A new 5-star-plus luxury hotel is under construction in Davos Dorf with 187 rooms and 23 suites, a spacious wellness complex and 37 privately owned apartments managed by the hotel.

The new hotel close to the Davos Lake will be managed by the InterContinental. Investments in the region of 145 million Swiss francs are planned and the hotel is expected to open for the start of the 2010/11 winter season.

A second hotel project is planned opposite the Congress Centre, this one a four-star hotel with 144 beds is to be built on the site of today’s Hotel Lohner. The investment is estimated at around 40 million Swiss francs and the hotel is expected to be run by a well-known hotel chain.

Lastly, a new 4-star hotel is being created from the 3-star Hotel Bahnhof Terminus and the neighbouring former Hotel Caprice, now used as an apartment hotel. Both establishments will remain standing and from Easter 2009 be renovated in stages and linked by a new building. The Hotel Bahnhof Terminus will remain open during the renovation phase. This new four-star hotel should also open for the 2010/11 winter season.

Austria’s largest ski region, the Skiwelt, offers half-priced lift tickets to women every Wednesday during the ski season after the New Years holiday period is over.

Now the region, which recently increased its published area size from 250 to 279km, has promised that men who dress up as women on the slopes during the region’s carnival week from 23rd February to 1st March will get half price ski tickets on that Wednesdays too.

The discounted ‘Ladies Day’ price reduces the ticket cost from 37.50 to the 19 Euros child price on Wednesdays for women.

A new guide to environmentally friendly accommodation in Bulgaria has been launched.

BalkanTravellers.com currently offers 23 eco-friendly guest houses and hotels which offer the opposite kind of holidays to those for which the country;’s ski areas have become increasingly infamous.

“Bulgaria’s countryside is a pristine treasure. Poor and underdeveloped, many regions, with hills and valleys, mountains and gorges, have remained untouched for decades. They are a wonderful destination for travellers with a taste for nature in its full glory and for those who want to escape from the overbuilt mountain resorts.”

Fourteen of the guest houses were recently given a Green House Award by the Bulgarian Association for Alternative Tourism, the State Agency for Tourism and the European Centre for Ecological and Agricultural Tourism (ECEAT).

Typical is the Moravsko Selo Bio-Hotel, situated in the Predela area, 12 km from Bansko and 8km from Razlog, in southern Bulgaria. The hotel is located where the Pirin Mountain meets the Rila Mountains surrounded by wilderness. The hosts use organically-grown fruits and vegetables to prepare food for guests. During the winter, visitors can ski and snowboard on Bansko’s slopes or the local Kulinoto slope.