Intercontinental Hotels & Resorts announced last week it will launch a new global brand advertising campaign starting on 26 September. Intercontinental´s new advertising campaign is the result of positioning work that has been ongoing since late 2004. The brand´s new tagline challenges its audience to answer the question, “Do you live an Intercontinental Life?”

There are ripples of excitement in the air as the Cuban capital of Havana prepares for the opening of The Saratoga Hotel. The hotel is reputed to evoke the pizzazz of a bygone Cuba –harking back to the 1920´s when the city´s elegant inhabitants met for afternoon tea while listening to orchestra performances of the famous group Anacaona. The hotel has undergone extensive restoration at its original location enabling spectacular views of the Capitol building, the Fraternity Park, the prestigious Partagas Cigar Factory and the Grand Theater.

Accor continues its rapid expansion in China with the signing of management agreements for three hotels, including two new Sofitel lodgings, in the Shanghai area and in Guangzhou. Sofitel Guangzhou will be Accor´s first Sofitel in one of southern China´s main commercial hubs. Located right in the city´s central business district, the 470-room, 28-storey hotel will be part of a one-block development that will include an adjacent 60-storey office building.

Reflecting its status as Cancun´s only resort with both golf and spa facilities on-site, the Hilton resort in Cancun has been renamed the Hilton Cancun Golf & Spa Resort. With the addition of a state-of-the-art 12,000-square-foot Wellness Spa, which opened in January, visitors to the resort can bask in the ultimate in pampering and beauty treatments.

Spanish chain RIU chain will open Club Hotel RIU Ocho Rios, its third resort in Jamaica and the chain´s largest, with a total of 856 rooms and its all-inclusive formula, on October 28. Club Hotel RIU Ocho Rios, the chain´s largest resort, will have 856 rooms and feature RIU´s world-famous all-inclusive formula. The resort is a small, authentic holiday city with 90,000 square meters of gardens and a wide array of services, located on the seafront next to the zone´s best beach, less than 2.5 miles from the city of Ocho Rios in Jamaica and 65 miles from Montego Bay International Airport.

Jamaican hotel workers who returned to the country following the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in the United States could soon find themselves back in the US under the government´s Overseas Hotel Work Program. Public relations manager at the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, Gerry McDaniel, was quoted as saying last week that as many as 160 workers had already been interviewed. The successful applicants were expected to take up a variety of hospitality jobs at the South Seas Resort located on Captiva Island off the coast of Florida.