Corinthia Hotel St. Petersburg wins Best Congress Hotel award

Corinthia Hotels announced that its newly-extended and refurbished five-star Corinthia Hotel St. Petersburg in Russia was pronounced the city’s best Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Events (MICE) hotel in St. Petersburg at the “Russian Business Travel & MICE awards” gala night held in Moscow on September 20, 2010. This is the first time that a hotel in St. Petersburg has won this prestigious title.

The award was presented to Corinthia Hotel St. Petersburg general manager Ken Dittrich by general director of the Tourbusiness Publishing House Ivan Kalashnikov on behalf of Business Travel magazine and Internet portal conference.ru. These two entities, in collaboration with the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, are the pioneering organizers of this recently-launched and already highly-regarded trade initiative. The presentation ceremony was attended by some 200 travel industry representatives, including the press.

Thanking the organizers and addressing the audience, general manager Ken Dittrich said, “Thanks to the vision of our owners, International Hotel Investments plc, which forms part of the Corinthia Hotels group, who put so much trust, investment, and effort in the recently-completed reconstruction and extension project of the Corinthia Hotel St. Petersburg, we can now boast of the largest conference facilities of any hotel in the city. It goes without saying that my dedicated team members in the hotel and myself feel extremely proud to have risen to the challenge of successfully operating such a magnificent new property, and in so doing helping to contribute so significantly to the development of business tourism to our beloved city. This award, therefore, is dedicated to all whose contribution made this achievement possible.”

The five-star Corinthia Hotel St. Petersburg is ideally located on the main boulevard in the heart of the northern capital in two historical buildings of the 19th century. The hotel offers 388 comfortable and elegant rooms and suites, and 15 fully-equipped, up-to-date meeting rooms with a total capacity of up to 1,000 people, providing an ideal venue for conferences, banquets, and special events. The high level of services and facilities at the Corinthia Hotel St. Petersburg have been highly praised by local and international representatives of the business community, world-famous personalities, and many of the city’s corporate clients.

The “Russian Business Travel & MICE Awards” have filled an important gap in the overall Russian tourist market, a rapidly-growing industry with an annual turnover of several billions of rubles and which involves various sectors including thousands of hotels, congress and exhibition centers, airlines, transport providers, insurances and logistic companies, and innumerable specialized agencies and tourist offices.

The annual event targets all sectors of the industry, with the first year producing no less than 163 nominations and 60,000 votes among 23 separate categories, judged by a panel of leading local and international experts in the field of MICE travel.

The Corinthia Hotel St. Petersburg is owned by International Hotel Investments plc (IHI), a public company based in Malta with hotel investments in Budapest, Tripoli, Lisbon, Malta, Prague, St. Petersburg and London. The company’s hotels are operated by CHI Hotels & Resorts (CHI), a leading hotel operating company owned by IHI itself (70 percent) and the Wyndham Hotel Group of the United States (30 percent).

ABOUT CORINTHIA HOTELS

Corinthia Hotels is an internationally-acclaimed brand of luxury hotels founded by the Pisani family of Malta in the 1960s. The Corinthia brand is true to its roots as a family business, fired by a determination to succeed, an infinite devotion to detail, and a boundless passion for understanding and serving its customers. All Corinthia hotels feature extensive leisure and business traveler facilities and are renowned for their uniqueness of character. Corinthia Hotels’ portfolio includes the award-winning Corinthia Hotel Budapest in Hungary, Corinthia Hotel Prague in the Czech Republic, Corinthia Hotel St. Petersburg in Russia, and Corinthia Palace Hotel & Spa in Malta. The portfolio also features the splendid Corinthia Hotel St. George’s Bay in Malta, the superior five-star Corinthia Hotel Tripoli in Libya, and the modern Corinthia Hotel Lisbon in Portugal. The latest additions to the Corinthia Hotels portfolio are the Corinthia Hotel London – due to open in early 2011 and the Corinthia Taormina Golf Resort in Sicily, Italy – due to open in 2012.