Introducing bloggers of GRTHotels Bloggers meet, Chennai

When I was invited to the bloggers meet being planned by GRT Hotels, I didn’t know who else were coming. I found out few of my fellow bloggers were invited but couldn’t make it. Didn’t know who were all will be attending. Only when a whatsapp group was created on the day of the event, I got to see the names of bloggers coming to Chennai for this event. Even then, most of them I had never met before. When I started sharing posts about the bloggers meet, many friends were curious to know more about the specially invited bloggers. After spending 3 days with them traveling around Mahabalipuram, Kancheepuram and Chennai, I now know them slightly better and thought a post introducing them to my readers will be apt. Thus in this post I am giving a quick intro about the other specially invited bloggers who were part of the #GRTHotels bloggers meet. You can refer their respective websites to know more about them, their stories and probably find out their social media handles to follow.

Group Photo taken at Radisson Blu Temple bay

1 & 2 Sandy and Vijay

I had met them a few times earlier, particularly in Indiblogger- Tata Motors events. This Bengaluru based couple blogs at Imvoyager.com traveling together for more than a decade now.  Sandy and Vijay were the only bloggers I had already met. All other bloggers I met for the first time during the #GRTHotels bloggers meet

3 & 4. Vivek and Saakshi

Vivek and Saakshi are Chennai based couple travel bloggers. Saakshi said she has been reading my blogs for some time now and it was such a pleasure to hear that. Both Vivek and Saakshi have full time jobs as a banker and dentist respectively and are managing travel despite that. We did have some great conversation during the journey, exchanged notes on Japan and more. Do check their blog at  http://seatbackupright.com/

Above: Vivek and Saakshi

5 & 6.  Prashanth Reddy and Andrea

Prashanth and Andrea are another Bengaluru based couple taking part in the GRT Hotels bloggers meet. They blog at http://gallivantinggoals.com , do check it out to know more about them and their travel and food stories. Andrea and Prashanth are also managing their travel despite full time jobs.

7. Gitanjali Banerjee: Gitanjali flew in from Delhi for the event. She had a corporate career but now into entrepreneurship with her niche website- infertilitydost.com . She is building a platform and a community for women health issues, pregnancy, infertility etc. Her travel stories are documented in the facebook page- Travel by Karma 

8. Divyanshu Mishra:  Divyanshu was probably the most active person the group, taking maximum number of pictures and sharing them instantly. He manages sales for a leading security services company in Pune and runs a food, travel blog at https://mybonappetit.wordpress.com/

Above: Divyanshu, Arvind and Spoorti

9. Arvind Soju: Arvind also has a full time IT job, based in Pune and blogs at https://chugnchow.wordpress.com/

10 Priya Shiva

Priya runs http://priyakitchenette.com giving great tips on food styling, recipes and more. She also consults with multiple brands. She joined us along with her husband Shiva and lovely son.

We also briefly met Swapnil Midha, official blogger for GRT. 

We were ably assisted by Anand, Spoorti and Senthil from the agency Firebrand Labs (more about them at firebrandlabs.in) and several other staff from the hotel and Firebrand Labs during the event. Below is another group pic clicked with GRT Management. (Photo sourced from COO Vikram Cotah's profile)

I was told that about 150 different bloggers were evaluated before shortlisting about 20 bloggers. Some of the invited bloggers couldn't accept it due to various reasons and finally about 10 of us made it to the event, spending 4 days exploring various GRT properties and towns of Mahabalipuram and Kancheepuram. I will write about those experiences separately and I am also looking forward to reading above blogger's experience from the meet. Also follow me on Instagram here- will be posting my clicks here regularly

I also learnt that Batch 2 of bloggers will be visiting soon. Curious to know them.

Similar: Bloggers I met at BNLF Mumbai *