Limousine Livery was recently featured both on the cover of Bus Ride Magazine and within, with a great article on our expansion to Turtle Top buses.

Time to Move On Up: Limousine Livery Turns to Turtle Top for Luxury and Service

Limousine Livery has been a fixture in New Orleans, LA, for 27 years, providing exclusive transportation to groups of every size for every occasion. The service that began with one stretch limo has expanded to a fleet that now numbers over 50 vehicles and includes sedans, SUVs, 15-passenger vans, limo buses with perimeter seating — and most recently, its first large buses from Turtle Top.

To view the PDF of the article, please click here.

Business travel can be frustrating. Lost luggage, missed flights, bad food, and of course snow storms can cause business travelers lots of heartburn and lost sleep.

However, some creative programmers have come up with a number of smart phone apps to help make business travel a better, if not totally pleasant, experience. iPhone users check out:

• “Trip It” which lets travelers keep track of all their travel plans in one easy place. With the touch of a finger, you can view airline, hotel and car reservations in one place. (App cost: free.)
• Missed a flight and want something other than McDonalds for lunch? “I Fly Pro” includes comprehensive terminal maps and service listings for more than 600 airports worldwide. (App cost: $6.99).
• For business travelers room service can get repetitive, especially if they are staying in the same hotel chain all the time. “Zagat to Go” can help them find a great restaurant nearby. And, with Google Maps embedded in it, figure out how to get there fast. (App cost: $9.99).

 

• “Post Card” is a fun app that lets users convert their iPhone pictures into email postcards. For business travelers with small kids at home, this is fun way to stay in touch with the family at home. (App cost: free.)

Handy business travel apps for Droid phones include:

• No more lost receipts! “ProOnGo” lets the business traveler take pictures of their receipts on the go, and download them into several expense report formats. (App cost: free.)

 

• “TaxiMagic” lets travelers book a cab from the touch of a button on their phone and even pay the cab fare automatically with a credit card on file. The integrated cab service is available in most US cities. (App cost: free.)

 

• Missed a flight? “Hotels Near Me” uses GPS technology to find the nearest hotel. With over 70,000 hotels in 71 countries listed, hopefully sleeping at the airport won’t happen. (App cost: free.)

Traveling with a Blackberry?

• Once the battery has died on the laptop, and the in flight magazine has been read– twice from cover to cover – open the “Kindle” app on a Blackberry. Not only can users read books on their phone, but they can purchase them from Amazon.com too, without having to buy a Kindle. (App cost: free.)
• Save money when traveling by using “TeleNav” as opposed to renting a car with a GPS finder in it. This app provides turn by turn directions, including spoken instructions. (App cost / service: $9.99 a month.)

Do not use maid service. Maids use water, energy and chemicals to clean your room. They use power to vacuum your carpet, water to wash your sheets and towels and various chemicals to clean your bathroom and dust the furniture. In many hotels, you can call and request no maid service. In addition, place your “do not disturb” sign outside the door so the maid will remember not to enter your room. If you want maid service, but would rather they did not change your sheets and towels every day, make the request and reinforce the request by remembering to make your bed and hang up your towel every day.

Water is a finite resource and in addition to affecting people, our water use affects the environment. In addition, we use energy to heat hot water. Take a 5 to 10 minute shower uses less water than a bath. Take a birdbath, turn the water on to get wet, then turn it off, lather up and turn the water back on to rinse the soap away. Also, during warm weather, take a colder shower in the middle of the day when it is warmer to use less hot water.

In many hotels, the heat and air conditioning is within your control. During warm weather, keep the air-conditioner on low, turning it off when you leave the hotel room. In cold weather, turn the heat down when you either leave the room or sleep.

Bring your own toiletries. The hotel packaging for those little bottles of shampoo, conditioner and mouthwash uses plastic. Do your part to reduce the demand for these products by using your own toiletries and leaving their toiletries untouched.

Find out if your hotel recycles. If they do not, try to find an environmentally friendly way to dispose of your recyclable waste. Alternatives can include taking your recyclable waste with you and disposing of it responsibly when you get someplace where recycling is available.

Another way to  reduce  environmental impact while traveling is by using an environmentally friendly transportation companies like Limo Livery. 

In the shadows of the devastating economic and environmental impact of last year’s oil disaster in the Gulf Coast, Limousine Livery, and in addition to being a member of Limousine Environmental Action Partnership (LEAP), will be converting 20 Lincoln Town Cars to propane autogas, a clean-burning, American-made fuel that lowers greenhouse gas emissions and operating costs simultaneously. So, by choosing Limo Livery, you are choosing an environmentally responsible leg of your travel.

The Hyatt Regency New Orleans, whose blown-out windows became some of the first images of Hurricane Katrina damage broadcast to television audiences around the country in 2005, will reopen to guests Oct. 19.

The Hyatt’s more than 1,000 guest rooms will help propel the city’s tourism industry closer to pre-Katrina levels of hotel capacity.

Assuming there is a football season, the Hyatt will open just in time for the New Orleans Saints’ Oct. 23 rematch against the Indianapolis Colts.

“We’re going to open with a bang,” the hotel’s general manager Michael Smith said. “We closed with a bang, we’re going to open with one. We’re the phoenix rising from the ashes.”

Smith said the opening date will also kick off a more than yearlong period of special events in the city, including the 2012 BCS championship game, the 2012 Final Four and the 2013 Super Bowl, all of which will attract business to the hotel, he said.

The 1,193-room hotel will include 95 suites. It will also contain two restaurants, one with an as-yet-to-be-named “celebrity chef”; a 24-hour fresh market; and a Starbucks coffee shop. The revolving rooftop restaurant is being replaced with a club-level lounge that overlooks the city and a fitness center that overlooks the Superdome and the New Orleans Arena. The lounge and fitness center will not revolve.

Smith is careful not to call the Hyatt’s repairs a renovation. He said he prefers the term “redevelopment and repositioning” and said the redeveloped Hyatt will have some marked differences from the old one. For starters, the hotel has doubled its meeting space to 200,000 square feet.

The reopening of the Hyatt will put the local tourism industry closer to pre-Katrina levels of hotel capacity. The Hyatt’s reopening will bring the total number of hotel rooms in New Orleans to 36,387 rooms, about 92 percent of the city’s pre-Katrina total. (Before the storm, there were 39,525 hotel rooms in New Orleans.)

The addition of the Hyatt will also boost the number of hotel rooms within one mile of the Convention Center to 23,000, according to the Greater New Orleans Hotel and Lodging Association.