Om Namah Shivaya

Om Namah Shivaya

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Oct 30, 2012

Up, Close & Personal : Indiblogger Meet At ITC Grand Chola

Indiblogger meet is always fun and when they organised the first of it's kind, meet as Anup from Indiblogger informed, - a preview of hotel, in the same hotel, it was bound to be fun. And when it's for one of the most grand Hotel in Chennai, ITC Grand Chola, the seats were bound to fall short and the registration for the event were full even before half of the bloggers from Chennai got to know about it. It was good that Indiblogger increased at the last moment the number of seats from 70 to 75 and I got to be in the most beautiful event so far from Indiblogger "TreatsForTweets".... 



But before I go further with the fun part of the event, let me give you some interesting facts about the most beautiful hotel in town. 

A Sustainable Design:

Opened as the world's largest LEED-certified platinum (Highest in the category) green hotel, is 100 per cent powered by renewable energy. It recycles all its water and generates sustainable energy, through wind farms in Salem (Tamil Nadu – India), for the whole of its electricity needs.





The Architecture:

ITC Grand Chola is themed after traditional Hindu architecture of the Chola Dynasty. This architectural theme is reinforced with 462 pillars, most of them with hand-carved design work. The hotel has over 1 million square feet of marble with 57 varieties of the stone. The intricate stonework in the building was created by 4,000 artisans from Mamallapuram who worked on site.




The hotel is comprised of 600 rooms, which include 522 rooms and 78 serviced apartments. The hotel has a total of 10 food and beverage destinations, including the Peshawri, which serves cuisine from the Northwest Frontier, and The Royal Vega, a vegetarian restaurant. Others include Madras Pavilion, Cafe Mercara, Nutmeg, Cheroot Lounge, Pan Asian, Modo Mio, The Pub and Tranquebar. The Leisure facilities will include a 23,000-sq-ft Kaya Kalp Spa, outdoor pools, gyms for each of the three wings, and a shopping area.





Now coming back to the event... The huge hall, where the event was happening was stunning and the arrangement of seats gave us lots of room to move around. Now I could understand the reason for less number of people invited as the ITC Grand wanted to give us lots of room to move about and not to cramp our Indiblogging style... 


This was proved to be true as later on Anup got us to make the biggest blogger train and chug along the whole hall...
The event started, right on time IST and we have had great presentations from GM and other dignitaries of ITC Grand and then it was time for our usual 60 seconds of fame..



This time atleast I got a chance to talk, unlike my last Indiblogger meet at Hyatt. Anyways, once every one has had his/her share of limelight, Anup got into his grove with clarion call of hurr... and pump-ed up the jam with getting every one to form a human train...  Once every one has hitched on to it and settled, we were asked for a repeat performance of UN Chief -  Ban Ki-Moon. Yes! do the gangnum style and here is the result...


But that was not the end of the story, for our master of ceremony - Anup. He dangled some great treats from the ITC Grand Team and masterfully guided us to one of the biggest musical chair that I have had ever seen....

After all the fun and frolic we were all treated to an amazing array of tea, coffee and snacks and then the ITC Team has arranged for us a grand tour of the Grand Hotel. The Indibloggers were divided the team into groups of ten and assigned a Host/Hostess to escort us as well as enhance the Grand Chola Experience. 



My group was assigned smiling Ms. Neelam, who were thoroughly patient with our exhuberance and unceasing question and comments. 



Here are some images from the tour...


The Haiku Gang...



A beautiful concept of iPad to control all your electrical
and electronics in a well appointed room
Iconic Egg Chair and a Haiku team member...
Get.. Set.... Click
Dashing... 


The perfect pose....
The ITC Grand Chola ....

Souvik - our another host
Juke Box - An interesting addition



An exhaust traditionally hidden in a kollam/ rangoli like
structure in one of the restaurants...
I was thrilled to find this M F Hussain Painting
from the Old Chola Sheraton - This is now valued
at Rs 10 Million
And the beautiful decor...
It was a pleasure to interact with the ITC Grand Chola team...



...  attentive to all our questions and queries.

Finally we were back to our hall and waiting for the results of our tweets... and the winner are ...
The Poonam Pandaya Gang..
And from our Team Haiku...
Siraj
But no one was left out... ITC Team gave each one of coupons for a dinner for two, any time till the new year... So in the end folks, it was a great pleasure and FUN-tastik time. Kudo's to Indiblogger Team, Renie and Anup for making this Chennai Bloggers Meet so memorable for all of us as well as giving us the opportunity to appreciate, what an amazing ITC Grand Chola is - Sustainability with Responsible Luxury.

Here I am signing off from our Team Haiku...




 ____________
Shashi
 नमः शिवाय
Om Namah Shivaya

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2 comments:

I appreciate your visit and it will be a great pleasure to know what you think of this post...

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