Starwood’s W Hotels has opened a new property in the Chilean capital, located in Santiago’s financial district of El Golf. It is the first W-branded hotel on the continent.
W will be joining Ritz-Carlton, Hyatt, Intercontinental and Crowne Plaza, which already have luxury hotels in the area. The Costanera Centre, a new mega-complex comprising offices and a hotel
(as yet unnamed), is also under construction in the district.
Osvaldo Librizzi, president of Starwood Hotels and Resorts Latin America, said: “We chose Santiago because of the need for outstanding hotels and for the importance Santiago has as a financial and cultural centre in South America.”
Librizzi calls W Santiago a “milestone” in the brand’s “continued global expansion into the world’s most vibrant destinations”. The new opening brings the total number of W Hotels worldwide to 33, with recent openings in Washington (see online news August 1) and Doha (see online news March 11).
W Hotels worked with two designers in the building of the new hotel, New Yorker Tony Chi and the native Chilean designer Sergio Echeverria, who chose the colour palette of blue and orange to echo its geographical surroundings - the Atacama Desert and the Andes Mountains.
The 196 guestrooms (including 20 suites, 16 Cool Corner rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows, three WOW suites and the Extreme WOW suite) have views of the mountains and the city. W Beds with goose-down duvets feature in every room, along with flatscreen LCD TVs, wifi and MP3 docking stations.
W Santiago is part of the Isidora 3,000 complex, which includes hotels, offices and retail outlets, while the hotel itself has three restaurants, leisure and business facilities.
Red2One is the hotel’s rooftop bar, while Osaka restaurant features Peruvian-Asian cuisine. NoSo offers modern French cuisine and there is also a private dining room available, with seating for 25, and a wine bar.
Guests also have access to the O2 Balance and Wellness Club, offering fitness equipment and spa treatments, and the heated, 21st floor rooftop pool.
In terms of business facilities, W Santiago houses a 24-hour business centre, plus more than 1,800 sqm of modern meeting and event space, including ten well-equipped meeting rooms and the Great Room (W’s ballroom), capable of seating 1,400 guests.
Starwood also opened a new Four Points by Sheraton property in Chile earlier this year, in Los Angeles, in the southern province of Biobio. Other South American openings in the pipeline include Le Méridien Panama later this year and four hotels in Peru (including a new Luxury Collection Resort) by 2011.
Visit whotels.com, starwoodhotels.com
Report by Bethany Whymark
