At Man Ho’s live cooking station, Chef LiGang Cai showed off how Manila Marriott Hotel’s premium mooncakes actually get made, in front of guests. A few feet away, Valeria Tan — a social media influencer, model, and professional host — was trading banter in Fookien with Man Ho’s Executive Chef Chan Chi Fai. Fookien, better known as Hokkien, is the Chinese dialect spoken widely among the Philippines’ own ethnic Chinese-Filipino community. That’s the scene that actually explains what Manila Marriott Hotel is trying to do with MOONFEST, its two-month Mid-Autumn Festival campaign: not import a foreign holiday, but stage one in a language the room already half-speaks.
The Mid-Autumn Festival — a Chinese lunar-calendar harvest celebration built around family, the full moon, and mooncake-giving — is not new to Manila; Binondo, the city’s historic Chinatown, marks it every year. What’s new is a global hospitality brand mounting its own version of it, at scale, for the first time in the Philippines. MOONFEST launched July 2 with a High Tea Mooncake Pairing Party at the hotel’s Still Tea & Whisky Lounge, and runs through Man Ho, the hotel’s Michelin-Selected Cantonese restaurant — one of the 74 restaurants recognized when the Michelin Guide made its Philippine debut in late 2025 — as well as the hotel’s other restaurants and bars, plus staycation packages.
The Flavor Bet
The mooncakes themselves are where the “Filipino touch” the hotel keeps mentioning actually shows up. Alongside the two traditional builds — White Lotus Paste with Yolk and Red Lotus Paste with Yolk — Man Ho’s kitchen is also selling Spicy Beef and Woodland Mixed Nuts, flavors that have no real precedent in a Mid-Autumn tradition built on lotus paste and salted egg. It’s a small bet: that a Manila audience wants the ritual of the festival without being locked into flavors built for a different market. The cakes come packaged in a Chinese fan-inspired gift box, positioned as much for gifting as for eating.
What’s Actually Happening Over Two Months
Beyond the mooncakes, MOONFEST includes two kitchen takeovers and the launch of what the hotel is calling its “latest innovation” across two of its restaurants, led by Man Ho’s Chinese Executive Chef Chan Chi Fai. The stated intent is to bring the Mid-Autumn experience into the hotel’s full portfolio of restaurants and bars, not just the one Cantonese kitchen built for it — with the campaign pitched as Manila Marriott’s answer to how the festival is marked in neighboring Mid-Autumn markets like China, Singapore, and Malaysia.
The launch event itself doubled as a small reunion of the hotel’s own leadership: Newport World Resorts Chief Hospitality Officer John Lucas led the ceremonial mooncake slicing alongside Manila Marriott’s Director of Culinary Meik Brammer, Marriott International–Philippines Area General Manager Bruce Winton, Market Director of Sales & Distribution Lala Quilantang, and Director of Restaurants and Bars Jun Salvador — the kind of lineup that signals this isn’t a one-department marketing push but a hotel-wide campaign.
MOONFEST also slots into a pattern Manila Marriott has been building for a while: “All Ways Valentines,” “Women of Wonder” for Women’s Month, “Time-To-Spoil-Mom,” “Dad of Steel,” “Paskonstelasyon” for the holidays, and “Sinagtala Famsgiving,” a program built around Filipino culinary arts. It’s also, this month, a hotel with a genuinely busy PR calendar — the same property that became the local face of Marriott Bonvoy’s newest ambassador push, when tennis player Alex Eala was named the face of the loyalty program’s Tennis The World campaign earlier in August. Moonfest is the same institutional-campaign playbook, aimed at a festival the hotel has never staged before.
Manila Marriott sits inside Newport World Resorts, the integrated resort complex run by Travellers International Hotel Group — the same Travellers Group currently finishing Westside Resort in Parañaque, where FHTC’s & Juliet has been holding open-call auditions this month. Different property, same parent company betting on Metro Manila’s hospitality and entertainment scene at the same time.
The Details
What: Manila Marriott Hotel MOONFEST — a two-month Mid-Autumn Festival campaign, running mooncake sales, two kitchen takeovers, and new restaurant offerings across the hotel.
Started: July 2, 2026, with a High Tea Mooncake Pairing Party at Still Tea & Whisky Lounge.
Where: Man Ho (Michelin-Selected Cantonese restaurant) and other restaurants/bars at Manila Marriott Hotel, Newport World Resorts.
Mooncake flavors: White Lotus Paste with Yolk, Red Lotus Paste with Yolk, Spicy Beef, Woodland Mixed Nuts.
More info: (632) 8988 9999 or manilamarriott.com; @manilamarriott on Facebook and Instagram. All photos used in this article are from Marriott Comms Team.