Sofitel Philippine Plaza Manila

History

The Sofitel Philippine Plaza was built during the administration of then President Ferdinand Marcos to serve as billeting venues for delegates at the 1976 Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, both of which was hosted in the country. The hotel, which opened in 1976, was designed by Leandro Locsin of Leandro V. Locsin & Partners. The hotel was then known as the Westin Philippine Plaza under the time of the then President Corazon Aquino. The hotel was among the seven properties sold by the government for ₱1 billion during at least the first half of 1987. When AccorHotels Group abandoned the Hotel Sofitel the Grand Boulevard Manila, otherwise known as Silahis Hotel, they decided to purchase the Westin Philippine Plaza from the Westin Group of Company and made it their premiere luxury hotel in the Philippines.

The Westin Hotel Company made renovations on the hotel in 1994 and July 1995. In 2006, the hotel signed a new management contract with AccorHotels. The following year, after extensive renovation works worth millions of pesos, the hotel was rebranded as Sofitel Philippine Plaza.

Features

In 1994, before the AccorHotels group took over ownership from Westin, the hotel hosted 670 guest rooms. In 2016, it hosts 609 rooms and 46 suites.

The hotel hosts the Grand Plaza Ballroom which can accommodate between 1,000-1,400 people. For smaller functions, the ballroom can be divided into three smaller ballrooms that are given names of the country's three major island groupings: Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. The ballroom underwent a major renovation in 2014. Some of the ballroom's features designed by Locsin have been kept most notably the Murano crystal chandeliers, which have been a fixture of all the rooms since the hotel's opening. The hotel management partnered with A. Ilustre and Associates for the renovation while the architect firm in turn consulted architect Raul R. Locsin who works for the original firm behind the hotel.