Football fans gathered at Park Inn Hotel in Kiyovu to support their favourite national team when France beat Belgium 1-0 in an entertaining World Cup semi-final match on Tuesday night.
Located at the hotel’s poolside, the venue brought together friends, couples and families who were watching the match as they shared food and drinks.
However, the match’s result drew mixed reactions among the fans after France sealed a spot to their first World Cup final since 2006 thanks to a Samuel Umtiti’s header.
What is clear is that Park Inn Hotel has created a special venue for its customers to watch each and every single game happening in Russia using the latest viewing technology.
The atmosphere on this particular night was similar to that at St. Petersburg as most Belgium fans went home disappointed as France supporters stayed behind to celebrate their triumph.
"This is really a place to be with your friends if you want to comfortably watch such a historic football match and I am happy for France’s well-deserved victory,” said Georgie Ndirangu, a football fan and media personality who came to watch the World Cup semi-final match on Tuesday.
"The ambiance here is so perfect, you can be as loud as you want as every football fan likes and this is where you would want see people express all kinds of feelings and reactions depending on their favourite team. I really liked the environment here,” he added.
After the Jean de Dieu Ntabanganyimana, the Hotel's PR & Marketing Coordinator, said this is being done to create better relationship with Park Inn Hotel customers, by bringing the best moments of the biggest football tournament in the world within their reach using high quality images.
"You know the world cup is a trending football event this summer. So we are screening the World Cup Games to make sure that our clients don’t miss out on this global spectacle. When we see people coming to join us instead of watching the games at home, it shows us that they love our services and we also want Park Inn Hotel to be their home away from home.
Watching football matches here is just like being in Russia because of our big screens and great sound. We don’t want football fans to miss anything happening in Russia. We also want to make sure that the ambiance is spectacular to give them utmost enjoyment,” he said.
Ntabanganyimana said the hotel has three venues to watch football games, adding that more games of popular sports type, like the Premier League, Formula 1, tennis and many other sports will be broadcast after the World Cup.
To make the World Cup an even more eventful for their clients at Park Inn, the hotel came up with a promotion where one can buy a Skol bucket for just Rwf9,000, chicken and onion basket for Rwf6,500 while a package of a burger and Skol beer is available for Rwf7,000.
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