Hotels, hotels, hotels

It's been a busy month of hotel spying here in Israel. New hotels have opened (although some are still taking their time), old hotels have closed, and some exciting hotel news has come out. Where to start? Waldorf Astoria: We admit it, for the past couple of weeks we've been purposely walking down Agron Street so that we can peek into the Waldorf. The hotel is finally starting to take shape, with furnishings, chandeliers, and fixtures in place. This will be a truly elegant place, from the grand entrance to the lobby and the extremely high- ceilinged ballroom in the basement (No, we didn't go inside! Just peered over the edge and trespassed a little...) All this will hopefully warrant the extra 5-10% that Waldorf plans on charging over comparable hotels' rates. Le Meridien Dead Sea is no longer. A property that was never, in recent years at least, featured on the Le Meridien website, this Le Meridien in name alone has dropped its Meridien and Fattal monikers and has become the David Dead Sea. We had the privileged of staying at the new David and are excited for some renovations which will transform this dated property, although it is still quite a good choice if one can overlook frayed carpeting or has a penchant for 80's furniture. The extraordinary facilities and spa will hopefully stay the same. Atlas Hotels has two new hotels coming to the chain: Market House Tel Aviv, which is said to open sometime this year, and another Jerusalem hotel on Mesilat Yesharim Street, said to open sometime in 2015. We stumbled across this hotel on one of our walks, so we don't have any information on it but we managed to find some renderings online. For more see http://studiomu.co.il/?portfolio=hotel-mesilat-yesharim-in-progress. Overall, it's been a pretty good month for hotel news.