used to relish travel and do so just for the sake of it, throwing carefully laid plans and caution to the wind; the only items we really needed to concern ourselves with was enough money to get by in our destination of choice, our passport and maybe also our wallet (once you’d taken care of legalities like a VISA or necessary vaccinations, of course). These days there are a whole host of addition things to worry about, turning a onetime joy into a veritable font of worry and last-minute additions to the inventory and itinerary alike.

These days it’s all about packing cameras, computers, laptops, batteries, phones and music players. It seems that to travel, one must also transport a whole host of technological “toys, such as the ones that already permeate every aspect of home life, something which travel was supposed to be a getaway from. Then comes the matter of space and having to carry it all, as with an ever-increasing number of things to remember and take, there’s an ever-decreasing amount of space in which to transport them, thus leading to additional problems. Technology was supposed to make our lives easier and at home and at business, it might well have. However, with regards to travel for leisure and luxury, this is far from the case.

This writer would call for a return to the days of yore and yesteryear, back to when travel was travel and – above all else – back when it was easy and a pure, unsophisticated joy. Next time you embark for distant lands unchartered, don’t concern yourselves with ineffectual add-ons and accoutrements, just go as yourselves and with yourselves. You’ll find that you’re better for it.

For more travel tips and vacation inspiration, check out the Tripbase Travel Blog / Tripbase site.

Tripbase eliminates the time-consuming and frustrating online search process by providing travelers with personalized travel recommendations for their next trip.

Tripbase was named Top Travel Website for Destination Ideas by Travel and Leisure magazine in November 2008.

1. Who are you?

2. What do you like about what you do?
I like to see our guests enjoy their stay with us and realise they’ve had a wonderful experience in our city.

3. What don’t you like about what you do?
I don’t like the low season, but rejecting guests when we are completely booked is even worse.

4. Please tell us about your hotel and your aims with it?
We are a small family run four star hotel on an excellent and romantic location, on a peaceful square, yet in the heart of the old town, amid shops and restaurants, bars and pubs. Majority of the historic sites and musea are in the neighbourhood of our hotel. Our building dates back to the 17 century so our decoration and styling is baroque, but with a touch of modern colours. Our rooms are all nicely furnished and mostly oversized. We like to offer our guests a personal treatment and an experience of a domestic yet stylish environment so they can enjoy discovering the city or their stay with us, regardless of their purposes for visiting Ljubljana.

5. Are you working with blogs and if yes, what is your favourite blog?
No, I am not. I’m just an occasional reader of blogs.

6. Your TOP 3 hotel experiences
- One&Only, Royal Mirage, Dubai, UAE
- Huis ter Duin, Noordwijk, NL
- Punta Tragara, Capri, I

7. Your TOP 3 destination experiences
- Italy
- The UAE
- Switzerland

8. Your TOP 3 food and/or beverage experiences
- Restaurants on the Emerald Princess, Princess Cruises
- Carlton, St. Moritz
- Meneghello, Palmizana island, Croatia

9. Can you offer possible readers 3 things they absolutely need to do/visit/see when visiting your city?
- Sleep at Antiq Hotel
- Visit the old town and the marketplace, possibly also the flee market on Sunday
- Have dinner at the As restaurant

10. Any comments you want to share with us?
I’d like to thank the Ring Hotel for giving us the opportunity to present ourselves and connect us in this way. I think it’s a marvellous idea. I wish you a lot of success and I’ll most certainly visit the Ring Hotel, when I come to Vienna, it looks as a very nice hotel from the photos on your website.

The 2 topics for the YHA 2010 are:

1. Back to basics : how to improve customer satisfaction and service levels?
2. Online hotel reviews : do reviews influence hotel revenue and how will the hotel manage this?

The Young Hotelier Award is an initiative of the GMC (General Managers Council) of the leading hotels in Vienna and powered by JohnsonDiversey.

The presentations for the YHA 2010 will be held at the hosting hotel Le Meridien on March 10^th, 2010. More information on the history of YHA, the event itself as well as the partners of YHA can be found on the newly established website www.younghotelier.at

WE LOVE GLAMOUR

For more information visit www.weloveglamour.com.

1. Who are you?

I would say that I am a cosmopolitan citizen who wants to make a positive impact in the world. Events in my life encouraged me to be extremely creative and to think for myself. I am originally Slovak and grew up in the old Austro-Hungarian empire, moving to Vienna many years ago. During the last five years I also lived in Marbella, southern Spain. I am also a Spanish resident, even though I now spend most of my time in Vienna. In addition to my main role as a full-time mother, I am an athlete, holistic therapist, former UNIDO staff member and blogger. During the last years, I also created a business concept with my first website-blog, The Best of Marbella. Many friends and business acquaintances would generally describe me as a dynamic and ambitious businesswoman, who doesn´t give up on her dreams.

2. What do you like about what you do?
Public relations, which is very much part of my work: The Best of Marbella blog-website is driven by my love for Marbella and its people. I like to interact and communicate in different languages and express my creativity, touching peoples’ lives in positive ways.

3. What don’t you like about what you do?
Practically nothing, although I have to say that in the beginning writing blogs and updating the website was time consuming. That was really the only challenge; however, I have a very supportive team and associate network, especially my friend-web designer and artist Syl Chad who helps me enormously. There are so many positive aspects of my work that I always prefer to look at the bright side of life …

4. Please tell us about your blog ‘The best of Marbella’ and your aims with it.
The Best of Marbella is much more than an interactive blog-website. It is a unique marketing and promotional concept, one of the leading references about Marbella, the Costa del Sol and beyond. Even during the initial stage The Best of Marbella is listed as one of the top 101 blogs to watch in 2009, according to the WE Magazine in the USA.

We are still developing our project, however, already in this initial stage it is visited by more than 90 countries in the world. Please read about our success story on our blog.

The Best of Marbella mainly promotes the multi-cultural and cosmopolitan lifestyle of Marbella, as well as selected businesses, properties, dining, nightlife, arts and cultural venues, health and beauty, golf clubs, local clubs and associations, events and in addition, business categories from A-Z, linked to an important and thoughtfully selected brand name: The Best of …

The Best of Marbella is also an ever expanding network of local and international professionals. We are associated with many top quality professionals, our associated partners such as CCG, C+Golf, 4Business Global Network, Marbella Dutch Business Club, Asociacion Francofonos, Business and Lifestyle Network, Concordia, Society Living Magazine, The Sentinella Costa West, Blue Sky Luxury Car Hire, Manifesto Design, Smithwood Productions and many more …

5. What are the benefits of a membership?
There are several subscription options and many benefits. Anyone interested in the membership should contact: maria@thebestofmarbella.com. We promote and support charities free of charge and with other colleagues from press and media we offer an exchange of services which is a win-win situation for all.

Benefits:

• Top Google ranking of any business or event when listed with us
• Local and international “visibility” in more than 90 countries around the world giving your business or event massive exposure
• We created strategic alliances with members and associates so that all businesses can also be promoted through a multitude of other websites and blogs that are inter-linked with us
• We promote our members through press and media that are associated with us and by personally introducing our members to each other
• We send free events and business newsletters to 20,000 entries from our database and in addition regular press releases (blog posts) to our ever-expanding social media network. For example, The Best of Marbella can be found on:
  www.thebestofmarbella.com
  thebestofmarbella.blogspot.com
  The Best of Marbella @ Twitter
  The Best of Marbella @ Zimbio
  The Best of Marbella @ YouTube
  The Best of Marbella @ Facebook
  The Best of Marbella @ linkedin
  and many other social and exclusive networks …
• Being promoted by us, your business or activity will become an essential part of our success story as one of the top 101 blogs/websites to watch in 2009, acknowledged by WE Magazine in the USA.
• If suitable, we include businesses and their activities in the promotional packages or events that we promote. “The best of Marbella” can offer and suggest holiday or luxury packages” such as golf breaks, luxury accommodation, luxury car hire, boat or yacht cruises, luxury shopping, cultural excursions, beauty, fitness and anti-stress holidays, adventurous holidays, property investment and corporate holidays, single or family holidays, weddings packages or cultural and business exchange with other places. The Best of Marbella is a franchising concept that will connect many places and countries in the world. Our first franchising destination is The Best of Vienna blog and we are planning to do the same with Moscow and many other attractive destinations in the world.
• Member to member discounts and special offers

During the current economic crisis, many places, especially tourist destinations like Marbella, need promotion and connection with other cities from abroad. Knowing both Marbella and Vienna and speaking many languages, I am in a unique position to connect people and places in many ways.

Marbella has the best climate in Europe and in places like Vienna, where the winters can be too long, cold and grey, escape to sunny Marbella even for a weekend can be uplifting and refreshing.

Another goal is to strengthen the inter-cultural and business exchange between Marbella and Vienna. There are so many talented musicians, artists and singers and most of them need promotion. For example it would be fantastic to invite the Wiener Philharmoniker orchestra or Die Wiener Sängerknaben (The Vienna Boys Choir) to Marbella or, conversely, to move productions and artists from Marbella to Vienna. Since I returned to Vienna, I reconnected with the local, international and diplomatic communities in Vienna and have been discovering new venues, clubs and luxury networks that inspired me to many new ideas.

There are many artists, dancers and musicians in Marbella like Stephen Lloyd Morgan that would be delighted to perform live concerts in the Grand Hotel Wien or The Ring, Vienna’s Casual Luxury Hotel. On the other side, one of the most important events in Marbella that visitors from Vienna and abroad should not miss is Marbella´s International Arts Festival. I am convinced that the Department of Tourism in Marbella and Vienna would also support this kind of inter-cultural and business exchange.

Furthermore, Marbella has so much to offer, not only because of its fantastic climate, beautiful beaches, world class golf courses, delicious food and exciting shopping, parties and nightlife, but also because it boasts some of the most prestigeous and luxurious properties in Europe. I also highly recommend anyone who wants to learn Spanish to visit Marbella. In the next months, we will include many properties on the Best of Marbella, as well as numerous golf courses, hotels and restaurants, to offer our readers the best choices. So, please check the site regularly for updates or even better, keep up to date via a subscription to our free events and business newsletters.

6. Were you working with other blogs and if yes, which ones and why?
This is the first blog I started a year ago when I recognized the opportunity to meet people´s needs by offering a unique promotional concept. We are currently preparing the Best of Vienna blog to connect the two blogs and places in many ways and initiate an inter-cultural and business exchange.

7. Please provide us with your TOP 5 for Marbella
It is very difficult to choose from so many beautiful places in Marbella, but my favourite place is the Paseo Maritimo (seaside promenade) ideal for walking, running and enjoying the warm weather. You can also try delicious food and Spanish wine in numerous chiringuitos. My favourite beach restaurant is Trocadero Playa. Everyone should visit the old Town of Marbella (Orange Square), which is very special and Puerto Banus promenade where you can admire the exclusive yachts and luxury cars, enjoy shopping in some of the most popular boutiques and visit some of the numerous restaurants and bars. If you like golf, Marbella Golf club is one of the best golf courses on “Costa del Golf”. When it comes to beaches and beach clubs, I like the Buddha Beach in Puerto Banus. My favourite restaurants: Villa Tiberio, Sol i Luna, Salotto, Passion Cafe and many more. You can find details about all these places on the Best of Marbella blog in the Dining and Nightlife section.

8. Restaurants/bars/shops/hotels/sightseeing
There are many wonderful restaurants, bars, shops, hotels and sightseeing trips that will be included on our blog-website soon. There is so much to do and see, including the beautiful white villages and places close to Marbella like Ojen, Monda, Guaro (with its Luna Mora festival), Ronda, Gaucin and El Chorro. Further afield Granada, Sevilla, Cadiz and Gibraltar await the curious visitor. The best way to find all the information is to check the existing blog articles and subscribe to our free events and business newsletters that will be sent out as of January.

9. Any comments you want to share with us?
I would like to emphasize the importance of blogs and social media in marketing any business. A lot of people don’t yet appreciate the importance and significance of blogs, so here is a simple explanation why The Best of Marbella is using blogs to promote its members and why it became so successful so far:

1. Blogs are a fantastic marketing and networking tool provided by Google. They are free and can be used in many different ways, depending on individual creativity, knowledge and expertise. In our case, it is a basic tool where every promotion starts.
2. Google invests billions of dollars to develop their software technology that we use
3. Blogs are the fastest growing medium of communication for businesses and individuals and have rapidly become influential components of the Internet. Their importance will grow for some time to come
4. Though blogs have a social function in the first instance, they have also become very popular because of their effectiveness in SEO (blogs are getting the kind of traffic that static websites can only dream of – even without SEO tactics).
5. We include blog links in all our social media networks and profiles including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and many other social and business tools and networks
6. In our case, our blog is interactive, constantly changing and the most important part of our website www.thebestofmarbella.com that we use for our PR and marketing campaigns and to connect with people locally and globally.

Edited by Manifesto Design.

We would like to thank you for your support, contributions and trust during 2009. We have seen numerous responses to the different postings on our blog, very interesting interviews and articles and an overall wonderful feedback.

You are always welcome to send us your feedback and opinions so we can further improve the blog and create what you enjoy most!

We wish you all a great December, Merry X-Mas and a happy New Year. Enjoy a wonderful holiday season with friends and family … do like the gifts you get and love those you give!

Casual Greetings!

Jenny Gucci has survived countless struggles and unbelievable traumas – yet has come through them all to become a stronger, more independent woman. This intriguing book gives an insider’s view of what it was really like to be at the heart of a force so powerful and, at times, so unpredictable. Her story definitely leaves you breathless.

Whilst promoting her book in Vienna in November 2009 among various media agencies and local press as well as at several high-class locations, she decided to stay at The Ring, Vienna’s Casual Luxury Hotel and enjoyed a few days of “casual luxury” at the famous Ring Suite.