New Opening | a brand new ibis in Mumbai, the second largest in India
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Anant Leekha, the general manager of ibis Navi Mumbai and the soon to launch ibis Mumbai Vikhroli. sharing what he could about his new charge as well as ibis Navi Mumbai which he will continue to helm.
“Currently I'm handling ibis Navi Mumbai, which is a 196 room hotel that opened in 2012. I have been given the responsibility to pre-open Ibis Mumbai Vikhroli—which will be our 20th ibis in India and feature 249 rooms and four meeting rooms as well, along with of course a Spice It restaurant,” said Leekha, who has experience of working in large ibis properties, the soon to be launched Vikhroli hotel is second in size only to the massive Delhi Aerocity hotel where he has worked as deputy general manager.
“The hotel is situated on Lal Bahadur Shastri Marg, which has a lot of corporate business. The likes of Godrej, Amazon and Cipla are all near the hotel. Vikhroli has no other branded hotel currently—you need to travel to Powai to the Renaissance which is in a higher category,” he said adding that the ibis property will cater not only to the Vikhroli market, but also business from Powai for their segment.
The corporates which the sales team have started to interact with have all shown positive response, of course, all depending on the pandemic situation and corporate travel returning, he said. Turning to his other charge, the ibis Navi Mumbai, we asked Leekha what the hotel did during that little glimmer of business which occurred starting September 2020 till the deadly second wave hit.
“We had a lot of initiatives during that period. One was— Wedding at Ibis, which was the key focus for us during those few months. And it got traction—Navi Mumbai was never a hotel that was catering to weddings, but because of our initiative, we started getting weddings up to 50-75 pax. We also came up with a concept of pet-friendly hotels and a lot of staycation customers actually started getting their pets. And now the momentum is slowly picking up for other ibis hotels as well,” he said. The hotel also provided accommodation for a team of doctors and nurses as well.
Finally, turning back to the subject of the new launch, which happens soon, Leekha said that the leadership team was on board, and he was working on filling level 2 positions.
