Westgate’s CALA investment. Orlando-based Westgate Resorts is partnering with a multimillion-dollar investment in the luxury Banyan Tree Bimini Resort & Residences development on Rockwell Island in Bimini, Bahamas. Westgate, Orlando-based Gissy Family Investments and others are investing with RAV Bahamas, created by Gerardo Capo, which built the $850 million project. The development offers homes with ocean views in the front and room for 80- to 120-foot docks in back on the bay. Rockwell Island will include an 18-hole golf course with larger homes, a boutique hotel and a nature preserve. This is Westgate’s first venture in the Bahamas and sets the stage for future opportunities in CALA for the company. Westgate has a portfolio of more than 60 resort properties.
More on Atlanta Marriott conversion. A pair of New York City-based companies, Monomoy Property Ventures and Axonic Capital, have selected Louisville, Kentucky-based Schulte Hospitality Group as the property management company after their acquisition of the 462-key Crowne Plaza by IHG hotel at the convention center in Atlanta. The hotel will be renovated and rebranded as the Marriott Atlanta and is scheduled to reopen in late 2027.
APF’s $1.6B in financing. Atlanta-based Access Point Financial (APF) has closed and committed to approximately $1.6 billion in hospitality-specific financings year-to-date. The financings comprise 51 hotel assets and include direct bridge loans, mezzanine loans, construction loans, preferred equity and hotel-specific SASB CMBS investments. APF said its pipeline is robust and has increased noticeably since Labor Day. The company said it has additionally grown its construction loan offerings considerably to include higher-leverage solutions.
Peachtree launches equipment finance division. Atlanta-based Peachtree Group has launched a new equipment finance division, broadening its credit platform and reinforcing its ability to provide flexible equipment lease financing across industries, including commercial real estate and hospitality. The division will be led by Brian Shaughnessy and Roger Johnson, who together bring more than 60 years of experience in equipment finance, specialty finance and portfolio acquisitions. This new platform represents a progression of Peachtree’s established private credit ecosystem. Many of the firm’s commercial real estate clients also require equipment financing, particularly in hospitality, where FF&E plays a critical role in new developments. The new unit will initially focus on financing lease transactions ranging from $500,000 to $10 million with terms generally between 24 and 84 months.
Houston hotel strike ends. Hotel workers at Hilton Americas-Houston, represented by Unite Here Local 23, have ended a 40-day strike after reaching a new contract agreement with the management. The strike, which was the first hotel strike led by union members in Texas, concluded when workers voted to ratify the agreement on October 10. The new contract includes wage increases, with the hotel housekeepers, stewards, and laundry attendants to earn a minimum of $20 per hour.
New brand in Italy. Cernobbio, Italy-based Villa d’Este is presenting Villa d’Este La Collezione, a new brand that represents a strategic step in the brand’s growth, with the aim of consolidating its presence on Lake Como, Italy. The new brand is welcoming two new destinations, Palazzo Venezia in Como and Miralago Luxury Apartments in Cernobbio. Palazzo Venezia will open on December 6, as the city’s first 5-star hotel affiliated with The Leading Hotels of the World. June 2026 will see the opening of Miralago Luxury Apartments in Cernobbio, which has been renovated from the former Hotel Miralago by Droulers Architecture.
Ennismore adds all-inclusive outside Europe. Ennismore is opening the 257-key SO/ Ras Al Khaimah, set to open later this year on the UAE’s Al Marjan Island. The new property will mark SO/’s first all-inclusive resort outside Europe and Ennismore’s debut lifestyle hotel in Ras Al Khaimah. The group’s global pipeline now exceeds 60 resorts with more than 25,000 rooms in development, including upcoming openings in Mexico, Egypt, Dubai and Vietnam.
Leaf adds in the UK. London-based Leaf Hospitality has signed the new 144-key Hampton by Hilton Wigan in the U.K. to its management and operations portfolio. The hotel forms a key element of Fettlers – the transformation of the former Galleries shopping center site in Wigan. This is Leaf’s 10th hotel signing.
Hyatt opens its first Caption in Australia. Hyatt Hotels Corp. is opening the 174-key Caption by Hyatt Central Sydney, marking the debut of the Caption by Hyatt brand in Australia and the Pacific. The hotel joins an expanding portfolio of Caption by Hyatt properties around the world, with locations in Shanghai, Osaka, Nashville and Tokyo.
First Novotel in Malta. Accor’s Novotel brand has opened its first hotel in Malta. The 293-key Novotel Malta Sliema is in Gżira and is managed locally by ST Group under a franchise agreement with Accor.
the Restoration. Modeled after
Christopher Wren’s London city plan, they grew a village of churches, steeples, meeting places, trading places, grand houses, and ale houses.
The year before the Charles Town settlement, the Carolina colonies began operating under the Fundamental Constitution, believed to have been written by the English philosopher
John Locke, who at that time served as secretary to the Proprietor of the Carolinas. Following the dictates of Charles II, who didn’t much care who lived in his colony so long as they weren’t papists, the Constitution guaranteed “ye liberty” to everyone, including “heathens, Jues, and other dissenters.”
For those who had been harangued, evicted, beaten, and murdered from one end of Europe to the other, until their backs were up against the Atlantic, an ocean that God hadn’t yet parted, hearing of “liberty” for “Jues,” even if they were second to “heathens,” must have been sweet words to downtrodden ears. The first written reference to a Jew in Charleston came in 1695—he was a Spanish-language interpreter for the governor. Populations of Sephardics began to arrive in droves as they sought escape from the long arm of Spain’s
Inquisition, which terrorized Jews throughout the colonies of South and Central America, up through Florida. In 1742, Spain attempted an invasion of English-occupied Georgia, which sent even more running into Charleston’s protection.
Here they had safety, citizenship, and rights. The community grew, and the first congregation–Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim—was established in 1749. A Jewish cemetery on Coming Street, which still survives today, opened in 1764. The Jews here fought in the American Revolution, and they fought in the
Civil War–for the
Confederacy.
Harlan Greene told me that to understand this allegiance, you had to look at the dedication ceremony for KKBE’s current building in 1841. “When they opened the synagogue and dedicated it, there’s an incredible statement made: Just as our ancestors defended their temple and their Jerusalem, we are going to defend our temple—and they call Charleston their Jerusalem. And that’s why they end up fighting for [the Confederacy in] the Civil War, because they have put down roots. They have been granted equality.”
After a renovation of the structure in 2020, the congregation rededicated the sanctuary with a plaque acknowledging that it was “constructed by a Jewish builder, whose skilled workers included enslaved African Americans.”
The first enslaved person was forced into Charleston only five months after its founding, and chattel slavery became the city’s defining industry. According to
Robert N. Rosen’s A Short History of Charleston, “Three-fourths of all ‘heads of families’ in Charleston owned at least one enslaved person” between the years 1820 and 1840. And according to Greene, “Jews owned slaves at about the same percentage as non-Jews.”
“One reason,” Greene said, “that Jews did so well is because Blacks didn’t do well.” Slavery shifted the demographics of the city—by 1709, there were more Black people than white. “You can’t help but think that one reason Jews were doing well was because they’re of European descent. That’s the sad irony: Jews had no power in the structure, but they needed more and more white people to balance the enormous Black majority. As things got fairer for the Jews, it got worse for the Blacks. And yes, Jews were complicit.”
Photo: Jeremy Tarr
The writer DuBose Heyward, most well known for writing
Porgy, which George Gershwin turned into
Porgy and Bess, wrote that Charleston had given “her beauty, her gardens, and her dim, old-fashioned ways.” Heyward lived on Church Street, and Porgy takes place nearby, on Cabbage Row. Heyward was right about Charleston’s beauty–especially in the heart of the historic district. Around the corner is the iconic
Rainbow Row, a collection of 13 brightly colored houses that have been luring tourists and visitors for over a century. And scattered throughout the neighborhood are gloriously pristine Greek Revival mansions, still showboating the colossal wealth of long-dead fatcats.
For a city with such an ugly past, it’s one of the prettiest I’ve ever seen, and most certainly the loveliest in the country.
Tyler Page Wright Friedman, a tour guide and founder of Walk & Talk Charleston, drove me around this pastel wonderland. Among her company’s offerings, which include
ghosts, gossip, and pink houses, is a Jewish history tour. She told me it’s not one of the more popular ones, and I can certainly understand why. It’s one grisly tale after another.
Here, at the mansion at 119 Broad Street, lived Mordecai Cohen, a Polish peddler who immigrated to Charleston in 1788, became “landed gentry,” and served as commissioner of the Hebrew Orphan Society; he also enslaved a man named Jim, who, after self-emancipating,
recounted to abolitionists the cruel horrors he and many others endured at Cohen’s family plantation. Two blocks away, at the mansion at 69 Meeting Street, lived the confusingly similarly named Moses Cohen Mordecai, president of KKBE from 1861 to 1866; he was also a secessionist, a Confederate, and an enslaver. Another two blocks away, in the courtyard of the Dock Street Theater, is a plaque honoring
Judah Benjamin, the first Jewish cabinet member in North America, who served as attorney general, secretary of war, and secretary of state; unfortunately, it was for the Confederate States of America (he also was the first Jewish person on currency–his portrait affixed the Confederate $2 bill).
Despite the density of all these Jewish homes and monuments concentrated in the historic district, this was certainly not a Jewish neighborhood. The historic district simply was Charleston. The city didn’t much expand beyond the tip of the peninsula, where the Ashley and Cooper Rivers meet, until the 19th century. And in the aftermath of the Civil War, when so much lay in ruins, many Jewish families moved away altogether. Moses Cohen Mordecai went to Baltimore, Judah Benjamin fled to England, and others traveled west. But plenty didn’t change their minds on slavery. Harlan Greene told me of Franklin Israel Moses, Jr.–Jewish on his father’s side, Methodist on his mother’s–who became governor of South Carolina, and actually reversed his position, accepting civil rights. However, “he was vilified by the Jewish community for that,” Greene said. “People changed their names and did not want to be associated with him.”
Post-Bellum Charleston stagnated for decades, and so did the Jewish community. It only began to revitalize in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The second large wave of Jewish immigrants arrived–Eastern Europeans fleeing pogroms and persecution. They consolidated into a single neighborhood. “Eastern European Jews brought the shtetl mentality,” said Greene. Meaning, it’s better to stick together in one area–just like they had done in the old country–rather than spread out all over the city.
“In the sanctuary, you can feel the presence of generations who came before you,” the rabbi told me. “It’s tangible. We’ve been sitting in the same uncomfortable pews for decades and decades and decades and decades. When you do a
Sulzer Sh’ma,” she said, referring to the traditional Sh’ma prayer, the central declaration of faith in Judaism, set to music by the Viennese cantor Solomon Selzer, “and you can imagine that they were also singing that in the 19th century. And you close your eyes and your voice gets softer for the second line, Baruch shem kvode [‘Blessed be the Name’]. It’s like you can hear the echoes, not just theoretically, but the actual resounding echoes of generations who came before you. And there’s so much inspiration in that. This sense of mission and legacy and responsibility to generations who came before and making sure that it’s there for generations to come after you, which means it needs to be relevant and current and modern and exciting, so that we continue to bring people into that space to be inspired. We are a vibrant, growing, dynamic congregation.”
To be surrounded by children, little boys in their kippahs speaking more Hebrew than I knew at their age (and probably more than I know now), and to see them in the embrace of this good and noble congregation that wants so badly to learn the lessons of the past to heal the present and protect the future–it is in many ways a profound blessing, and a beautiful way to start a year.
Human Foot Washes Up on Popular Tourist Beach

https://www.fodors.com/news/news/this-week-in-travel-human-foot-on-ibiza-beach-smithsonian-closures-london-anti-harassment-campaign
This week in travel, we have uncovered several stories that might have flown under your radar. Among them: a human foot washed up on the shore of a beach in Ibiza; amid the shutdown, Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo have closed their doors; and a new campaign in London is urging commuters to stand up against harassment and abuse.
Dive into these and more as we examine the latest in travel news.
NO.1 AIR CANADA TO SERVE FREE BOOZE
Canada’s flagship carrier
Air Canada announced it will serve free wine and beer to all passengers, including economy class. The change will make it the first North American legacy airline to offer free alcohol to passengers on all flights.
Scott O’Leary, vice president of loyalty and product, said, “Food and beverage just tend to have a disproportionate impact on customer satisfaction, more than any other attribute of our products and services.”
The airline is trying to woo passengers after its baggage policy change last year added extra baggage costs to tickets. But it’s easier and more cost-effective to serve alcohol than cut baggage fees, O’Leary said. “That’s just not something that’s easily waived or given to everybody without having to have some impact on ticket price.”
NO.2 SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS SHUTS DOWN
The government shutdown has entered its third week. After 11 days, the Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo
closed. The group of 21 museums, the zoo and its research centers had kept their doors open using budgets from previous years. The Smithsonian’s X account announced it will not share updates other than its operating status, and the animal cameras will not be operating.
The shutdown has also affected travel across the U.S. Some national parks are closed, but most have remained open with skeleton crews and minimal services. Air traffic controllers have also started calling in sick, leading to delays and disruptions across the country.
NO.3 CAMPAIGN ASKS LONDON COMMUTERS TO STAND UP TO HARASSMENT
Transport for London, the agency that runs the Underground, buses and trams in the capital, launched a new campaign asking commuters to step in if they see someone being harassed.
“For
National Hate Crime Awareness Week and beyond, we’re sharing real stories of people who made a difference by being active bystanders and acting like a friend by stepping in, showing kindness, and helping to defuse difficult situations,” TfL explained.
The video depicts different situations on public transportation where people have been victims of hate crimes and harassment. It urges people to act like a friend and “only intervene if you feel safe,” the ad notes.
Last year, sexual harassment on public transportation in London increased more than
10% year over year, TfL said. The transport authority launched a poster campaign asking people to intervene and report offenses.
NO.4 HUMAN FOOT WASHES UP ON BEACH
A beachgoer
found a human foot on Playa d’en Bossa, a popular Ibiza beach, last week. The person was taking a morning walk when they spotted the foot and alerted authorities. The person also held it back with a stick to ensure it was not carried back into the water. Police and forensics arrived on Plata d’en Bossa beach and closed the area for investigation. It is possible the foot washed ashore after Storm Alice made landfall in Spain.
NO.5 HELICOPTER CRASHES IN HUNTINGTON BEACH
A helicopter
crashed in Huntington Beach, California, on Saturday. It happened near a parking lot between Beach Boulevard and Twin Dolphins Drive. The chopper hit a pedestrian bridge before coming down among trees in front of the Hyatt Regency hotel. Five people, including two passengers, were taken to hospitals after being pulled from the wreckage. Police closed the area to investigate.
Videos posted on social media captured the helicopter spinning before going down. The chopper was part of the event Cars ‘N Copters, which was held on Sunday.
An eyewitness told ABC, “This could have been a lot worse, a lot worse. There were hundreds of people lined up. It could have been a lot worse.”
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