| Club Hotel |
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| Club Hotel, the private-labeled product of 17 year-old Hospitality Marketing Concepts (HMC), has been operating since 1997 and currently has over 400,000 members. Club Hotel provides members with exceptional dining and room benefits at over 400 luxurious hotels, 600 restaurants around the world in 80 countries. Other benefits include car rental discounts, online reservations, personalized card and hotel directory, online newsletter and more. Since the membership usually pays for itself within 3 trips, it makes perfect cost-savings sense for people who travel with relative frequency. This reminds us of the beginnings of travel associations, and probably the first one in history was the Roman State itself, which provided lodging and other facilities to bureaucrat on the march thorough the vast lands that they conquered. Travelling thorough the Roman Empire took a long time, and it was indeed, a slower thing to do than today. It was also accomplished over land or water, but Romans never were enthusiast seafarers anyway, and so they always preferred to use their highways (the famous concept of the 'via romana'); and along these roads, over pre-established distances, state functionaries in their duties could stop at the 'mansiones,' which were essentially Roman villas dedicated to these working individuals in need of a rest for them, their 'entourages' and horses. The Romans managed to build a pretty extensive and efficient network of these rather luxurious lodges over the years, and functionaries could even find them even at the farthest reaches of the lands that they conquered; however, sometimes, especially in rather isolated provinces, they found that local authorities had moved into the villages for their own personal use. Naturally, sooner or later these intruders were expelled, but it always took some time to achieve than, unless the visitor had a strong, armed company of bodyguards or legionaries coming with them. Of course, we live in a world where such things don't happen anymore, and travel associations deliver what they promise. |
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