Creating an authentic onsen experience in Manila
YET ANOTHER luxury hotel is on the rise as I’M Hotel, a 44-storey affair located along Makati Avenue, is set to open first quarter of 2017. The 434-room property with a six-level spa features an “authentic onsen” (Japanese hot spring) experience, which, according to its general manager, is the property’s biggest draw.
“We really want to deliver a real, onsen spa,” Wouter Piet, I’M Hotel general manager, told the media during a preview on Nov. 24. In Japan, according to the Web site of the Japan Association of Secluded Hot Spring Inns, the legal definition of an onsen must be “a natural spring that contains over a defined amount of natural chemical components and is over a temperature of 25˚ Celsius at its point of release.”
The six-level, 3800 square meter spa also features 69 massage beds from communal massage pods to VIP rooms and offers more than 30 kinds of spa services from body scrubs to massages.
I’M Hotel is a P3-billion property previously developed and operated by Frankfurt-based WorldHotels group in partnership with H2O Ventures (which developed the H2O Hotel in Manila) and is now operated by WorldHotel Makati, Inc., a Philippine-registered company though Mr. Piet refused to divulge the name of the owner/s.
While still in the process of being rated, “the hotel has complied — line by line — with all the qualifications set by the Department of Tourism regarding the five-star hotel rating,” said its marketing manager, Melissa Lim.
The property, designed by Singapore-based Suying Design, is decked in black and gold color motifs to provide a sense of sophistication and contains four food and beverage outlets: Bloom, its all-day dining restaurant; Empress Jade, a dim sum and modern Chinese restaurant; Antidote, a tapas and bespoke cocktails skylounge; and Mermaid, the poolside bar.
Hotel rooms are spread across nine categories (from studio to a two-bedroom executive suite) with sizes ranging from 30 square meters to 50 square meters with the suites, located from the 23rd floor and above, going up to more than 80 square meters.
The suites come with a fully-stocked kitchen/dining set up and a washer to encourage long-staying guests. Toiletries are provided by Crabtree & Evelyn.
The rooms also strived to be almost paperless as the Smart TV provided in each room serves as the hotel compendium, in-house dining menu and ordering system and can do the check-out processes.
And since the property was developed with the people behind the H2O Hotel, known for its underwater “aquarium” rooms, I’M Hotel also boasts a unique infinity pool which has an acrylic bottom, making the pool semi-transparent from below.
“My focus is on new markets that are developing very, very fast for the Filipino tourism industry,” said Mr. Piet, specifying South Korea, China, and Europe as the hotel’s main foreign market targets.
“The Philippines always had a security image problem in Europe and that security image problem is actually fading away. So you see a lot of countries in Europe [bringing] a tremendous growth in hospitality in the Philippines, and we want to grab a piece of the pie,” he added. — Zsarlene B. Chua
