17,000 festive meals served at InterContinental

Almost 17,000 people dined and lunched at the InterContinental Malta over the festive period, and 5,600 people celebrated at staff party lunches and dinners at the hotel, general manager Fethi Abdennadher said yesterday, the eve of InterContinental Malta's first anniversary.

A further 800 saw the new year in at parties organised by the InterContinental in the hotel's grand ballroom and lobby bar, and over dinner at the Eastern Breeze and Harruba restaurants. More than 400 went to the InterContinental for the traditional night-time breakfast in the first hours of Christmas Day, and the hotel's restaurants were full to capacity for dinner on Christmas Eve, and for lunch on Christmas Day and New Year's Day.

Dismissing out of hand a Super One TV news item on Friday, which claimed that InterContinental Malta had just made 25 people redundant, Mr Abdennadher said: "This is not true at all. On the contrary, we shall shortly be making a call for further recruitment."

Over the past year, the InterContinental has hosted 100,000 guests and served 250,000 meals. It has been the main venue for major conferences coming to Malta, including the European Association of Dermatologists and Venerologists, which brought over 1,000 delegates.

Mr Abdennadher said: "We have worked hard to build up our reputation for superb cuisine, and this response has been very pleasant. At the outset, we wanted the InterContinental to become a landmark in the Maltese community, and not simply a venue for conferences and visitors to Malta. I think we have succeeded in this. On my desk there is a large file of which the hotel staff are justly proud. It contains letters of thanks from people whose parties and group meetings have been organised with care by our team."

In the course of the year, the InterContinental received the Definitively Good Food Guide's 'best value seafood restaurant' award, for its warm-weather Al Fresco restaurant, which reopens at the end of May. The hotel's chefs also won eight silver medals, six bronze medals, and two merit awards at the recent Salon Culinaire competition organised by the Food and Cookery Association.