M&R Hotel Management have announced the appointment of Thomas Gatto as general manager of the 105-room, full-service Holiday Inn Staten Island, scheduled to open next month at 290 Wild Ave. in the Travis section on the west side of the island.
Gatto, a 27-year hospitality industry veteran who has managed hotels in New York and New Jersey, will oversee operations, sales, marketing, security, maintenance, housekeeping and accounting. He also will have oversight of the hotel’s three-meal-a-day restaurant.
Prior to joining M&R Hotel Management, Gatto was general manager of the Hampton Inn & Suites Staten Island. From 2004 to 2009, he was hotel manager of the Hampton Inn Manhattan-Madison Square Garden. From 2003 to 2004, he was general manager of the former Holiday Inn Edison-Raritan Center in Edison, New Jersey.
Earlier in his lodging career, Gatto served in operations positions of increasing responsibility at hotels operated under the Ramada, Homestead Village and Holiday Inn brands. In addition, he worked for the Morgans Hotel Group when it was led by Ian Schrager.
Gatto earned a bachelor’s degree in hotel administration at New York City College of Technology and a fire safety director certificate of fitness from the New York City Fire Department.
The Holiday Inn Staten Island, a preferred hotel of the Staten Island Yankees baseball team, meets the latest design and amenity standards of the Holiday Inn brand, franchised by InterContinental Hotels Group. The hotel will feature a flexible meeting and event space that can host groups of up to 80 classroom-style, a fitness center, grab-and-go lobby market, guest laundry, complimentary Wi-Fi throughout the building and complimentary shuttle service to the Staten Island Ferry.
Guest rooms – a mix of king and double queen rooms – feature Guest Link centers in each room that provide a connection to the Internet, a port for connecting personal computers to the television and outlets for charging computers, phones and tablet devices.
The new-build hotel has been engineered to minimize energy use through the use of low-wattage fluorescent lighting and high-efficiency heating, cooling and ventilation units in each room.
The Holiday Inn Staten Island will become M&R’s third hotel on the island, adjacent to the 95-room Holiday Inn Express Staten Island West at 300 Wild Ave. and the 93-room Comfort Inn at 310 Wild Ave.
