Thursday, December 12, 2013

Perion Network, Vikram Chatwal & More At UBS Conference

Israeli based Perion Network Ltd. announced that Josef Mandelbaum, chief executive officer, will present on December 11 at the UBS 41st Annual Global Media and Communications Conference at the Westin New York, Times Square.

Ami Mesika & Vikram Chatwal have previously briefed these seminars.

Perion Network Ltd. (NASDAQ: PERI) is a global consumer internet company that develops applications to make the online experience of its users simple, safe and enjoyable. Perion’s three main consumer brands are: Incredimail, Smilebox and SweetIM. Incredimail is a unified messaging application enabling consumers to manage multiple email accounts and Facebook messages in one place with an easy-to-use interface and extensive personalization features, and is available in over 100 countries in 8 languages; Smilebox is a leading photo sharing and social expression product and service that quickly turns life’s moments into digital keepsakes for sharing and connecting with friends and family, in a fun and personal way.

SweetIM is an instant messaging application that enables consumers to personalize their everyday communications with free, fun and easy to use content. Perion products have had over 300 million downloads to date with more than 50 million monthly unique visitors across all of its brands. Perion also offers and develops a range of products for mobile phones and tablets to answer its users’ increasing mobile demands. For more information on Perion please visit http://www.perion.com.


SOURCE http://www.jewocity.com/blog/perion-network-vikram-chatwal-more-at-ubs-conference/10524

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Dan Hotels Israel #1 In Market: Vikram Chatwal To Enter Hotel Market?

All the large hotel chains in Israel participated in this survey which took place during September and October 2013 in accordance and cooperation with “ACSI” (American Customer Satisfaction Index). It involved 612 guests who stayed in hotels in Israel during the previous 12 months and the results show the Dan Hotels comes top in nine of the thirteen categories analyzed, with the main ones being, customer satisfaction; willingness to recommend; and willingness to return.

The Israeli hotel market has seen considerable growth, with a Ritz Carlton being opened shortly, and rumors Vikram Chatwal is primed to enter the market.

“This is a great achievement and we all very proud of the results” commented Rafi Baeri, Vice President Marketing and Sales. “It is always a challenge to ensure customer satisfaction for the long- term but achieving first place for eight years in a row (since 2005, when the survey began) is very gratifying and ensures customer loyalty for the future. It is even more of a triumph this year as we have also managed to improve on Dan’s perception by our customers as compared to previous years.”


SOURCE http://www.jewocity.com/blog/dan-hotels-israel-1-in-market-vikram-chatwal-to-enter-hotel-market/10377

Monday, November 25, 2013

My hard partying days behind me: Vikram Chatwal

Billionaire hotelier Vikram Chatwal has had a rough life. Apart from his bad boy image and recurring stints in rehab, he also spent a lot of time over the last few years dealing with his much-publicised divorce from Priya Sachdev. But things have started to look up for Chatwal now. The entrepreneur, who has overcome his substance addiction, seems to have found happiness in his work.

Currently dabbling in many projects — designing and running hotels, acting and film production — he says he feels content in life, after a long time. “The most important thing for me today is to love myself and what I’m doing. I’m sober now and my hard partying days are behind me. I have no regrets. After a long time, I feel settled in life,” he says.

After marrying Priya in 2006, Chatwal went through a painful divorce in 2011. However, unlike what most tabloids tend to project, the experience has not put him off the institution. “I still believe in marriage and I look forward to settling down and having more kids,” says Chatwal, who met his daughter (with Priya), Safira, on her birthday earlier this year. “She was dressed up as Katy Perry as the theme of her party required the kids to dress up as their favourite pop stars. It was fun being with her. I try to meet her at least a few times every year.”

Although Chatwal lives in Los Angeles, USA, he travels to India regularly. Earlier this week, he was in the city for a fundraiser that he’s been associated with for a while. Ask him what he has planned for his film career and he says, “I produced Spring Breakers (2012) with James Franco and Selena Gomez and another film is being planned. There are two Bollywood films that I’m looking to produce and act in. I’m keen on directing and writing too.”

The last two Hindi films Chatwal was seen in were Ek Ajnabee (2005) and Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd (2006).


SOURCE http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/1154012.aspx

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Vikram Chatwal to take over Plaza Hotel

The Plaza Hotel on Fifth Avenue is close to getting new fashionable partners. Sources tell Page Six exclusively that hotelier Vikram Chatwal is nearing a deal to take over the historic hotel and bring in designer Tommy Hilfiger and restaurateur Sean Largotta as partners. We hear billionaire Chatwal is taking a 30 percent stake in the 105-year-old landmark, and is said to be looking at Hilfiger, who lives in The Plaza with his wife, Dee, and Largotta, whose properties include The Windsor and clubby watering holes The Lion and Crown, to partner on the famed Oak Room. In July, former Plaza owner the Elad Group sold its 70 percent stake in the hotel to the Indian-based Sahara Group for close to $600 million. The Sahara Group also bought an 85 percent stake in the Dream Downtown hotel last spring from Chatwal’s father, Sant Singh Chatwal. Vikram Chatwal told us last night, “The deal will close in the next couple of weeks. There have been a lot of changes at The Plaza over the years and we want to restore the history and the cultural symbolism of this treasure of New York real estate.” The Chatwals still manage the Dream and sources say talks are ongoing with Fairmont, which currently manages The Plaza, for the Chatwals to take over management once the deal is done.


SOURCE http://pagesix.com/2012/09/20/vikram-chatwal-to-take-over-plaza-hotel/

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Vikram Chatwal calls of engagement with Spanish supermodel

New York: Hotelier Vikram Chatwal has called off his engagement to Spanish supermodel Esther Canadas. Chatwal, who proposed to Canadas at St Patrick's Cathedral earlier this month, confirmed to New York Post last night that the couple had mutually agreed to end their relationship. Chatwal, whose properties include the Dream Hotels, and who was previously linked to Lindsay Lohan, told us last night of his infinitely complicated love life, "Esther and I mutually called off our engagement. We are no longer dating and remain friends." The 41-year-old was previously married to Indian model Priya Sachdev from 2006-2011.


SOURCE http://ibnlive.in.com/news/vikram-chatwal-calls-of-engagement-with-spanish-supermodel/425495-8-66.html

Monday, September 23, 2013

Dubai's second tallest tower to be operated by Dream hotel brand

Dubai-based developer Sheffield Holdings has announced its soon-to-be-completed hotel project Marina 101 will be branded Dream Dubai Marina and will be managed in association with Wyndham Hotel Group, the world's largest hotel provider.

Marina 101, is being developed by Emaar Properties – builder of the world’s tallest building Burj Khalifa – and Sheffield Holdings. When completed and opened in the fourth quarter of 2014, it will be the second tallest building in the emirate.

At a press conference on Sunday, Sheffield Holdings chairman Abu Ali Malik Shroff announced the tower, which will be one of the tallest in Dubai Marina when complete, will be operated by Hampshire Hotels Management, in association with Wyndham Hotel Group, and will be branded the Dream Dubai Marina.

The Dream hotel brand was the brainchild of hotelier Vikram Chatwal and is characterised by its “whimsical public spaces that mimic dream sequences and serene accommodations lit to lull the guest to sleep”.

The brand’s has properties in New York, Florida, Cockin and Bangkok, but its first Middle East property in Dubai will include 300 guest rooms and 420 branded hotel apartments, six restaurants and lounges, a nightclub that will occupy the 101st floor, two pools and two spas and two gymnasiums with squash courts.

“This is the first multi-use hotel and hotel apartments tower for Sheffield Holdings, and I am proud to say that we have taken the step to make it one of the biggest, most ground breaking projects of hospitality in the region,” said chairman of Sheffield Holdings, Abu Ali Shroff.

According to official Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) records, the tower will be 432m when complete and will be the second tallest building in Dubai, after the 828m tall Burj Khalifa. Overall, the CTBUH ranked it the 50 tallest tower built or under construction in the world at present.


SOURCE http://www.arabianbusiness.com/dubai-s-second-tallest-tower-be-operated-by-dream-hotel-brand-517192.html

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Hotelier, in a Good Place


SINCE opening the Time hotel more than a decade ago in Midtown Manhattan, Vikram Chatwal has been a fixture of glittering city life. He briefly dated the models Gisele Bündchen and Kate Moss. He entertained celebrity friends like Naomi Campbell at Nell’s, now closed. And in 2006, his family hosted a 10-day, three-city Indian wedding for him and Priya Sachdev, a model and former investment banker, inviting guests like former President Bill Clinton, Deepak Chopra and Sean Combs.

So it comes as something of surprise to encounter the Vikram Chatwal of today — the one who, at age 39, says he has put his partying days behind him; the one who is now single after a separation from Ms. Sachdev; the one who has embraced sobriety after two stints in rehab; and the one who says he is now more focused on being a successful hotelier than being a fixture in Page Six.

On a rain-soaked Thursday in June, Mr. Chatwal was seated in a black chair in Suite 1108 of his new hotel, the Dream Downtown, sipping coffee poured by a white-gloved butler who used to work for the designer Tom Ford. Two publicists huddled off in the distance, one of them perched on the closed seat of a bathroom toilet, tapping on a BlackBerry. “Welcome to my world,” Mr. Chatwal said.

It was the day after the opening of that hotel, his fifth in Manhattan and the eighth, over all, all managed and owned by Hampshire Hotels and Resorts, which is run by his father, Sant Singh Chatwal. And the talk was of Vikram 2.0, the more serious counterpart to his hard-partying younger self. Never mind that, a few months earlier, he had been photographed out on the town with Lindsay Lohan, another tabloid favorite who has passed through rehab more than once. (They are “just friends,” he said, having met her at a party in Los Angeles this spring.) “I was always told to be strictly business and to make money,” Mr. Chatwal said. “I got lost in the world of what I would do every day. There are two different tracks, the partying track and the getting serious. And it’s hard to balance those two things. You have to do one thing or the other. And my life has been a tricky balance.”

He has been thinking a lot about his future lately, he said: the tug between his Western upbringing and his family’s Indian roots; his interest in the film business; the split with his wife; the expectations of his father, as well as his own sobriety.

Early this year, he checked himself into Promises in Malibu, Calif., for alcohol addiction, his second rehab stint in five years. The first one came just a year after his marriage, and was not so voluntary. Friends expressed concern about his drinking. “They came in and told me to get my life together because I had been partying too much,” said Mr. Chatwal. (He was in New York; his wife was in New Delhi where she and their 4-year-old daughter, Safira, live.) “My parents and my wife made sure I got on a plane and went to Hazelden,” Mr. Chatwal said, referring to the treatment center in Minnesota. “It helped me realize that in life you obviously can’t do things by yourself.”

His sobriety was short-lived, he acknowledged, and thus the recent stay at Promises and his subsequent attendance at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. “It was just great to go to a 12-step meeting with people who really got stimulation hanging on to each other, and talking to each other about their problems and getting things out,” he said, talking publicly for the first time about his latest attempts at sobriety. “It was a real relief for me.”

His family’s hotels, which include the Chatwal on 44th Street, home to the Lambs Club restaurant (as well as a newly opened Dream South Beach hotel in Miami Beach), lack the cachet of Andre Balazs’s Mercer or the indie cool of the Ace. Still, they exhibit a certain urban chic, one apparently coveted by the Wyndham Hotel Group, which owns the Ramada chain and which earlier this year signed an agreement with Hampshire Hotels to franchise as many as 150 boutique hotels under the younger Mr. Chatwal’s brand. The expansion is ambitious given the glut of new boutique hotels (“Frankenstein has been created,” said Ian Schrager, the pioneer in the market who is collaborating with Marriott International) and Mr. Chatwal’s early ambivalence about joining the family business.

MR. CHATWAL was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the elder of two sons. His parents, originally from India, immigrated to Canada, then moved to New York in 1982. Mr. Chatwal has spent most of his life as a New Yorker, though his parents infused daily life with traditional Indian rhythms. As a child, he was sent upstate to Sikh camp to learn how to recite prayers. On his left shoulder is a tattoo of Guru Gobind Singh, a Sikh warrior Mr. Chatwal admired. Below that is a tattooed pair of eyes and a “G,” a relic of his relationship with Ms. Bundchen.

After graduating from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1994, Mr. Chatwal had trouble finding his way professionally. He flirted with a career as an actor and movie producer, appearing in small roles in nine films, including “Zoolander” and the Bollywood hit “Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd.” (Recently, in Cannes, he hosted a dinner on his yacht for the movie producer Harvey Weinstein.)

“He has grown up in many ways but he is a child in many ways,” said Queenie Singh, a friend from Mumbai.

Mr. Chatwal admitted to a certain diffusion of purpose. “It is a tremendous burden growing up,” he said. “It’s almost like that authoritative rule to be successful in life and, you know, make money and do all these things.”

By the late 1990s, however, he said his father, who made a fortune after founding the Bombay Palace restaurant chain, expected his son not only to apply himself in the family business, but also jettison the socialites and enter into an arranged marriage.

In 1999 the younger Mr. Chatwal opened the Time, capitalizing on his social connections. In 2006, he opened the edgier Night on 45th Street. Finding a bride took more time. “I don’t know if I would have dated an Indian girl if I did not have the pressure,” Mr. Chatwal said of Ms. Sachdev, a long-legged beauty he first encountered at a dinner party in India.

Mr. Chatwal’s father said that his son found purpose in marriage and building hotels. But the elder Mr. Chatwal, 65, suggested that the company also benefited from Vikram’s youthful sensibilities. “He brought new life” to the family business, Sant Chatwal said. “It was the way to go.”

A few weeks ago Vikram Chatwal, his estranged wife, a family friend and his father were gathered at the Dream Downtown, seated on a round of silver lobby cushions. The usually gregarious elder Mr. Chatwal demurred when asked what role he played in his son’s recovery. “He had an idea to fix himself,” he said of his son, changing the subject. Pressed on the matter, he replied, “The mother sometimes sees more than the father.” The young Mr. Chatwal stared blankly at a cushion as his father spoke.

“He’s very mysterious; he keeps his feelings to himself,” Priya Sachdev said of her husband, adding, “It erodes you and that is what I worry about.”

Of course Mr. Chatwal had his own take on where he is headed.

“There is that idea that home is where you make it,” he said. “That is, home with my family, with my daughter and with myself. When I go out and enjoy myself, that is home to me, too, because I have done that all my life. So I tend to be O.K. with it, until it gets to be a little bit too much sometimes.”



SOURCE
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/21/fashion/the-hotelier-vikram-chatwal-finds-himself-in-a-good-place.html