A hotelier's charmed life

IT’S impossible to have conversation with Señor Miguel G. Cerqueda without laughing and reminiscing about the time he managed The Manila Hotel. After all, a large chunk of his 30-year career in the hotel industry was spent at what was once known as the “Grand Dame” of hotels in the country.

Fondly called the “ghostbuster” by his staff, it was Señor who would bravely sleep alone in some suites allegedly haunted, after ghostly apparitions were reported. (“She was on drugs! She was hallucinating!” he dismissed one such report of a woman so scared out of her wits by the supposed shadow of a little girl, she ran screaming in the hallway in the middle of the night.) Over lunch at the Astoria Plaza, which he now oversees, we joke about a few more ghost stories that he has been able to credibly explain away. (Click Sunday BusinessMirror, March 21, 2010 for the rest.)