Okada Manila receives the five-star nod from the Forbes Travel Guide
With the recent release of the Forbes Travel Guide Star Award winners, the hotel industry is celebrating quite a few achievements. It’s the Forbes Travel Guide’s job to verify and rate luxury properties around the world—from rooms to service, spas to restaurants—reporting them annually in a list that’s become the Oscars of the hospitality industry.
And in 2020’s Star Awards Okada Manila finally got the seal, making it one of the largest integrated five-star resorts in the world. It took them three years to get to this point. And all things considered, that’s a fairly short amount of time to do it.
So how does this happen exactly? Forbes usually sends representatives to the hotel—usually anonymous—each one trying out the rooms, spas, and restaurants. Then they rate it according to 900 objective standards. All of this is done independently, and Forbes pays for its own representatives, which means that the ratings aren’t influenced by the property at all.
And when the winners are announced, it’s always a cause for celebration. Just last week, Mantle joined in as Okada celebrated its five-star status, which was held in one of the resort’s VIP suites—the El Nido Villa.
The resort’s sprawling, 44-hectare seafront space offers quite a few places to lounge in, though it is in the highly polished El Nido Villa that you see some of the best of Okada Manila. A large living area, a private pool, multiple rooms, an entertainments room, and a generous view of the sea: it’s literally a place you could get lost in.
At the celebration, Okada also served up Japanese cuisine, though not in the way you would expect. Watermelon cubes topped with caviar, pork slices covered in chocolate, slips of tortilla topped with beef: it was intended to be a spread that took you on a journey by using different textures.
This is what it takes to get Five Stars at the Forbes Travel Guide. And for Okada Manila to have gotten that rating across its entire property—meaning its facilities, its dining, its spas, the bars, and everything else—speaks about how important this commendation actually is.
Still, Okada’s not stopping there, and they say they’re continuing to develop the property even further.
“We are delighted and extremely honored to receive the highest accolade in the hospitality industry and join the league of the finest hotels in the world. We aim to continue on this path of excellence,” says Okada Manila President and Co-Vice Chairman Takashi Oya.
That’s something we can all look forward to.
