We first met Waterfront Cebu City Hotel & Casino’s new General Manager when the hotel hosted the welcome cocktails for the delegates of MICE Congress held for days at the CICC. During this gathering of delegates at the Pacific Grand Ballroom, GM Alfred Portenschlager (he told us to just call him Alfred because his family name is too long!), was the host and he was “muy alegre”.
At any rate, we had lunch with Mr. Alfred as the invite was to introduce the new GM to the press over lunch at La Gondola.
Mr. Alfred, as he is fondly called, is an Austrian national and he brings with him vast international hotel experience from across four major continents, namely: North America, Africa, Asia and Europe. Prior to the 1900s, he was part of the Mandarin Group for eight years with assignments in Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong, Mandarin Oriental Manila and Oriental Singapore. He also spent years of experience in Indonesia and the Bahamas. His stint in the USA also brought him to assignments in Ritz Carlton, Remington Hotel, Pier 66, Hilton in Texas and Oppyland Hotel in Tennessee. He spent the earliest years of his career in Europe with hotels in Switzerland and Austria.
With Mr. Alfred’s vast experience in hotel management and exposure to multi-cultural environment and people-oriented nature, we look forward to great things from him as the new General Manager of Waterfront Cebu City Hotels & Casino.
Introduced together with Mr. Alfred was Waterfront’s F&B Director Alastair Granger. A British national, he worked in various luxurious hotels and restaurants in Europe and Asia. Interestingly, he started as a chef and later moved on to become F&B director. He has been working more than 25 years in the hospitality industry, specifically in the Food & Beverage division. And now at Waterfront, Alastair Granger is the Director of F&B department.
And the newest and sweetest addition to the Waterfront culinary team is Chef Daniel Lajoux as its new Group Executive Pastry Chef and AVP-Operations of Waterfront Food concepts. During the press introduction, Chef Daniel prepared 47 kinds of pastry and desserts. Quite sinful but we were all deliciously tempted!