The Team
Marc de la Cruz, Co-Founder
After graduating with a Communication Arts degree in De La Salle University, Marc spent a few years as an advertising executive at Saatchi & Saatchi before embarking on a life-long career in the hospitality industry. His initial foray in hotel PR was at the Inter-Continental Mania and then moved on as Communications Manager of Makati Shangri-La. He had a brief stint as Corporate Communications head of St. Luke’s Medical Center in Quezon City until he joined the Discovery hotel group where he capped his corporate hotel career as Director of Marketing Communications of Discovery Suites and Discovery Country Suites. Marc is an occasional writer and has contributed feature articles for Inflight Magazine and Philippine Star (uncredited). His most noteworthy achievements include awards for Best Student as an undergraduate at the De La Salle University given by Gawad CCP (1991), and spearheading award-winning initiatives on behalf of Discovery hotels such as Miele Guide Asia’s Top Restaurant citations (2010, 2011 and 2012), Spot.ph, for Best Steak Restaurant and Mabuhay Service Awards (2009).
Gemma V Batoon, Co-Founder
An industry veteran, Gemma has 29 years of experience in the service and hospitality industry. She led the marketing communications team of Discovery hotel group for 13 years, and was part of the corporate team that successfully launched the pre-opening and marketing communications plans of four (4) new hotels under the HSAI Raintree Hospitality management team. She pioneered Discovery hotels’ CSR programs generating between P60,000 to P200,00 per year in donations for various charities. She was responsible for brand marketing, guest experience management, product development, and owner relations. Gemma raised awareness for the Discovery brand generating a total of P73M (Philippine publications only) in media mileage. Her Visit Discovery project in 2014 earned P12M for the hotels.
Prior to her role in Discovery, she was Marketing Services Manager for Mandarin Oriental Manila for three years, and for Ayala Foundation’s Art & Culture Division (Ayala Museum) for a total of five years, in charge of brand building activities, partnership marketing, CSR programs, promotions and events.