Hotel Company Toasts its Famed Bars With Legends, Libations and Lyrics

For more than a century, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts' bars and lounges have been at the "heart of it all." The stories that echo through our grand hotels are romantic, captivating, thrilling, seductive - and countless. Today, visitors can celebrate the tales from these famous bars with Lounging with Fairmont, an in-bar promotion offering long-standing and luscious libations at 42 hotels across six countries.

Visitors can take a seat and recount stories while tantalizing their taste buds with 12 signature drinks from Fairmont's classic bars. With Lounging with Fairmont, guests will experience famous libations from Fairmonts around the globe - get a taste of Manhattan by sampling the "Old Fashioned" from The Plaza's Oak Bar, "Give Peace a Chance" with a cocktail inspired by John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "Bed-In for Peace" at Montreal's Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth or indulge in island flavors, with the "Dark N' Stormy" from The Fairmont Hamilton Princess, Bermuda or the "Kohala Sunset" from The Fairmont Orchid, Hawaii.

Fairmont has also created a compilation CD that offers the sounds behind the stories. Created as a promotional item and featured in hot spots including Fairmont Gold Lounges for in-room listening and in the lounges themselves, the CD features classics like Buddy Greco's The Lady Is A Tramp, Aretha Franklin's It Ain't Necessarily So and Vic Damone's Almost Like Being in Love.

Often referred to as the birthplace of the world's first cocktail, The Sazerac, The Fairmont New Orleans' eponymous bar, will celebrate Lounging with Fairmont with their annual Stormin' the Sazerac costume party on September 26th. Guests lounging in the Big Easy will take a step back in time and relive this historic event, when a take charge group of gals - who had previously been admitted on Mardi Gras day only - stormed the bar, shattering the formerly "men only" tradition. After the September 26, 1949 event, women were "cordially invited at all times" to the new Sazerac Bar!

By Lounging with Fairmont, guests take a step back in time, imbibing the ambience of legendary lounges that have changed the course of history, had an impact on our social fabric and even launched superstar careers, including:

· Tony Bennett crooned "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" at The Fairmont San Francisco for the very first time in 1962. The starry-eyed tune won two Grammys and transformed the singer into a living legend. The perennially suave Mr. Bennett returned to this icon atop Nob Hill forty years later, in 2002, to show the City by the Bay that the maestro could still swing.

· While The Plaza had been the place to be seen since 1907, the Oak Bar was born to lure an Atomic Age cocktail crowd with the most discrete bartenders in town. It was a formula that worked: the who's who included Frank Lloyd Wright, Milton Berle, Marilyn Monroe, and JFK, to name just a few. This infamous bar is also a movie star, starting its illustrious film career in the opening scene of Hitchcock's North By Northwest, when Cary Grant was kidnapped from the bar's east-wall banquette.

· In Toronto, the cocktails-and-cigars Library Bar at the historic Fairmont Royal York is famous for its timeless ambiance. James "I Feel Good" Brown had his pompadour styled on the bar's marble steps while waiting to film a scene with Jackie Chan in 2002's The Tuxedo and then headed straight for the grand piano at the hotel's jazzy Epic Lounge.

· The Fairmont Copley Plaza's Oak Bar has been a Beantown favorite since the 1930s, when the former Merry-Go-Round Bar featured a working carousel as its bar. Today's bar has been faithfully restored to its original pre-Prohibition state and is reminiscent of a British officer's club of the 1890's, complete with gilded ceiling, rich, dark wood paneling and marble wall hangings.

In addition to the brand-wide lounging menu, guests can get a taste of the hotels' local lore. While at The Fairmont Scottsdale Princess experience the flavors of the Sonoran Desert with a Cac-Tini in the Cazadores Bar. The Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge offers the Rocky Mountain Berry Splash or try the new Fabian cocktail at The Fairmont Hamilton Princess in Bermuda - the drink is topped with umbrellas turned inside out. Fairmont Hotels & Resorts is a collection of world-class resorts and city center hotels that enjoy unrivalled prominence in the communities where they are located.