Hotels hold year-end charity events

By Kim Rahn

With many organizations, companies and individuals dispensing charity to the poor and needy during the chilly winter season, hotels are no exception.

Hotels here are actively holding charity events for fundraising or their employees do volunteer work.

Imperial Palace Hotel and the IP Boutique Hotel are holding a painting charity event. Artist Noh Jun, famous as a sculptor of cartoonish characters, drew sketches of his characters. The sketches have been placed in the lobbies of the hotels, and guests can paint on the sketches by purchasing paint there. Some 10 paint colors are available, with each priced at 10,000 won.

The paintings, when completed, will be auctioned, and the earnings from the auction and the paint sales will be donated to charity groups.

Some of Noh’s works that characterized dogs, cats, snails and otters, including Air Haedaru, Merry Flo Christmas and Space Flo, will also be exhibited in the lobbies. More information about the donation through painting is available at 02-3440-8000 for the Imperial Palace Hotel and at 02-3702-8000 for the IP Boutique Hotel.

At Millennium Seoul Hilton, the Christmas train will be on display in the lobby again.

The train, which has become one of the hotel’s representative year-end events, will encourage the charity spirit through Jan. 16.

In the 15-year-old event, a miniature train runs on a track which surrounds the fountain on the first basement floor. About 100 locomotives and railroad cars are sponsored by domestic and international companies, and all the proceeds will go to orphanages and welfare facilities.

At the main lobby stands a gingerbread house, which is decorated with Christmas-shaped gingerbread, Santa Claus-shaped chocolate, Christmas tree ornaments and Santa Claus dolls. They are all available for sale.

The Ritz-Carlton Seoul continues its charity work to support visually-impaired children at a special school in Chungju, North Chungcheong Province, which the hotel began last year. During December, the hotel has sold teddy bear dolls at 10,000 won each along with an English-language collection of poems, which the students of the school wrote, and Christmas cards.

The same children gave a hand bell and flute performance at the hotel’s lobby on Dec. 22, and were treated to a buffet dinner.

To the Westin Chosun Seoul, charity work is not a seasonal event but a year-round one. With a welfare center at Yangcheon-gu, Seoul, staff of the hotel have helped the elderly who live alone, given baths to the elderly with dementia, counseled children from low-income brackets, and taken disabled children to excursions every week since 2003. They held a Christmas party for the children of the center on Dec. 22.

The hotel’s steady volunteer work was recognized in 2009, with an award presented by the Seoul mayor.

Besides the volunteer work, Westin Chosun employees regularly give donations and the hotel donates the equal combined amount collected by the workers.

JW Marriott Seoul also holds charity projects regularly together with its brands here, Ritz-Carlton, Renaissance, Courtyard by Marriott and Yeouido Marriott Executive Apartment. In April, some 100 staffers planted trees to prevent desertification on a mountain in Yeoncheon, Gyeonggi Province, in April. They also took part in a habitat campaign and held a fundraising event in September.

In November, they made kimchi for the elderly at a welfare center in North Chungcheong Province. The hotels also collected soap unused by the guests and sent the thousands of soap to those in low-income brackets in India.