Rituparna Chatterjee – Mumbai
The recently opened theme park hotel, Novotel Imagica Khopoli, located adjacent to the theme park Adlabs Imagica and water park Adlabs Aquamagica and off the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, is positioning itself as a wedding destination. Since its opening a few months back, the property has been receiving both leisure guests and corporates, and is presently focusing on attracting the wedding segment by leveraging its proximity to the theme and water parks. However, the present focus for the 287-room Novotel Imagica Khopoli will be to host small weddings because only 116 rooms and a 5000 sq feet hall are presently functional. The remaining rooms along with an additional 1000-1400 sq feet hall are expected to become functional by March-April 2016. Post this, it would look at hosting large weddings. In addition, the property boasts of four F&B outlets – The Square, FLOTZ, Nitro Bar and Tubby’s Bistro.
Speaking to Food & Hospitality World about this, Srinivas Srirangam, general manager, Novotel Imagica Khopoli stated, “We have been working for the past six months to develop Novotel Imagica Khopoli into a good wedding destination. We have been building the whole concept and then the product by making sure that we have enough banqueting space, proper operating equipment, an event management team and decorators, back-up, etc. Post this, the marketing started wherein we spoke about the unique buying propositions of our hotel and the region, the facilities at our banquet, the event managers working with us and so on.” Adding to this, he said, “We check for the auspicious dates and target the wedding groups through wedding planners, travel agents, etc. We are doing both B2B and B2C marketing.”
The hotel will be hosting three weddings in December this year wherein around 300 guests are expected for each wedding. As for customising weddings, Srirangam opined, “We are open to doing any weddings – be it Jew, Jain, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, etc. One of the things we can propose our client is to opt for a character baraat instead of a traditional one wherein there will be a character parade.”