At What Cost?

Speculation about the cost - beyond the estimated 18 billion dollar hit to the U.S. economy - continues to swirl around the issue of Trump's infamous travel ban.  Job losses in the tourism and hospitality sector seem likely, at the very least. Not so tangible is the possible intellectual impact from international scientific and academic communities choosing not to meet in the United States.

See Convene magazine's article Will Global Planners Cross the U.S. Off the List? for some of the latest research figures and specific examples of lost opportunities.

Flipping Awesome!

There's a fun article in the Sports section of the The Globe and Mail today about how "elves" (as they think of themselves) convert the hockey arena that saw the Leafs lose to the Caps in Game 6 of the first playoff round to a basketball court for our still-in-the-game Raptors.

Check it out here

Thing is, hotels do this sort of thing all the time.  Sometimes it involves tearing down a trade show for one group (booths and pipe and drape and food stations) to set up a breakfast meeting (banquet rounds with linens, chairs, dishes and cutlery, and staging with podium, mic, and screens) for a completely different organisation. Sometimes a group requires a room to be "flipped" in the same day, for the same group.  

I  remember one group I worked with was using half the Regency Ballroom at the the old Four Seasons Hotel (on Avenue Road) for a team building event featuring a crazy obstacle course of over-sized blow-up tunnels and things to climb over and under.  While they were playing mock Olympics it was "all hands on deck" with employees from nearly every department in the hotel assisting with the "flip" to a gala dinner setup complete with dance floor and staging for live band.

Can't believe I found a picture of the Regency Ballroom in the *old* Four Seasons Toronto!

Go Raps!

All work and no play?

I know how hard my clients work, and our partners at Fairmont Hotels & Resorts (now part of Accor Hotels) recognize how much ConferenceDirect Associates do for our clients. So a couple of weeks ago we were all treated to a mid-week pampering break at Her Majesty's Pleasure cocktail bar/spa located downtown in Toronto. 

After a pampering treatment of our choice and some "F&B" (this is the hospitality industry, after all), we were apprised of the latest updates on Fairmont Hotels in the Eastern region of Canada - most exciting of which is the complete "transformation" (to the tune of $140-million) of the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth in Montreal. The QE closed completely in June of 2016 and is set to re-open, ahead of schedule, within the next couple of months and the entire guestroom inventory will be renovated by December 2017. See here for more details.

Can a Hotel change the way we eat?

That's the question posed in an article in this week's NOW magazine, about the Gladstone's decision to hire a food activist to work with the hotel's Executive Chef in planning menus using sustainable, locally sourced ingredients.

It's not a new revelation that rearing cattle produces more greenhouse gasses than driving cars. "According to the United National, livestock is responsible for 18 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. This percentage includes the effect of deforestation in order to create grazing land, as well as livestock natural methane gas emissions".

So naturally vegetables and other produce from nearby Southern Ontario farms will be taking centre stage. Food activism also translates to social responsibility to the neighbourhood residents by offering healthy pay-what-you-can dinners.


Read the story here