Oracle Hotel: Luxe for less

Distance isn’t always a gauge of a beautiful destination or an unforgettable journey. Truth is, you need not travel far to embark on a gratifying vacation. Sometimes, those spontaneous impulses to spend some quality time with your family, friends or even yourself can prove to be truly rewarding.

Recently, my sisters Jaqui Boncan, Michelle Soliven and Yvonne Romualdez, my best friend Bum Tenorio, my soon-to-wed niece Nikki Boncan and I decided to hie off for the weekend to a nearby jaunt in the city to celebrate precious time before the wedding day on 11-11-11. We also wanted to satisfy our curiosity if there existed some lodging that meets our requirements: it must be within the city, must have comfortable amenities, great food and must be considered luxe for less.

We drove all over Makati, Ortigas, Roxas Boulevard and Quezon City till we finally checked in at the Oracle Hotel along Katipunan for our bonding session. It proved to be one of the most eventful weekends of our lives.

For us, it was a spontaneous act of fun and festivity that led us to this precious find. The Oracle Hotel, our home away from home, is a 70-room boutique hotel located along the busy commercial strip of Katipunan Road in Quezon City, across the sprawling Ateneo campus. The hotel, the first boutique hotel of its kind in the area, officially opened for business last October with a full range of services both as a comfortable haven of respite and as a choice venue for any function. Yes, at Oracle Hotel, customized events based on your own theme and your own budget can be enjoyed, too.

The hotel exudes soul and its gracious staff makes up the heart of this chic urban retreat. The Oracle takes pride in its individuality while maintaining its standards of service and reliability. Oracle will satisfy the experienced leisure wanderer, the time-starved business traveller and the corporate manager as well. Modern and classic, the hotel combines all the qualities to ensure a stay that is sublime and luxurious. Fine cuisine like the kind in Oracle exemplifies the apogee of global gourmet triumph. Any time of the day, the hotel offers unforgettable dining experiences at its restaurant called O’Bistro and Cafe.

This characteristic is expected because Sheila Bermudez-Romero, the gorgeous and hard-working CEO and owner of the Oracle Hotel and Residences, used to run the Azurro Bistro and Bar, known for its delightful cuisine. We found our favorite dishes at the hotel, which includes roti chanai, beef curry, chorizo pasta and bruschetta, pizza and chocolate fondue.

The need to get away is so prevalent in today’s hectic lifestyle. Many would love to satisfy their wanderlust to explore our country and what lies beyond it but our schedules make it seemingly impossible. The answer is to be creative and choose inn-timacy in an oasis within the city. Oracle not only offers luxury for less (imagine shelling out only P2,850 for an overnight stay in a deluxe room), excellent cuisine, peace and security but a love for timeless art collections for all ages. The Oracle Hotel uniquely transcends its traditional role as a hotel as the multifunctional spaces in its walls and ceilings, particularly in its ballroom, are transformed into precious spaces for their art collections and exhibitions.

Michelle, the painter in our family, and Nikki, the architect, led the group in admiring the significant artworks in the ballroom of the Oracle Hotel, which reflect a deep sense of love for our culture and heritage. Reflecting the owner’s passion for the arts, the masterpieces of Emmanuel Garibay, Reynold de la Cruz,Wire Tuazon and others adorn the ballroom, which can be used for weddings, parties, dance fests and others.

The ballroom at Oracle Hotel & Residences lets you customize events with your own theme and budget.

The artworks at the hotel, which change every so often, are conversation pieces themselves. Oracle Hotel isn’t only imbued with distinctive hip and functional characteristics, the obras of contemporary Filipino artists are added an attraction to the hotel as well. Sheila and her husband Mikee Romero (vice chairman of Air Asia Philippines) are passionate art collectors. They held an art exhibit of the masters during the opening. The couple has an extensive collection of Amorsolo and Juan Luna paintings.

Sheila intimated to me during our trip to Kota Kinabalu recently that she developed a passion for charming boutique hotels while travelling in Europe, US and Asia. Her favorite chic retreats include the Christian Lacroix Hotel in Paris, The Westbury Mayfair in London, The Gran Hotel Conde Duque in Madrid, Hotel Mediolanum in Milan, The Iroquois in New York as well as Hotel Tugu Malang and Blitar in Indonesia. She wanted to create an intimate, boutique lifestyle hotel that offered a cut above the rest at affordable prices for everyone to enjoy. At Oracle, you are guaranteed to be treated as an individual and not just a room number.

 Our unforgettably fab stay at Oracle recently reminded me of what Claus Sendlinger, CEO and president of Design Hotels, once shared. He said, “The modern person’s notion of luxury is shifting from the opulent and ostentatious to that which is precious and rare — be it time, peace, a moment of illumination or a sublime experience.”

He added, “This new luxury is about simplifying our lives in an increasingly accelerating world to enjoy quality over quantity, acts over acquisitions, and the intrinsic value in a thing of beauty or a perfect design rather than its price tag.”

Sheila, a first time hotelier who created the concept of the hotel based on valuable assessment and insights from its target clientele, said, “People who are traveling need to be assured that they will be as comfortable, if not more so, as they are in their own homes, and that’s what The Oracle provides them with.”

She continued, “The idea for the hotel is to make things much easier for people who live, work and study in the area, as well as for the people who come to visit them.”

Building Oracle came into Sheila’s entrepreneurial realm when she witnessed herself how parents search for a place to stay after visiting their children who study in Ateneo and other nearby academic institutions. (Her equally beautiful daughter Milka is a sophomore Management Economics student in Ateneo.) More than that, she wanted to provide accommodations for both local and foreign guests who attend many a symposium or conference in the vicinity.

Sheila conceptualized the hotel and the result of her creative genius became more than satisfactory. Always brimming with ideas, her foray in hotel management led her to developing themed nights for the hotel. The fun on Thursday Acoustic nights happen at the hotel’s well-appointed O’Bistro and Café where live music from pop to disco and occasional rock is experienced. For the open mic set, you can belt out the best anthems of your favorite musical acts — from Dionne Warwick to Destiny’s Child, Bruno Mars to Katy Perry. Here, either you croon or croak, no judgment will be passed. There’s actually a guitarist to provide live musical accompaniment (and eventually makes you sound better).

Fridays are no different when it comes to creating fun and unadulterated high. This time, get ready to warm up your heels on the dance floor for O’Bistro and Café’s Dance Friday. For a minimal cover charge, you can kick off the weekend with an early dinner of a mouth-watering “light” feast such as the Oracle Sampler — mini pork honey mustard, Asian spring roll with homemade vinaigrette, spaghetti Bolognese, chicken a la king on melba toast, or the duo of beer-battered fish fillet and herbed roasted chicken with panache of vegetable and mashed potato.

The concept of less is more, as espoused around the world by acclaimed boutique hotels, is the characteristic that beefs up Oracle Hotel and Residences to be a cut above the rest, a hotel force to reckon with. Here, luxury is an experience that just happens naturally, like the innate ebb and sinuous flow of lines in an intricate work of art, like that unforgettable flavor that your palate craves for. All these and more are found in Oracle Hotel. 

Luxe for less has never been this affordably desirable.

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For more information on Oracle Hotel and Residences, call 926-7777 loc. 7002 or visit www.oracleresidences.com. The Oracle Hotel and Residences is located at 317 Katipunan Ave., Quezon City.

E-mail the author at miladay.star@gmail.com.