East Europe's Richest Woman Seeks Key Share of Prague Top Hotels
Renata Kellnerova, the richest woman in eastern Europe, is boosting her footprint in real estate by buying a second hotel in Prague, setting herself on a path to control the biggest chunk of the luxury hospitality segment.
Investment company PPF Group NV, owned by Kellnerova and her family, is seeking to take over the Four Seasons in the city's Old Town, the Czech anti-trust office said on Monday. The facility, owned by Northwood Investors, offers 157 rooms, with some overlooking the iconic 14th century Charles Bridge.
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Forbes
14 hours ago
- Forbes
Navigating Orlando, Florida's Award Winning Dining Scene
A table at Capa at The Four Seasons Resort Orlando Orlando, Florida is well known as a popular travel destination. With its warm climate and variety of theme parks and attractions, it welcomes millions of visitors each year. In fact, WalletHub named Orlando number one on their list of the best places to visit in the summer of 2025. While roller coasters and sunshine help make Orlando a beloved vacation spot, the city also has a vibrant and award winning restaurant scene attracting visitors. The culinary landscape in Orlando is booming. According to the Florida Department of Businesses and Professional Regulations, the number of restaurant licenses in Orlando has increased year over year. Not only is the number of restaurants growing, but the number of award-winning restaurants is increasing as well. Orlando now has the second highest number of Michelin-starred restaurants in the state of Florida, coming in behind Miami. The Michelin Guide for Florida added 11 new restaurants to the Orlando line up for 2025. The city now has 59 restaurants that have been recognized by The Michelin Guide. That includes nine starred venues, 15 Bib Gourmands and 35 Michelin Recommended dining destinations. Orlando also had two James Beard nominated chefs in 2025. Amy Drew Thompson is a multimedia food reporter for Orlando Sentinel who has lived in the city for 20 years. She calls the dining evolution in Orlando 'incredible." 'We have so much available now, at all price points, from killer weekly food truck events to, as of this year, two-Michelin-star venues for visitors to explore,' Thompson said in an email. As Thompson notes, Orlando is the new home of one of only two two-Michelin-starred restaurants in the entire state of Florida. Sorekara, a restaurant in the Baldwin Park neighborhood that serves a tasting menu highlighting Japan's 72 micro seasons, was awarded the coveted distinction in April 2025 at the Michelin Guide Awards for Florida. The tasting menu at Sorekara starts at $275. The dining room at Capa Capa, a Spanish-influenced steakhouse perched on the 17th floor of The Four Seasons Orlando, earned a Michelin star for the fourth year in a row at the April awards. According to Capa's head chef, Chris Edwards, Orlando's not just a city for tourists to grab a quick bite, it's a place where food is taken seriously. 'It's an exciting time for the city for any culinary professional to grow and thrive. With Orlando being a major tourist destination, it gives us the opportunity to experiment with local ingredients and the fusion of multicultural techniques,' chef Edwards said in an email. Steak at Capa at The Four Seasons Resort Orlando The Four Seasons Orlando is also home to the Michelin recommended restaurant, Ravello, that offers a modern Italian menu. Bacán, a restaurant in The Lake Nona Wave Hotel serving innovative Latin American dishes, and Nami, the Lake Nona Wave's contemporary Japanese restaurant, are also Michelin recommended. Diners can even get a Michelin-starred meal right in one of Orlando's famed theme park destinations. Victoria & Alberts is located inside Walt Disney World at the Grand Floridian Resort and Spa. It serves modern American cuisine in an elevated Victorian setting just a stones throw away from Cinderella's castle in the Magic Kingdom park. It's the only restaurant owned and operated by a U.S. theme park to be awarded a Michelin star. But Thompson says it's not just pricy tasting menus and Michelin starred establishments contributing to Orlando's thriving food scene. There are restaurants at all price points serving up delicious food from cuisines around the globe. The Mills 50 District, which is directly north of downtown Orlando, is a colorful neighborhood known for its wide variety of Asian-owned businesses and eateries. One of the neighborhood hubs is Mills Market, a food hall featuring two Michelin Bib Gourmand recognized establishments, Bánh Mì Boy and UniGirl. The Bib Gourmand distinction is reserved for restaurants that offer exceptional food at reasonable prices. UniGirl is an onigiri snack shop designed like a Japanese 'konbini' or convenience store. They serve freshly made onigiri with fillings like spicy mentaiko (a Japanese delicacy made from salt-cured Alaska pollock roe) and sea urchin. Bánh Mì Boy is a Vietnamese café that takes a creative spin on traditional dishes, like a French dip bánh mì and Saigon street wings. A dish at Kaya Around the corner from Mills Market is Kaya, a Filipino restaurant set in a small bungalow with patio seating and a garden. Kaya earned a Michelin Green Star award which is given to restaurants that are eco-friendly and demonstrate exceptional sustainable practices. Kaya sources 90% of their produce from Central Florida farms. According to Thompson, Kaya diners should also head out to the backyard where they'll find a small stand that makes 'artisan-level' kakigori, a Japanese shaved ice dish. The stand is called Koko Kakigori and Thompson says it's one of her favorite desserts in the city. Mead at Zymarium For those looking for an award winning drink, bars in the area include Otto's High Dive, a rum bar specializing in Cuban dishes with a Michelin Bib Gourmand distinction and Zymarium, Orlando's first meadery. Zymarium has also been awarded the most 90 point meads in the world by The Mead Institute. 'The more attention the city gets, the more talent it attracts, so the culinary fires here, small and scattered to start, are starting to grow and spread,' Thompson said in an email. According to chef Edwards, the food renaissance in Orlando is thanks to the thriving local food culture and an influx of talented chefs. 'With chefs and restaurateurs opening establishments that focus on high-quality ingredients and creative dishes, Orlando is increasingly recognized for its culinary talent, chef Edwards said in an email. "It's not just a city for tourists to grab a quick bite; it's a place where food is taken seriously."
Yahoo
19 hours ago
- Yahoo
The NHS and Royal Mail are a match made in hell
Your bank doesn't send letters ticking you off about your overdraft anymore. Neither does your lawyer, or your accountant, or anyone else for that matter. Even your birthday or Christmas cards typically arrive via your phone's inbox instead of the front door. There is, however, one organisation that still finds a piece of paper delivered by hand to be the most efficient way to communicate: the NHS. Its spending on the Royal Mail is still soaring – with taxpayers footing the bill. The Health Secretary Wes Streeting may still trot out his standard speech about how the NHS is a global leader in new technologies and how Artificial Intelligence will drive a new era of productivity. The reality, as so often, turns out to be very different. We learned this week that the technology that the health service relies on is one from the 1840s: the letter with a stamp on it. Despite pledging to switch to a completely digital way of communicating with patients, according to research from the Taxpayer's Alliance the amount the health service spent on mail punched through £100 million this year, up by 12.5 per cent over the last twelve months. Even though up to a quarter of the estimated eight million missed appointments a year were the fault of delays in the post, hospital managers persist in using letters as their main form of managing the system. The last quarter of a century of technological progress has completely passed it by. Indeed, at the current rate of growth the NHS will be spending £180 million a year by the end of the decade on the postal service, and more than £500 million by the 2040s. Perhaps the takeover of the mail system by the Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky makes sense after all. While most of us may have imagined the postal business was in terminal decline, perhaps there is a fortune to be made as the booking system of the NHS. The trouble is that it should hardly come as a surprise to anyone. In reality, the NHS and Royal Mail are perfect partners for each other. They are both relics of a different era, created at a time when we still believed that government-owned monopolies were the most effective way to deliver a product or a service. They are both hopelessly inefficient and riddled with restrictive practices. They are both dominated by trade unions that are resistant to change; that protect their privileges with a single-minded determination; and bask in a sense of entitlement that justifies everything they do. And they are both completely resistant to new technology, even if it could transform both the quality and the efficiency of the service they are meant to be delivering. They could both move with the times if they wanted to. But it would cause too much inconvenience for the staff. Instead, they are perfectly happy to prop each other up – with the long-suffering taxpayer left to foot the bill for both of them. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
New York Post
3 days ago
- New York Post
Inside the first-of-its-kind, ‘luxury' college campus tour — and why it costs a mind-bending $300K for four days
These high schoolers are getting a lesson in luxury. College hopefuls will soon be able to tour universities like rockstars — zipping between campuses on a private jet, crashing in five-star hotels, and wining and dining their way to a decision. For a mind-boggling, all-inclusive $300,000, the college admissions consultancy group IvyWise will whisk away seven students — each with a parent in tow — on an opulent, first-of-its-kind tour of seven elite universities this fall. The four-day jaunt costs about as much as four years of tuiton at an Ivy League college. The maiden 'Elevation Experience' begins Oct. 13 in the Big Apple, where the families will visit New York and Columbia universities, before the parents enjoy dinner at either Casa Cipriani or Zero Bond. Students, meanwhile, will be treated to Samoa Sundaes at the celebrity hotspot Corner Store, according to IvyWise's CEO and founder, Dr. Kat Cohen. 5 Families will fly on a private Gulfstream G650 jet to each campus included in IvyWise's 'Elevation Experience' tour this fall. ETA Jets But that's just the beginning. Attendees will be chauffeured to the Four Seasons in Tribeca, where they'll stay for a night before boarding a private Gulfstream G650 jet that will whisk them to Princeton University in New Jersey — followed by a skip and a jump to Yale in New Haven, CT. Before the end of Day 2, the jet will arrive in Beantown, where the families will spend the next two nights at another Four Seasons hotel between tours of Boston's Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, and dinner at ritzy Deuxave. 5 The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is one of seven university campuses the students will visit during the tour. Marcio – 5 The families will be put up in the Four Seasons Hotel Boston for two nights. Facebook/Four Seasons Hotel Boston The trip culminates with a flight to Washington, DC, for a campus tour of Georgetown University – complete with a meal at the esteemed Le Diplomate – before jetting back to Manhattan. Attendees can expect private tarmac pickups and chauffeured luxury cars every step of the way – as well as new bags to transport their belongings, courtesy of a not-yet-decided designer luggage brand that IvyWise will partner with, according to Cohen. As far as academic advice, IvyWise counselor Christine Chu – who previously worked as the assistant director of admissions at Yale and Georgetown – will be on board to ensure students are asking quality questions during campus info sessions, and that they're getting the full experience during each visit. 5 The 15-person jet will transport seven students — each with a parent — and an IvyWise counselor to each stop, complete with private tarmac pickups. ETA Jets 'So you're getting advice from an expert the entire time,' said Cohen – including before the trip, when IvyWise's staff will meet with students to create personalized reports. Post-tour, the IvyWise staff will help the students with filing college applications, writing essays and preparing for interviews with university administrators, Cohen continued. 'It's a very robust and extremely comprehensive service,' she said, adding that an international tour is already being planned for spring 2026. 5 Attendees will enjoy a ritzy dinner at Deuxave in Boston. Facebook/Deuxave 'A lot of families tell us that college visits are one of the most stressful parts of the admissions journey.' Cohen said. 'They want somebody to plan all of their travel, they don't want any hassle along the way, and they want to make sure they're going about the tours in the right way. This takes . . . all the stress out of it.' Except for the SATs.
