The Forbes Luxe 11 - We Are Number One!

Many months ago we were contacted about being part of a Travel Channel show from Forbes magazine about the most exclusive luxury hotels in the world. The production company from New York contacted me and ask if we could help them arrange a crew to do a video shoot there as it would be prohibitively expensive to send a crew from the US. As fate would have it, around this same time I met Rafael Winer who was now living in Siem Reap with his wife and he did video productions back in LA. I put him in contact with the company from NY and they worked out an arrangement to do the video shoot at the hotel. It was a lot of fun working with Rafael, putting together the talent that became our guests and helping Rafael and crew capture what The One Hotel is all about. He had to interview me and I did not realize how difficult it was to do an on-camera interview. We shot the video over about three days last year.

In June I receive an email from the production company telling us the air date for the show would be 26 December on the Travel Channel in the US. It just so happened that I was going to be home for Christmas so how perfect to be able to watch the show when it aired. I wrote to them again to confirm the air date and I was told it was not scheduled for 19 December, 10pm. So, we arranged a viewing party with my Mom, my sister and my nephew (complete with champagne of course) and sat down to watch the episode. They started and it was a countdown of their 11 most exclusive hotels. Starting with 11 and working their way towards number one, I was starting to feel very nervous. The main reason was that we were in such heady company. Some of the hotels were $10,000 per night and quite incredible. But, as the countdown started and went on, I just knew that we were going to be number one. After all, how appropriate would that be since we are The One Hotel?

It got down to the top three and I was almost sure that we would somehow be number two but when the second place hotel came up, it was Auberge du Soleil in Napa valley and we began to scream and jump around knowing we were going to be number one. The four minute segment was very, very good of course even though I was in it. The hotel looked great and they really sold us properly as an exclusive hotel that is very affordable at $250 per night. With that, the show ended and we were in a euphoric state. After a few minutes of basking in the glow of being number one, I looked and we had eight booking requests in the first 20 minutes after the show ended. Amazing! You can see a link to the forbes.com website with a brief story by clicking here. I will try to get the video and add it here and add it to our website. What a thrill!

Oh, the show airs again on 26 December at 10pm on the Travel Channel.