ibis Styles hotel to open by yearend

The Araneta Group is set to soft open the P1.5-billion ibis Styles Hotel Araneta by the end of the year, which is seen to improve the 35-hectare Araneta City’s offerings to travelers as well as the Meetings, Incentives, Conventions and Exhibitions (MICE) sector.?On Monday, Araneta Center Inc. (ACI) officially topped off the first ibis Styles hotel in the country.

?“Soft opening, not the whole number of rooms, we’ll probably test it out end of the year. Full opening probably first quarter of 2021,” ACI senior management consultant Rowell Recinto told reporters.?

The 15-story ibis Styles Araneta hotel will offer a total of 286 rooms, with 22 guest rooms per floor.?The hotel will also have six function rooms that may be used for meetings and online conferences.?Another amenity of the hotel is an overhanging pool with a glass bottom that will be the highlight of the roof deck bar overlooking the Metro Manila skyline.?

Recinto said ibis Styles is the Accor group’s affordable brand for both business and leisure travelers.?“We’re targeting the young market, not really staycation, it’s more of business-oriented, young single travelers,” Recinto said.?“We are seeing in Novotel an influx of overseas guests because of the BPO expanding here,” Recinto said, referring to foreign executives of these BPO firms visiting the country.

?Recinto added that the group still needs to determine the rates of the upcoming hotel, but emphasized that it would be lower than rates offered by Novotel.?ibis Styles Hotel Araneta will also offer meeting rooms to cater to the MICE sector.?“We have to have meeting rooms since we are technically considered a business hotel and with Novotel, a lot of people rent our function rooms,” Recinto said.?“Quite frankly, we have several missed opportunities in MICE just because we didn’t have enough rooms. The events still push through, but the guests don’t check in here. Hopefully, we will be able to cover that,” he said.?On plans to put up separate MICE facilities within Araneta City, Recinto said there are plans to do so in the future but in another superblock.?He added there are plans of transferring the location of the Shopwise supermarket to the basement area of Gateway Square.?

“Shopwise is coming here and we’re going to redevelop that whole block next,” Recinto said.?The ibis Styles hotel will be built above the New Gateway Mall and is part of the Araneta Group’s initiatives to reinvigorate the 35-hectare Araneta City.?Together with the New Gateway Mall, the hotel is the latest addition to the Gateway Square which currently features the Novotel hotel, the Smart Araneta Coliseum, the Gateway Tower Building and the Parking Garage South Building.?“All strategically situated within Gateway Square, these six structures will be interconnected with the other developments in the Araneta City via skybridges and pedestrian malls to offer a complete urban experience – lodging, parking, shopping, dining and entertainment,” the Araneta Group said.