Shanghai Marriott Hotel City Center, next to the People's Square and Nanjinglu, is positioned as a flagship property of the Marriott Hotels and Resorts brand in China. Provided to China Daily

Hotel profile |Shanghai

Marriott brings brand to city center. Yang Yijun reports.

The largest hotel of Marriott International in Shanghai has opened its doors in the heart of the city. The 720-room Shanghai Marriott Hotel City Center, next to the People's Square and Nanjinglu, has been positioned as a flagship property of the Marriott Hotels and Resorts brand in China.

"The voice of the Marriott brand is inspiring performance. We found out that our guests in the Marriott hotels are the performance achievers. I believe this hotel reflects the brand voice very well," says Meng Lo, general manager of the hotel.

"If you look at everything you see in this hotel, from the decoration to the location and to what we serve, all these things go into making the guests' stay more inspiring and making them perform well."

The classically designed guest rooms and suites feature Marriott's "Revive" bedding, ergonomic work space and various modern devices, iPod docking stations and 42-inch LCD televisions with plug-and-play MP3 and laptop connectivity.

The hotel offers more than 2,000 square meters of meeting space, including two pillar-free ballrooms and seven break-out rooms, six of which offer natural light. All the meeting rooms are spread out over the same floor, making it very convenient for people who have large meetings to move among different rooms.

"On top of that, we have a huge LED screen which is 9 by 5 meters. I think to this point, we are the only one in the city to have that. The picture quality is very competitive, so it's very popular for meeting planners and wedding couples," Lo says.

"Our goal is to position this hotel as a MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) hotel. We have already had some very successful meeting groups from the US and India here."

The hotel has introduced Inagiku, the renowned century-old Japanese restaurant chain, to Shanghai. The restaurant features its legendary tempura, which is made with a special combination of oil that gives it a very nice flavor.

For the guests who are looking for more dining options, Shanghai City Bistro offers Asian food, Western food as well as cold dishes and desserts in its three islands.

"That gives a huge amount of variety. I think it's really too much for one sitting. You might have to come two or three times to try everything. We are very proud of that," Lo says.

Its Chinese restaurant Man Ho, which is Cantonese for Marriott, serves authentic Cantonese and Shanghainese cuisine in a luxury manner.

For casual diners, the hotel features Java+, which serves coffee and pastries, as well as a new concept called "5, 10, 20" in the lobby lounge.

"It's a menu where we can produce food in five minutes, 10 minutes and 20 minutes. That will prove to be very popular to a lot of people who are on-the-go for very simple cold cuts to mini burgers," he says.

Lo has high expectations for the hotel. "This hotel will continue to grow and it will do very well. It has the right infrastructure, location, facilities, number of rooms and brand name. We have all the components to make this a very successful hotel," he says.

Having joined Marriott in 1989, Lo has a strong belief in the company's philosophy.

"One of the core values from one of our founders is that if you take care of your associates, the associates will take care of the guests and the guests will come again and again," he says.

"We are sincere in taking care of our associates and seeing how we can be more productive. We are very performance driven, but, at the same time, there is a family side to this huge corporation."