THE RADISSON BLU OPENS IN NAIROBI PAVING THE WAY FOR A DOUBLE FIRST
(Posted 11th November 2015)
(Crisp new room design blending the contemporary with the class ic African motives)
The day was long in coming but finally, on a bright morning earlier this week, did Nairobi’s latest hospitality kid on the block open its doors. Both Jens Brandin, the hotel’s General Manager and Vickie Muyanga, Director of Sales & Marketing, stressed the fact that this was a ‘soft opening’ and that the formal launch event would take place in early 2016. Nevertheless was the opening a splendid affair, with owners’ representatives, contractors and some invited guests present when the blue tape was eventually cut. The hotel’s staff witnessed the event and cheers filled the air as they applauded the tape cutting moment for which they had waited for so long. At that exact moment were the doors of the new Radisson Blu officially opened for guests and in another first – this is Rezidor’s first hotel in Kenya and the first Radisson Blu brand presence in the country – was this correspondent able to check in as the first guest, allocated room 612.
With 271 rooms and suites will the Radisson Blu be one of Nairobi’s larger hotels and the various banqueting, meeting and conference facilities reflect this. A grand ballroom on the lower level of the hotel is complemented by two smaller ballrooms and a number of meeting rooms of various sizes on the entire first floor, suggesting already the direction of the main sales thrust, being corporate business and the MICE segment. Located on Upper Hill, a part of town which only emerged over the past ten to fifteen years as standalone business and commercial hub, is the hotel near enough to the main CBD but also removed enough from the perennial traffic jams and noises many city centre hotels are now subjected to.
(State of the art meeting rooms with all the prerequisite tools to make a conference a success)
Novel for Nairobi is a dedicated indoor cigar smoking room, the ‘Humidor’, where fine Cuban cigars can be purchased and enjoyed in the company of likeminded individuals while the rest of the hotel is a designated nonsmoking zone.
(The smiles of Vickie [on the left] and her colleague and the thumbs up tell the story – the wait is over)
Another ingredient in giving a hotel a reputation, good or bad, are the restaurants and the hotel on soft opening offers an all-day dining before in due course the fine dining option will open. However, a fine breakfast was already available moments after the tape was cut and the breakfast chefs were showing their skills when they prepared an Egg Benedict and an Egg Florentine, served twenty minutes after placing the order with freshly made Sauce Hollandaise. This, I often found, is the ultimate test for a five star hotel and while many have failed, did the Radisson Blu kitchen team not disappoint. Chef Wambua, first discreetly watching from his kitchen door, swiftly made his way to my table when he saw my face light up as the dish was placed in front of me. THAT indeed was an Egg Benedict out of the recipe book, apart from the lack of English muffins to form the base. Only three chefs ever made it to a 10 out of ten mark in my global Egg Benedict Challenge, among them Michelin One Star Chef Barry Tonks when he opened the Hemingways Nairobi and Christian Meinhardt whom I met at the Kempinski Seychelles Resort. Wambua got a very respectably 9 out of ten mark on first attempt on the very first day and within the first hour of the new Radisson Blu opening and that holds a promise for future guests who fancy breakfasts cooked to order.
With some five thousand new hotel rooms in the pipeline for Nairobi in coming years and ever more branded hotels pushing into the market – literally all international groups are now seeking a presence in THE business and tourism hub in Eastern Africa – has the arrival of Rezidor’s Radisson Blu brand at this stage given them a competitive advantage over those coming in a year, or several years down the line. Already is Rezidor in the final stage of adding another of their brands in the three star segment, a sign of confidence that Nairobi and Kenya remain a firm favourite for global hotel groups seeking to either enter the African market or else expand their footprint on the continent.
Congrats to the Radisson Blu team led by Jens and may they soon be able to hang out ‘fully booked’.
