Ever since The Park, Navi Mumbai, opened its glass-and-shiny-metal doors, the punters have been rolling in with some regularity. Not surprising: it is the first five-star hotel in Mumbai , and with its focus on the business traveller, it fills a much-needed niche for the very many software and BPO companies in a city that is beginning to feel its oats a bit.
It is unpromising at first sight: a large white brick of a building plonked next to the highway at Belapur. The hotel’s literature seeks to lay the blame on inspiration from Modernism and Le Corbusier. Being a philistine, all I can say is that if I was paying several thousand rupees a night for the privilege of staying in a five-star, I’d like the place to look and feel like one. White walls, hard lines, lots of glass and metal? Nada. Sure, coloured lighting does soothe the contours post-dusk, but even then the atrium and corridors look like a gussied-up barracks. In the rooms, a little more attention to the placement of the furniture would improve things. For example, in mine, the flat-screen TV is off in one corner, at an angle from the bed and miles from the couch — which faces the wardrobe — with an uncomfortable chair placed at an angle to the screen. And the bathrooms: well, I’ve seen larger in suburban apartments. For me, one of the perks of this reviewing gig is getting to swim a bit. But the pool’s a wee little thing. If more than three people tried to swim laps, you’d need traffic signals. But hey, maybe it’s Modernism’s substitute for a bathtub.
What redeems the place for me is the level of service, which is superb, with staff who know when to be chatty and when to leave you alone. And the food rocks. As of my visit, Bamboo, their Chinese restaurant, hadn’t opened, but Zest, the 24-hour multi-cuisine restaurant, Aqua, at the poolside, and Dusk, the bar, were in business. I spent long hours eating, indulging in long breakfasts from the buffet (after all the busy firangs had gone off to kick outsourced butt), lazy late lunches and contemplative dinners. The menus are inviting and varied, the wait-staff know their stuff, the portions are ginormous, and junior chefs are usually around at the buffet, monitoring patron enjoyment levels. I swear I moved up a belt-notch for each day I was there.
The restaurants will get the locals flocking in, because if there’s an even bigger hole in the New Bombay leisure market than a luxury hotel, it’s in the area of fine dining. Poolside weekend buffet brunch packages and the like will bring in the yuppies in droves. And Zest? A place that stays open all night legally, that isn’t filled with smoke, rickshaw drivers and call centre kids; that’s something New Bombay desperately needed.
The information
Where: No 1, Sector 10, CBD Belapur, Navi Mumbai
Accommodation: 10 studio single rooms, 41 deluxe pool view and hill view, 14 luxury garden view, 14 studio suites, 1 presidential suite
Tariff: Rs 6,800 (studio single), Rs 7,500 (deluxe hill view and pool view), Rs 8000 (luxury garden view), Rs 9,000 (studio suite), Rs 12,500 (presidential suite)
Contact: 022-27589000, www.theparkhotels.com