A housekeeping manager at a luxury Manhattan hotel is charged with killing a woman who was strangled and had a kitchen knife stuck in her neck.

Certain hotels become not only places to stay but monuments. They enter civic lore. Luxury properties project glamour and have stories to tell. The Plaza, the Waldorf, Raffles, the Ritz, and their like are visited by travelers who could not or would not stay there. Locals patronize hometown hotels for food and drink, and for parties and conferences. Vicki Baum’s Grand Hotel captured the scene and the sensibility. The movie version starred Garbo.

The federal government is waking up to the growing nightmare of bedbugs.

Despite the slumping economy, the metropolitan Richmond region will add about 1,300 hotel rooms this year, an 8 percent increase. That will come on top of 965 rooms added to the area’s lodging inventory in 2008.

Chesterfield County:
Residence Inn by Marriott, Chester area
  Hanover County:
Country Inn, Doswell
Country Inn and Suites, Lewistown Road
Comfort Suites, Doswell
  Henrico County:
aloft Hotel, Short Pump
Candlewood Suites, airport area
Hampton Inn, airport area
Hilton Conference Center and Spa, Short Pump

Crime is down around hotels Richmond officials say police have tamed Midlothian corridor Richmond police are cleaning up hotels and working off tips—but it has nothing to do with housekeeping. City authorities yesterday declared a success the yearlong initiative to curb crime at hotels along Midlothian Turnpike. The four-phase plan has reduced robberies, aggravated assaults, drug dealing and prostitution in the corridor, said Richmond Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Alexander Taylor.

Hilton Hotels Corp. is moving its headquarters from Beverly Hills, Calif., to Northern Virginia. The company is expected to spend at least $17 million on the move to Fairfax County and create more than 300 permanent, full-time jobs in the next three years, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said in announcing the project yesterday. The state is helping Fairfax with a $1 million grant from the Governor’s Opportunity Fund and $2.5 million in economic development incentive grants.

Hotels convey mystery and romance, variations on a theme. In the days before tourism annihilated travel, steamer trunks bore stickers with the logos and names of legendary hostelries in London, Paris, New York, Venice, Banff, Cairo, Bombay, and other ports of call. “Grand Hotel” starred Garbo and Barrymore. Oh to have been in Berlin when Grusinskaya was there. Those who spent last year in Marienbad are not the only ones to confuse present and past. The ghost of Somerset Maugham haunts Raffles in Singapore.

Two lodgings and one restaurant in Virginia have received five-star awards in the 2009 Mobil Travel Guide, including The Jefferson Hotel in downtown Richmond. The Jefferson earned Mobil’s top award for the ninth straight year.

The Richmond area’s newest upscale lodging, The Westin Richmond Hotel, has opened at West Broad Street and Forest Avenue just off Interstate 64. The 250-room hotel, which opened last week, is the first Westin in the Richmond area.

After more than two years of construction, the former Miller & Rhoads department store will reopen next year as a hotel, condominium and retail complex in downtown Richmond. Set for a February opening, the building, which dates to 1888, will offer meeting, convention and banquet facilities, as well as 250 hotel rooms and 133 condominiums, some with original marble or wood floors.