The long-anticipated Shangri-La Hotel opened in September on University Avenue with 202 rooms. The 90-seat lobby restaurant features an all-day menu inspired by Southeast Asian food vendors and an extensive list of handpicked teas. The Bar, a 30-seat space, serves as the entrance to the hotel's in-house restaurant Bosk, which seats 80 diners and has a private dining room for 30. Event and meeting space is housed on the third floor in nine meeting rooms that stretch out to 14,626 square feet. The rooms are separated into four areas but can be combined by two central corridors to create a single event space. The event rooms are named after prominent Toronto destinations and include a 42-seat screening room, a two-story glass room, and the largest space, Queen’s Park. The latter, which dazzles with 39 crystal chandeliers and occupies 3,670 square feet, can be divided by an air wall that descends from the ceiling. Pivot doors open to reveal a glass wall and an outdoor garden terrace overlooking University Avenue.
The Four Seasons Toronto opened in October. The 55-story building is home to two restaurants from Michelin-star chef Daniel Boulud, a 30,000-square-foot spa, and Aria, a 6,776-square-foot ballroom that holds 575 guests. The 17 various event spaces, housed on the third and sixth floors, are modern and come equipped with high-tech equipment including built-in projectors.
The Trump International Hotel and Tower, which opened in January, offers two floors of meeting and function space. The 3,744-square-foot grand ballroom has room for as many as 300 guests. The Presidential Hospitality suite on the 30th floor is better fit for intimate gatherings. The 4,000-square-foot suite includes one bedroom, a screening room, private dining room, living room, two powder rooms, and access to additional executive floor suites. The presidential suite has the capacity for 60 guests.
Groupe Germain Hospitalité opened Ontario’s first ALT Hotel in July. The hotel's modern vibe starts in the lobby with a piece of artwork made up of 80,000 Instagram images submitted by participants from all over the world. The hotel is steps away from the Pearson Airport and has 12 stylish meeting rooms equipped with 50-inch televisions and projector screens. The largest space, the Rose Fuscia room, seats 135 guests theater-style.
The Arcadian Loft opened this spring as the newest addition to event venue Arcadian Court. The 6,773-square-foot space can be divided into five smaller rooms for various events, each outfitted with screens, projectors, and dimmers. Playing into the neutral color palette of the venue, the decor includes gray wood floors, light-colored finishing, and city views thanks to a 200-foot glass wall. The Loft seats 312 or holds 340 for receptions.
Inspired by the '60s and '70s, Cube nightclub is dotted with brass details and mirrored surfaces. The 7,000-square-foot club opened in February and holds 600 guests indoors and 400 outside on the 3,500-square-foot patio. Cube is available for buyouts, and catering services are also available for private events.
The first-ever Marilyn Monroe Café opened in Oakville in November. Owned by Authentic Brands Group, which co-purchased the rights to Monroe’s image last year, the café is not filled with memorabilia, but rather is designed as a place where the actress would feel comfortable. The space is available for buyouts with room for 43 guests on the main floor, 12 on the mezzanine, and 30 on the patio.
Top Chef Canada’s Ryan Gallagher leads the kitchen at Reds Wine Tavern after the restaurant, formerly Reds Bistro, was re-branded and renovated this fall. The rehaul, which opened up the space and heightened the ceiling, added leather, brick, and wood decor accents and new communal tables. The restaurant’s two private rooms—one boardroom-style space for 12, the other with room for 50 for receptions—were also redone.
With an 11-page drink menu and more than 400 bottles behind the bar, SpiritHouse certainly earned its name. The 3,500-square-foot cocktail bar opened on King West in April and holds as many as 96 guests. The space is available for buyout and includes a semiprivate lounge area with a glossy, U-shaped banquette for 18 people.
USA Network's public-service campaign "Characters Unite" is aimed at putting an end to hate and discrimination. Earlier this month, the network launched a national bus tour called "I Won't Stand For." Stopping in cities such as Nashville, Atlanta, and Cleveland, the activation lets visitors personalize the "I Won't Stand For" tag line by adding in a word or phrase that resonates with them; choices include "sexism," "religious intolerance," and "homophobia." Guests can have their pictures taken with their custom statement and then share the images on Instagram using the hashtag #IWontStandFor. The photos also become part of the network's online photo gallery.
Evian is a longtime sponsor of the South Beach Wine & Food Festival, which takes place this year on Saturday and Sunday. Leading up to the festival, the brand has partnered with Live Young to launch a social media campaign with chef Richard Blais, using Instagram for its #evianeats photo activation. The chef has already started sharing daily culinary photos via @evianwater to promote the hashtag; once the festival kicks off, he'll post daily pictures via #evianeats.
In January, HBO hosted a New Years-themed party to celebrate the second season of its hit show Girls. Held at the Skirball Center of Performing Arts in New York, the cheeky function invited guests to pen resolutions on placards with the Twitter hashtag for the show #Resolutionsgirlsbreak. (The show's creator, Lena Dunham, wrote: "I resolve to wake up within two hours of my alarm.") Guests snapped photos holding their placards, and the fun shots were posted to HBO's Instagram page.
Earlier this month, Grey Goose hosted a launch party for its new Cherry Noir flavor at Thompson Hotel in Toronto. At the event, guests could use Instaprint, a location-based photo booth for Instagram designed with a specific hashtag, to print out keepsake photos. Some 365 images were printed out on site, but using the hashtag #cherrynoir, guests created more than 131,000 social media impressions that night.
To promote its new fashion blog the Cut during New York Fashion Week in September, New York magazine tapped Grand Central Marketing to dispatch a fleet of branded vehicles that served as shuttles for V.I.P. attendees. To engage the online community, the brand hosted the Cut Shuttle Fashion Forward Sweepstakes. Participants were encouraged to upload photos of the shuttles to Instagram using the hashtag #thecutshuttle; anyone who did was automatically entered to win prizes including tickets to fashion shows.
Last year, Toyota launched the #ToyotaGiving campaign. The initiative, which company reps describe as a "campaign that harnesses the power of the public via Instagram at events across the country," raises funds for community and nonprofit organizations. The campaign stopped at Lollapalooza in Chicago in August, and invited guests to write a statement on a blackboard that described their individual commitments to bettering themselves and their communities. Guests then posted photos of those statements to Instagram and Twitter using the #ToyotaGiving hashtag. For every tagged tweet or Instagram post, Toyota donated $2 to a nonprofit partner. In total, the campaign generated 4,000 Twitter and Instagram impressions, and proceeds went to 11 different organizations.
In November, Tiffany & Company hosted an in-store party in New York to celebrate the launch of its Tumblr page. At the event, live feeds from the brand's Instagram and Twitter feeds were projected onto the walls via Postano. Launched in 2011, Postano is a social media visualization tool that's designed to help brands leverage social and digital marketing content to build branded communities. Through Postano, brands can aggregate multiple social media feeds and then style the content to match the brand's presentation standards. The platform then lays the result out in a completely customizable format and automatically syndicates it across Web sites, Facebook tabs and apps, and more. It is also one of the only tools that aggregates social content for brands across all of their owned channels, including Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and more. A live Postano feed allows clients to easily pull in content whether by selected accounts or hashtags, monitor the content, and then have it instantaneously displayed.
