Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory, Australia
Australia’s Northern Territory has launched the new Northern Territory Business Events Support Fund (NTBESF) to encourage conference planners to consider the destination for their business events.
Andrew Hopper, acting deputy CEO of the Department of Tourism and Culture, indicated that the financial assistance for qualified events was designed to complement the local government’s Buy Local policy, with funding steered towards elements requiring involvement by local NT businesses.
Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory, Australia
“This may range from the appointment of a local PCO or DMC through to covering costs for a local keynote speaker, a welcome function, gala dinner or perhaps a technical touring component in any of our key business event destinations which include Darwin, Alice Springs and Uluru,” he said in a statement.
Support will also be weighted towards business events aligned with the Territory’s economic and social strengths which include health, agribusiness, land management, mining, renewable energy, education and defence.
Hopper indicated that this new scheme would not only assist the Northern Territory to increase its share of the keenly sought after “business events pie” but would provide planners with invaluable support to consider vibrant and interesting destinations away from the usual Eastern Seaboard capital city rotations.
Organisations can apply for financial assistance of A$100 (US$80) per delegate up to a maximum of A$50,000 per event.
The Malaysian Association of Convention and Exhibition Organisers and Suppliers (MACEOS) has developed programmes for young professionals new to the exhibitions, conference and event management fields, in order to upgrade the level of professionalism in the industry.
The three-day courses will start this year and is meant for those with one or two years’ of work experience, shared Kenneth Fong, education & training committee chairperson at MACEOS.
Fong further shared that MACEOS, together with Malaysia Convention & Exhibition Bureau and 13 universities in Malaysia, are part of the Business Events Academic Council, where the council is encouraging local universities to introduce more modules in both diploma and degree courses that relate to event management.
“Some universities are dishing out wedding planning as a topic. This is unsuitable for the business events industry and is not equipping students with the relevant knowledge,” pointed out Fong.
The Association of Association Executives (AAE) is strengthening its member base in India by launching an India-specific website and converting its Association Leaders Forum to an annual affair.
“There are two ways that association executives can be part of AAE, one is through subscription, while the other is through a membership. As a member you have to be more involved, as you are on an intelligence panel and need to answer surveys,” explained Damian Hutt, executive director of AAE.
Ashok Gupta talking about the vital importance of professionals giving back to society at the recent forum
AAE currently has 90 members and 6,000 subscribers in the country.
At present, AAE has one global website, and is planning to launch an India-specific website for association executives in June 2018. The association will have India-based staff to ensure that the website has the right content to engage the local member base.
As well, AAE organised its second Association Leaders’ Forum in New Delhi in partnership with KW Conferences last month, where 22 representatives from different Indian associations participated.
Hutt shared: “We are keen to convert our Association Leaders Forum into an annual conference. This year, we plan to do (it as) a two-day event and are thinking about organising different sessions for trade associations and individual member organisations.”
He pointed out that AAE has learnt a lot about the different challenges faced by associations in India through the annual forum.
“The whole idea of Association Leaders’ Forum is to have very small working groups where you are addressing associations, societies and federations, focusing on some of the challenges they face in terms of driving membership, and keeping them engaged. The event also focuses on conference development, and how to get more attendees at a time when there are multiple meetings happening in metro cities,” said Monimita Sarkar, managing director, KW Conferences.
Other aspects the forum covered included sponsorship development, a need for more collaboration and partnership between associations, and ensuring exhibitor sales in a price-conscious market.
The Society for Incentive Travel Excellence (SITE) has appointed Didier Scaillet as its new CEO, serving both SITE and the SITE Foundation.
Scaillet’s responsibilities include driving SITE’s 2020 vision forward to grow its chapter network, increasing membership, and raising awareness of the human and economic impact of the incentive industry on the global economy.
Didier Scaillet
He will assume the role on February 1, taking over from Kevin Hinton. The Belgium native will be relocating to the US, and will report directly to the presidents of the SITE International Board of Directors and SITE Foundation Board of Trustees.
A MICE industry veteran, Scaillet brings to SITE extended global experience and a deep understanding of association management.
Most recently, Scaillet was vice-president business development for Cruise Lines International Association. He started his career working for one of the first association management companies in Europe, quickly becoming a business partner. For 18 years he held various roles with Meeting Professionals International; as director of European operations, vice-president of global development and chief development officer for MPI and the MPI Foundation.
Scaillet has also engaged and served on various industry forums and organisations such as Joint Meetings Industry Council, Events Industry Council, Canadian Tourism Commission, and United Nations World Tourism Organization.
It is easy to see why the property is a big hit with holidaymakers, and why high-end incentive planners should take note.
Room The sprawling Anantara Peace Haven Tangalle Resort offers 152 keys – 120 guestrooms in blocks close to the main hotel building where most guest facilities are located, and 32 private pool villas strew generously across a lush and serene landscape.
Beach Villa
I spent three nights in a garden view pool villa, number 616, which sits at the top of a slope. My immediate neighbours were a peacock and a peahen that loved to strut up and down that slope and hop on my roof. I woke up one morning to one of them screeching, something that delighted the city girl in me.
My 64m2 villa is furnished with a king bed, a daybed, a spacious work desk, and comes with a massive bathroom with a rain shower, an oval bathtub, twin vanities and a walk-in wardrobe. The pool deck offers two sun lounges.
Meeting facilities The resort only has a 12-seat boardroom in the main hotel building. But what it lacks in function rooms, it makes up with three beautiful restaurants that are flexible with full venue hire for private dining parties as well as several spaces that are perfect for crafting memorable social events.
All-day-dining Journeys serves international cuisine, and I find its Sri Lankan and Middle Eastern dishes especially good.
Beachside Verele, shaped like two cocoons, specialises in Japanese-Sri Lankan teppanyaki cuisine. The stylish interior and isolated location make Verele an attractive venue buyout option for social events.
Il Mare
Il Mare Italian restaurant is my favourite place to be. Sitting atop a cliff, with waves crashing into a a dramatic, rocky coastline below, the restaurant makes a delightful place for a sunset cocktail party and later an elegant dinner under the stars.
Elsewhere, there is El Vino wine cellar, the Poolside Bar and The Lobby Lounge. In terms of unique spaces, some of the options available to planners include a lawn on top of a cliff, next to the elegant Il Mare Italian restaurant; a quiet beachfront, and the spacious pool deck at the hotel’s main building.
Other facilities The resort offers a regular calendar of activities to keep guests busy and these can easily be adopted for corporate incentive and teambuilding groups.
Go on a nature walk with an in-house naturalist to see the resort’s wild but friendly residents (I’ve spotted peacocks, Indian palm squirrels, a rabbit, a monitor lizard and a family of purple-faced leaf monkeys), and herb and spice gardens. Or be awed by the nimble coconut guru who, despite his advanced age, zips up a coconut tree faster than I can run for the bus. Also, Spice Spoons offers cooking demonstrations and classes that are great for small-sized groups.
Much consideration is also paid to guests’ wellness here. There are daily meditation, Hatha yoga and taichi sessions, as well as a spa with Ayurvedic treatments overseen by an in-house Ayurvedic doctor, tennis and badminton courts, a 24-hour gym and a two-deck swimming pool. These will make great additions to a corporate incentive and teambuilding programme.
Service Villa guests can walk to and fro between the facilities, but should their legs tire, resort staff will happily zip them around in buggies. Another perk for villa guests is access to a personal butler who, at a phone call or WhatsApp text message, will deliver on their desires. My butler Isuru was so reliable, and was able to whisk me off in his buggy on an informative site inspection the moment I asked.
Overall, service is quick and of world-class, five-star standard. I must also commend Manju, for being more than just a chauffeur when he was tasked to drive me to two tourist attractions before dropping me off at the next resort on my travel itinerary. He made a few stops along the way to point out unique landmarks such as the last remaining directional sign post left behind by Sri Lanka’s former Dutch masters, and to tell me about local folklores and a traditional blessing routine locals often made at a temple of god Vishnu in Dondra.
Loews develops hotel, event centre in Texas
A new US$150 million flagship hotel, Live! by Loews, will be developed at Texas Live!, the US$250 million world-class dining, entertainment and hospitality destination in Arlington, Texas.
The hotel will feature 302 guestrooms including 26 suites, as well as a number of event spaces such as a terrace and event lawn, and a rooftop terrace with several private event rooms.
The piece de resistance will be the two storey, 3,250m2 Grand Event Centre. It will house a grand ballroom with banquet capacity of up to 1,500; an executive boardroom with five additional meeting rooms, and a 140m2 outdoor terrace overlooking Johnson Creek and the Entertainment District.
Other hotel facilities will include an outdoor infinity pool; two bars; a Revolver Brewing Brewery, Bar and Tasting room, and a fitness facility.
InterContinental opens in Ljubljana
The capital of Slovenia is now home to a 165-key InterContinental hotel, complete with a presidential suite and a club floor.
Recreational facilities on-site include a swimming pool and fitness centre on the 18th floor. For meetings and events, organisers can make use of restaurant B and bar with its own viewing terrace that can accommodate up to 200 guests, or either of the property’s two conference rooms on the 19th storey.
Brähler Convention moves to new premises
Brähler Convention has moved to their new premises in the traditional Billevue quarter in Hamburg, Germany, as the company requires more space for its growing team and its increasing rental pool of event technology.
The company is a specialist for the rental of event and conference equipment, and undertakes the complete technical management of events, as well as offers support by experienced specialists on-site.
In addition to its headquarters in Königswinter and the Hamburg branch, it has five other locations in the country – Berlin, Dresden, Munich, Stuttgart and Frankfurt am Main. Internationally, Brähler Convention is represented in 40 countries.
Wharf Hotels has promoted Dalip Singh from hotel manager to general manager for Marco Polo Hotels – Hong Kong.
Reporting to the group’s vice president operations, Singh will be in charge of three properties: Marco Polo Hongkong, Prince and Gateway.
Prior to joining Wharf Hotels, Singh was managing director of KOP Properties. He is also a seasoned hotelier with more than two decades of experience, and has held senior management positions with hotel groups such as The Ritz Carlton and Dusit Hotels in his native Singapore, Malaysia and Dubai.
Holiday Inn Resort Batam in Indonesia has launched a teambuilding and meeting room package at S$165 nett (US$125) per person.
The package includes a one-night stay in one bedroom suite for two, return ferry tickets, a city tour inclusive of lunch, half-day teambuilding or half-day meeting room usage, and one buffet dinner.
Groups have to have a minimum group size of 25 pax.
Air New Zealand has appointed Jenni Martin as head of South and South-East Asia. She will report to Scott Carr, regional general manager Asia.
In her new role, Martin will be based in Singapore, and will be responsible for sales and market development activity across South and South-east Asia, with a particular emphasis on working closely with Air New Zealand’s alliance partner Singapore Airlines.
Martin began her career at Air New Zealand in 2010 when she joined from Qantas as an account executive in the New Zealand region corporate sales team. Since then, she has progressed through a number of roles and was most recently the airline’s senior manager sales and operations based in Sydney.
Tell me quickly about the variety of restaurants you have at Anantara Peace Haven Tangalle Resort.
We have three restaurants. Journeys is our all-day-dining restaurant, with capacity for 120 to 140 guests. Il Mare Italian restaurant is led by an Italian chef and most ingredients are imported from Italy. With its location on a cliff, I think it is possibly the best place (to dine) in our resort.
And finally, we have Verele which specialises in Asian cuisine. It is a beautiful venue on the beach. There isn’t air-conditioning, and the space gets the sea breeze. Verele is built as two domes, one housing a bar and the other the dining area. At the dining dome are two teppanyaki grills, and we have experienced teppanyaki chefs dishing out Sri Lankan-Japanese fusion dishes.
Besides these three, we have the pool bar which overlooks the ocean.
Do the corporate groups at your resort dine often on property?
Yes, for convenience, hence it is important that we offer a variety of dining experiences to prevent them from getting bored over the two or three days that they are here with us.
Breakfast is often at Journeys, but for lunch and dinner, we can easily arrange a special setup on one of the two beaches, in the garden and by the poolside. We can do a bonfire party on the beach too.
Do all three restaurants welcome full venue hire?
All our restaurants are available for corporate bookings, including full venue hire. We are very flexible but the attendees must be staying guests.
We will look at the size of the group and the desired dining theme before recommending a suitable restaurant. For instance, we would recommend a section of Journeys for a 20-pax corporate group. A full venue hire wouldn’t make sense in this case.
We also have many open spaces that we can play with and turn into special event venues for corporate groups. For international guests, this is important because they don’t want to fly for hours to Sri Lanka, only to spend every day inside the boardroom. A unique setting is one of the keys to a magical and memorable event experience. A corporate group, for example, could meet on the beach, have lunch in the garden, have a sunset cocktail beach party with their feet in the waters, and enjoy a team dinner under thousands of stars.
A private dinner setup on the serene beach fronting Verele
What sort of dining events have you done recently?
We recently had a 20-pax, high-end dinner function by the beach and it was lit all around by tiki torches – beautiful. We had a cocktail party in the garden near Journeys, hosted by a government agency.
Coming up on January 24, we will host a gala dinner for a local branch of an international company. It will be at Verele, and the entire restaurant is booked for this purpose. Cultural performances will be brought in.
How ready is your kitchen to feed event attendees from around the world?
We are ready for all the different dietary requirements seen today. We have two Indian chefs who understand the many dietary needs and restrictions of our Indian guests, and they have been invaluable in our resort’s handling of Indian corporate groups.
We can also fulfill gluten-free and Halal dietary requirements. Our kitchen is Halal-certified and we have a strict audit of the food suppliers we engage. At the breakfast buffet line at Journeys, we have a gluten-free section and we clearly mark out pork-free dishes.
We get some Middle Eastern guests here at the resort and they can dine at ease with us.
All Anantara properties offer a Dining by Design programme. Tell me briefly about it and how can this be applied to corporate groups at your property?
Dining by Design is all about creating a special dining experience for guests, so they won’t have to be restricted to dining only at our restaurants. Our beaches, gardens, lawn on top the cliff at Il Mare and poolside are all possible venues for Dining by Design.
For leisure guests that often book a Dining by Design experience at the last minute, perhaps in the morning for a special dinner that evening, we can make it happen for no more than eight people. But with sufficient lead time, we can craft and deliver a memorable Dining by Design experience for larger groups, such as the corporate guests. We need time to make it happen because our kitchen and banquet teams need special preparations.
What’s your biggest F&B challenge when it comes to handling corporate groups?
Last minute menu changes. The organiser often decides and finalises the dining menu in advance, but on the day of the event, one of his/her assistants could come to us and say that there are now 10 guests who don’t want this or that in their main course or need this or that special order.
How do you deal with that?
Well, we make it happen (laughs). We have a team of very experienced chefs, thankfully, who are from Thailand, India, Italy, etc and we have local Sri Lankan chefs too. They do what they can to help with such situations.
We need to feed our guests well and make them happy. I think food and dining ambience are very important in winning the heart of guests and getting them to come back to us.
There was once I met a gentleman, a guest here, who told me gladly that he’s back for the second time. I checked his profile but couldn’t find records. Then I realised he was here for a corporate event the first time. He loved his experience here so much during his work trip, that he returned with his family for a vacation.
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Martin began her career at Air New Zealand in 2010 when she joined from Qantas as an account executive in the New Zealand region corporate sales team. Since then, she has progressed through a number of roles and was most recently the airline’s senior manager sales and operations based in Sydney.
