Mandarin Oriental & Oberoi Launch Partnership

Lucky, you might wanna correct the Oberoi picture text
Oberoi Udaivillas are in Udaipur and not in Jaipur

A correction: The Oberoi Udaivilas is in Udaipur. And the Rajvilas is in Jaipur

Not travelling to India anytime soon. It is becoming increasingly dangerous for women there!

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/woman-dies-gang-rape-india-second-in-week/

Udaivillas is my favourite and yes in Udaipur. I stayed in one of those rooms in the picture near the water.
Oberoi sometimes have offers in June. I stayed at the Oberoi in Bangalore and it was stay 5 nights (or 7?) and get one night free. I managed to get free nights in Jaipur and Agra. Excellent value for money.

Actually I do think they quietly implemented tiers in the Fans of MO program. It’s says I’m Elite tier which always gives me free breakfast for two, welcome amenities, free pressing, streaming wifi etc. When they first launched the program I remember these were options you could choose from when you booked, but now it says they’re included and I have an Elite status expiry date at Dec 2022.

Then at the time of booking I can select two additional benefits on top. For my recent booking I chose a $150 hotel credit (F&B and Spa) and a surprise for a special occasion. Other options included guaranteed early check-in or late check-out, and some other options I don’t recall).

I doubt the owners of MO will ever want to merge businesses given the size and strength they have in the property market in Asia. Perhaps an outright sale of the brand might be more of their interest.

Random comment. Stayed at the Waldorf in Vegas a few months ago, which was a Mandarin. I don't know what renovations Hilton did when they took over, but thoroughly unimpressed by the hotel. I'm guessing I didn't miss much when it was a Mandarin.

Indeed there is an Elite tier at the MO. It is not transparent, how to get there. But I was informed by mail some time ago, to have reached the Elite status. I always book this hotel through Virtuoso and don‘t know how this will interact.

@Jay: Stayed there more than a dozen times. "Hard product" was fine but nothing spectacular, in line with the fact that the hotel hadn't been updated since it opened (which is also why they sold the building and dropped the MO branding), but the "soft product" or service in general was by far the best in Vegas and possibly in the US. That, plus the fact there no stinky casino downstairs made me come back time and time again.

They even had a program for frequent guests where the doormen would recognize you when you got out the car and handed you your room key because you had been checked in automatically. Magic, for real. Ahhh, the good old days 🙂

The Oberoi Lombok is one of my favourite hotels! The venture makes sense to me as Oberoi adds more resorts to a predominantly business/city hotel portfolio.

Oberoi Vanyavilas and the Taj Lake Palace are my two favourite hotels in the world. The Oberoi and Taj properties are simply fantastic.

@Roberta - the violence you refer to is horrific and the roots are much more complex and rooted in backward caste issues more representative of rural populations. I doubt you will ever visit those areas. As a western woman, traveling across India has never felt unsafe to me. I feel more at unease in my hometown of Chicago due to wide-spread gun violence.