● Ames Hotel (Cambridge) - Bringing some NY flavor to the Beantown hotel crop.

Ace Hotel, the chain born in Portland, Oregon, and which has since expanded to Palm Springs and New York, is synonymous with art and innovation. The hotel (and its founder Alex Calderwood) has made a point of partnering with a fantastic array of creatives on varying projects since the hotel's nascent stages. And, with two new projects -- porn and a pop-up shop -- slated for the hotel's Palm Springs and New York outposts, respectively, there's no shortage of stuff to pique the interest of prospective guests. First off, New York's Ace Hotel is gearing up to debut a pop-up shop come November 14.

● Pies-n-Thighs (Williamsburg) - Long-awaited return of comfort food legend.
● Andaz Wall Street (Lower Manhattan) - Hyatt gets haute on the Financial District.
● Andaz Fifth Avenue (Midtown East) - New-school Hyatt brings both style and substance to the heart of midtown.

● The Jefferson Hotel (Dupont Circle) - Just enough pomp and circumstance to keep Thomas Jefferson happy. New comforts gone old school.
● Kellari Taverna (Downtown) - Mt. Olympus comes to America's Mt. Olympus. Greek cuisine, done up for DC, without being dumbed down.
● Plume (Dupont Circle) - "What's this fork for?" whispered with a Maltese accent. Dupont's hot new haute French.

● Butter Tart Bakery (Eagle Rock/Eastside) - Andre Guerrero focuses on good coffee and pastries.
● Agura (West Hollywood) - French-Japanese in overly-stimulating atmosphere: chandeliers and a gigantor Buddha.
● W Hollywood (Hollywood) - Will undoubtedly be Hollywood's premiere hotel, catering to celebrities and the wealthy.

If we start making a list of excellent career choices, Eva Ziegler may have to play role model right at the top. The Austrian-born marketing mastermind is the "Global Brand Leader" for W Hotels and head of the global launch for Le Méridien Hotels as part of parent company Starwood Hotels & Resorts. From her home base in New York, Ziegler spends her 9 to 5 working on strategic planning (establishing the Starwood brand, scope, marketing strategies, implementing design) for hotels across the globe. Arguably, the biggest perk is that her job also includes traveling to all of these hotels (from Istanbul to Bali). In a smooth Austrian accent, the charming power player makes it all look and sound effortless, in between jet-setting to exotic locations to conduct business, of course.

Hotelier Larry Whitten is getting roasted over the policies he put in place at his newest hotel acquisition in Taos, NM. He bought the weathered adobe-style Paragon Inn hotel over the summer and made plans to renovate and reopen, as he has with some 20 other properties around the country. It was business as usual until he made the decree banning the Spanish language from the hotel, since he doesn't speak Spanish. He also requested that his Hispanic employees go by “anglicized” first names, then allegedly gave some of them the boot for noncompliance. These new policies did not go over so well in the liberal town of Taos, which has long celebrated the Spanish language and culture. Whitten is now being accused with discrimination in the workplace and racism by the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). Whitten claims that he is just trying to accommodate his out-of-town guests who most likely do not speak the language or understand Spanish names, and that he's no racist. The city of Taos, however, feels differently, and sent out a press release immediately after the skirmish hit the media.

The Joie de Vivre chain of hotels is really flexing its social media muscles by working the hell out of Twitter, Facebook and cell phones. Take note, hospitality industry. On "Mobile Mondays," you can send out a text to 888999 with the subject "JdV" and bang! you can opt in to sweet offers for the next seven days valid at JdV hotels in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, and Sacramento. You might get a coupon for free cocktails or discounted spa treatments.

Two deals go live today, one in the hotel world and one on the airline front. First up, the Leading Hotels of the World "Quest of a Lifetime" contest. The "Quest of a Lifetime" deal is pretty sweet. If you've spent any time in any one of their hotels in the last two years, you can go ahead and enter the contest. It's open to both Canadians and Americans, and all you've got to do to enter is whip up a little 150-word blurb on your "extraordinary travel experience" when you stayed in one of the Leading Hotels. Entries will be judged on creativity, originality, and how well your story fits the "quest" theme.

● Radisson Blu Royal (Tsvetnoy Boulevard) - Lux hotel slotted within the restored neo-classical Hotel Ukrania -- one of the infamous Stalin-era Seven Sisters skyscrapers.