2011 Wrap-Up: A Year in the Life of a Hotel

Looking back, I have to say that it’s been a pretty amazing year for the Hotel V.  Not always great, not always easy, but amazing nonetheless.

Here is a look back at the year for us in photos:

We welcomed our first feathered guests.

(Part One of the Bird saga here, Part Two here.)

We brought in a baby grand piano for Maria Markesini's CD release concert

And had a few more concerts...

We hosted Book Launches... (James Worthy, Henk van Straten, Patrick van Dam...)

And listened to some fascinating Book Presentations from notable guests (Sir John Hegarty, Platon, Shed Simove...)

...Some cheekier than others!

We took part in Earth Hour...

hosted talks on Sustainability by the Y-Community...

And hosted more than 8 editions of AchieVers with Lebowski & TopNotch

We saw a DVD presentation...(Rik Zaal from Zaal Over de Vloer)

and we turned the lobby into a pop-up cinema for the pre-premiere of 'The Rum Diary'

We held the first ever 'Meet the Bloggers' event for design bloggers...

And threw parties for bloggers...

...and had some parties of our own...

There were photoshoots...

And another Green Key certification! (Yes, again!)

We got a facebook facelift...

We said goodbye to several crew members...

and welcome three temporary stagiares (Zosia, Yannick & Thabitha)!

There was one birth (Tess) with several more on the way!

So in short, I guess you could say that our year was about…..life.  Life happened at Hotel V in all of its forms.

And to end the year on a weird note, here are some V facts for 2011:

• 12.000 different guests slept in the hotel.
• This week we welcomed website visitor 100.000 of this year.
• 25% of the visitors are from the Netherlands, 13% are from Amsterdam, 1 is from the Northern Mariana Islands.
• 100 visitors searched Google for “love hotel Amsterdam” and found our website.
• One search was looking for “ajax stadium parking map”, one for “a hotel that the rolling stones stay in Amsterdam” and one for “a hotel to have pipe dreams in”.
• 700 and 1 bikes were rented this year. No bike was stolen, nobody crashed (as far as we know).
• 58 people forgot their toothbrush and bought a kit at the hotel.
• Most of our guests are Dutch, 2^nd most frequent guest is from the UK.
• One of our guests was from Swaziland!

Happy New Year everyone! See you in 2012!