Have you seen the Rizal Park Hotel yet?

Five words to describe the Rizal Park Hotel: So beautiful and so instagrammable.

The hotel, which stands on Roxas Boulevard in the Ermita district of Manila, used to be home to the Army and Navy Club.  With its banquet and social halls, swimming pools and dining facilities, it became the center of American social life in Manila. 

It recently reopened as a five-star hotel and the results are amazing.

ON SOFT OPENING

The Rizal Park Hotel is still on soft opening, with only 74 rooms (out of 110) available for booking. Of the planned facilities, only the Cafe Rizal, the spa center, and the courtyard are operating.

According to an employee GMA News Online spoke on the phone, the hotel is targeting to open a Chinese restaurant, a sky bar, and a coffee shop in September.

"The other 36 rooms in the new building, as well as the banquet halls and swimming pools are being targeted to open sometime in the last quarter of the year." 

On August 8, they are hoping that the PAGCOR-operated casino will start to operate.

At the moment, the Rizal Park Hotel is offering introductory rates, starting at P4,800 a night, which is good for two people. It comes with complementary breakfast and wifi, of course. The selling period ends on Monday, but stay period is until September.

LOADED WITH HISTORY

The building, which was completed in 1090, had many other uses: During World War II, it was used as an evacuation center and bomb shelter, and in the ‘60s, it served as the office for the city architect. According to its website, the structure was also used as a manufacturing site as well as a warehouse.

It was declared a National Historical Landmark by the National Historical Commission of the Philippines in 1991, and in 2014, it was confirmed that the structure was being redeveloped into a five-star boutique hotel.

Palafox Associates was tapped by Oceanville Hotel and Spa Corp., the developer of the Army and Navy Club building, to be the architectural firm of the redevelopment.

In 2014, Palafox Associates’ chief operations officer Michael de Castro told GMA News Online, that “our intention is to restore the façade to its original design of William Parson. The beams, columns, will be retrofitted accordingly, based on the detailed engineering studies and the slab will be reinforced concrete. The building will be redesigned to function as a five-star boutique hotel with all of its amenities.” — LA, GMA News