Corinthia Hotel Saint Petersburg lands best MICE award

The award was conferred at the Russian Business Travel & MICE awards gala night held in Moscow last Monday. A Corinthia statement explained that this was the first time that a hotel in St Petersburg had won this prestigious title.

The award was presented to Corinthia Hotel St Petersburg general manager Ken Dittrich by Tourbusiness Publishing House general director 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, had been the organisers of this “recently-launched and already highly-regarded trade initiative”.

The presentation ceremony had been attended by some 200 travel industry representatives, including the press.

Thanking the organisers and addressing the audience, 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,” he added.

The five-star Corinthia Hotel St. Petersburg was ideally located on the main boulevard in the heart of the Northern capital in two historical buildings of the nineteenth century.

The hotel offered 388 rooms and suites, and 15 meeting rooms with a total capacity of up to 1000 people, providing an ideal venue for conferences, banquets and special events.

A company statement explained how 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 had filled “an important gap” in the overall Russian tourist market as “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 centres, airlines, transport providers, insurances and logistic companies, and innumerable specialised agencies and tourist offices”.

The annual event targeted 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 statement concluded.