Travellers' checks

Due to open for business next Monday - some six months behind schedule - Beijing's Sunrise Kempinski Hotel (above) is attracting a lot of media attention for its highly unusual design. Coming hot on the heels of President Xi Jinping's call for an end to "weird architecture" in China, the hotel is auspiciously designed to resemble either the rising sun or a scallop, depending on your angle of view, while the entrance is supposed to resemble the mouth of a fish. Originally to have been called the Yanqi Lake Kempinski Hotel Beijing, the eye-catching property is just one part of a larger and slightly confusing three-part development that includes the Yanqi Hotel and an apparently unnamed cluster of 12 boutique hotels on nearby Yanqi Island. The whole project is managed by Kempinski Hotels but belongs to state-owned Beijing Enterprises Group (which would explain why the Yanqi Hotel came perilously close to opening as the Yanqi Lake State Guest House, being named as such on recent press releases). All three projects are scheduled to open at the same time, and their websites, with various opening offers available for each, can be accessed via www.kempinski.com/en/beijing-yanqi-lake. Yanqi Lake is located about 45km from Beijing Capital International Airport and about 60km north of central Beijing.

American mid-range hotel franchise company Best Western has attached its name to dozens of hotels across Asia in recent years, from Bangladesh to Japan. And while few if any of them have set the hospitality industry on fire, they do at least promise a fairly consistent level of services and facilities, often in locations in dire need of the same. For travellers on a budget, Best Western's current Discover Asia promotion offers a third night free at dozens of hotels throughout the region, in locations as diverse as Sandakan, in Borneo, Koh Phangan, in Thailand (above), Vientiane, in Laos, and Tokyo, in Japan. Other countries with hotels taking part in the promotion include Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Several Middle Eastern destinations are also included. For a full list and further details, visit www.bestwesternhotelasia.com.

Having inaugurated the route last year, the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express has scheduled another journey between Santa Lucia railway station (above), in Venice, and Stockholm Central Station, in Sweden, for 2015. The five-day trip begins with a swift overnight hop through central Europe that ends with a post-luncheon arrival in Copenhagen. The following two nights are spent at the Copenhagen Marriott Hotel, with a city tour and dinner at an "exclusive, secret venue" on day three, then it's all aboard on day four for an overnight trundle to Stockholm. The five-night Venice-Stockholm leg departs on June 1, and the return trip (with the same Copenhagen stopover) leaves on June 6. Fares in either direction start from US$7,420. For a full itinerary and a virtual tour of the train (which will be taken out of service this month for its annual four-month refurbishment), go to www.belmond.com and click on the Iconic Trains link.