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Liked The Chatwal? You Can Expect More of Them in The Future
Vikram Chatwal lives! The WSJ has an in-depth look at the hotel business of Vik and his father, Sant Singh Chatwal, who just opened his Chatwal Hotel the other week. You can see our tours of the hotel here and here.
From the article, we learn some rather interesting things like the genesis of Sant Singh's hotel business in America and his trips and falls along the way. We also learn Vikram has moved in across the street from the Soho Grand Hotel into a $5.4 million townhouse at Soho Mews. (pic of Vik's building.)
But the most surprising news is that aside from opening The Dream Downtown, the Chatwals have another hotel planned for NYC's NoHo nabe which will open in Spring 2011 AND the Dream Hotel South Beach will actually be two hotels called The Dream and The Night. (Currently, it's half-open as the Palmer House. That property will now open in October.) (False Alarm! We read the article too fast. The Dream South Beach will be one hotel, one dream and no Night.)
But they won't stop there.
Tags: Miami Hotel Mambo / Dream Hotels / Vikram Chatwal / Hotel Delays / Hotel Openings / → All Tags
Fans are Keeping The Dream Alive in SoBe
A half-Dream.
We've been a bit exasperated by the deferred Dream South Beach and the other week when a Twitter follower sent us a Twitpic of the hotel's seemingly slow-going construction, we were disappointed to say the least. (Remember, this hotel is only half-opened right now as The Palmer House.)
However, two commenters in South Beach strongly disagreed with us, saying the hotel is hard at work on opening. The first commenter said the photo we posted was "unfair as it fails to show the incredible progress the building has made, the sky bridge and the huge crews working on the building daily."
He also mentioned that the staff at the Palmer House will also be the staff for the Dream when that side is completed and noted that the hotel has already received great reviews on TripAdvisor.
Another commenter has more helpful info, saying:
Tags: Hotel Construction / Miami Hotel Mambo / Dream Hotels / Vikram Chatwal / Hotel Hype / Hotel Delays / → All Tags
The Dream South Beach Says Late 2010 But That Could Just Be a Dream
A Twitter follower of ours sent us this recent snap of The Dream South Beach and as you can see, it's a looooong ways away from opening.
Back in May, we cleared up exactly what was happening with this nightmare, er, Dream. Half of the hotel has reopened as The Palmer House South Beach with just 46 guestrooms and rather decent prices.
The other half of the hotel was set to open in October. Then the two halves would become one and be officially known as the Dream South Beach. But it doesn't look like any new work has been done on this half since we last snapped a shot of it in May.
Tags: Broadway Shows / Hotel Packages / Manhattan Hotels / Times Square Hotels / Vikram Chatwal / Dream Hotels / Dream Downtown / → All Tags
Vikram Chatwal Hotels Will Get You into Two Hot Broadway Shows
If last week's Tony Awards put you in the mood to see some Broadway theatrics, Vikram Chatwal Hotels will put you in front of two of the hottest shows, Fela! and Promises, Promises.
Seeing Jay-Z and Jada Pinkett Smith share producer credits for a production is enough to pique our interest. But if you need more reasons to catch Fela!, about the life of Nigerian musician Fela Kuti, it won three Tonys this year, including one for best choreography.
As part of the Fela! at the Time package, The Time will snag you two orchestra or front mezzanine tickets to the show, dinner at Serafina, memorabilia from the musical and a night in a king room in the Times Square hotel. And if the great music gets you in the mood to move, you can add on African dance lessons for two at Djoniba Dance Center. Prices start at $425 a night.
Tags: Hotel Openings / Manhattan Hotels / Chatwal Hotels / Vikram Chatwal / → All Tags
What To Expect Inside The Chatwal New York
As regular HotelChatter readers know, we’ve been salivating for news—any scrap of detail we can get—on the upcoming opening of The Chatwal New York. We’ve seen glimpses of what’s to come on the hotel’s website, but now the property’s PR folks have some more bite-sized hints to feed us. Join us, if you will, for a teasing appetizer of what the new property will be serving come spring 2010 …
Tags: Miami Hotel Mambo / Hotel Hype / Hotel News / Dream Hotels / Vikram Chatwal / → All Tags
Vikram's Dream South Beach To Come True in Early 2010
UPDATE: We have some renderings after the jump.
The Dream South Beach in late July 2009.
We know, we know. The Dream South Beach has said they would be opening several times before. But this time, we think they really mean it. A rep for Chatwal hotels has told us that the Dream will become a reality in early 2010. Yes, early 2010. And yes, that building above will be transformed into a Dream Hotel by early 2010.
There's still no mention of Dream South Beach on the Vikram Chatwal Hotels website and the DreamSouthBeach.com is not functional. BUT there is a Twitter feed. The first update? "Preparing for opening in Spring 2010!" Hmm...spring, eh? Well, we'll take into account this new truth of social media: If you tweet it then you must believe it.
Tags: Miami Hotel Mambo / Vikram Chatwal / Hotel Construction / Vikram Chatwal Hotels / → All Tags
Vikram Chatwal's Bad 'Dream' Continues in South Beach
Back in February, we did a drive-by of the South Beach site of Vikram Chatwal's Dream Hotel in Miami. Back then, the signs plastered over the construction said "Coming 2008." We chuckled. Six months later—guess what? Yup, this is what it looks like now.
We'd make a joke here about playing a game of "Spot the Difference in the Pictures," but given Mr. Chatwal's financial troubles, that seems a little cruel. And, besides, there is no prize.
More photos of The Dream South Beach after the jump.
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The Chatwal's Rooms Will Be '$1 Million a Night'
Hmm. We think something may have gotten lost in translation here. Well, at least we hope it did.
We were poking around the ol' web to see if we could unearth any new info about the supposedly-coming-next-month (but still not taking reservations) Chatwal in NYC, the newest from Vikram Chatwal, when we came upon a new website for the hotel group. Which was neat — but not particularly helpful, as The Chatwal's logo was teensy weensy and unclickable on the bottom of the page, the only evidence of the property's existence.
Tags: Hotel Rumors / Hotel Openings / Vikram Chatwal / Manhattan Hotels / → All Tags
Don't Count On That September Opening For The Chatwal
Listen. We wouldn't necessarily call ourselves pessimists or cynics when it comes to the Manhattan hotel market. In fact, we like to think we're open-minded and hopeful, embracing pleasant surprises like on-time openings, cool new concepts and even a little bit of neighbor drama. But we've been doin' this for a while and we have come to lower our expectations when it comes to hotel hype and promises of opening dates — in Manhattan, it is a sweet, sweet miracle from the heavens when a hotel opens on time.
Which is why we're calling this now: we don't think The Chatwal is going to open in September, as the Leading Hotels of the World site is promising us right now. See, not only is the hotel not taking booking at all for the month of September (not too unusual, but certainly not promising), but we haven't heard a peep outta Chatwal's peeps in a good long while. And let's not forget this one tiny detail: this hotel has been in the works for about a decade now.
Also, this: The HVS Manhattan Market Overview lists The Chatwal's opening date as early 2010; we're inclined to go with the word of HVS on this one.
Got any hot gossip on The Chatwal for us? Speak up.
Tags: Hotel Delays / Vikram Chatwal / Hotel Openings / Manhattan Hotels / → All Tags
The Chatwal is Now Shooting For a September 2009 Opening
Hey, remember when someone told us that The Chatwal would open "sooner than we think" and that "sooner than we think" was going to be July? Yeah, no: now we're looking at September.
The former Lamb's Club-turned Vikram Chatwal vanity-ish project has had a lot of obstacles to overcome, we suppose (what else takes a hotel ten years to open?) — and we checked in on the property's Leading Hotels of the World page to find that the "New hotel: Opening to be advised" message had turned into "NEW HOTEL - OPENING SEPTEMBER 2009 (date to be advised)."
We noted a couple months ago that the property had mysteriously disappeared from the list of hotels on the Vikram Chatwal Hotels site, but we were reassured that the place was still going to open — and, also, we really have no idea what this means, but when we Google "The Chatwal" the search results come up like this:
This is probably nothing we need to read into, but it's just sort of...weird.
Anyway, in conclusion: they're shooting for September and we're not holding our breath.
Tags: Hotel Hype / Hotel Openings / Miami Hotel Mambo / Hotel News / Vikram Chatwal / Vikram Chatwal Hotels / → All Tags
South Beach's 'Dream' Will Become a Reality on Labor Day
Dream SoBe, in February 2009.
'Twas when we were in Miami earlier this year when we first heard news of Vikram Chatwal's plan to take his Dream Hotel to South Beach — in fact, we drove past the hotel itself, which is going to be the result of renovations of the Tudor and Palmer House buildings on Collins Avenue, and it was under some pretty serious construction. But that was in February — and no opening date was in sight.
But we did a little checkup on the VC Hotels website today and noticed a sweet little "Labor Day 2009" next to the hotel; can it be? But where we assume its website should be (dreamsouthbeach.com), there's nothin' but a bit of plain text nonsense.
Whenever it does open, the 110-room hotel will span across the two renovated buildings connected by a glass-enclosed walkway. It's set to have two food and beverage establishments: a ground-floor restaurant and a glass-enclosed rooftop bar.
We'll keep our eye on this bad boy 'til September 7th. In the meantime, send any hot gossip our way.
Tags: Hotel Openings / Hotel Delays / Vikram Chatwal / Times Square Hotels / → All Tags
Rejoice! The Chatwal Shows Signs of Life, Might Open This Summer
No, we can't believe it either. Surely egged on by our not-so-wild speculation and eyebrow-raising (what? The fact that the hotel disappeared from the VCH website was legitimate cause for concern), we received a sparkling nugget of a press release in our inbox today: it was from The Chatwal, the mythical, fabled hotel from hotelier Vikram Chatwal that we thought would never open.
Well, it still hasn't opened — but it is showing signs of life! The hotel announced today that it has hired itself a general manager: one Mr. Joel Freyberg, who most recently held the position of Executive Director for New York's Waldorf Towers (at the Waldorf Astoria).
And — ready for this? — this caught our eye: "Opening in July 2009, The Chatwal will salute the New York City “baby grand” hotels of a bygone era, offering unparalleled accommodations and a fresh perspective on the luxury hotel experience."
July! July! July! It's coming! And now...we wait. And no, it does not appear to be accepting reservations yet.
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