Life in Motion – perpetual motion!

Wednesday, 03 March 2010 13:24

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Life in Motion – perpetual motion!

Thorsten Meier tells Sydney Paulden about his new venture, an events agency called Life in Motion
Many will remember Thorsten Meier as Managing Director of Leading Group Sales, the MICE sales subsidiary of The Leading Hotels of the World. At EIBTM in Barcelona in December, he announced he had left LHW and had set up his own organisation called The Life in Motion Group. He styles it as ‘the only global agency needed to fulfil all your group travel, entertainment and event management requirements.

‘Initially’, he says. ‘I have offices in New York and London with three people in each, but we will grow from there. We are a one-stop shop, A to Z, from ticketing, to negotiating hotel rates, to air chartering and event management’.

Having launched Leading Group Sales and then headed it for over seven years, Thorsten can rightly claim to know a lot of people worldwide. ‘My contacts, and friends,’ he points out, ‘are on both sides of the equation. They are the hoteliers and they are the organisers. And’, he emphasises, ‘they are global.’ He was responsible for specialist MICE people in 9 LHW offices and for many months in each of those years he was travelling on every continent. Anyone calling him would never know in which part of the world he would answer his phone.

Even before his LHW days he was very much in this sector. ‘I worked for Kempinski for 8 years, during which time I opened one of their hotels in Germany. I also spent three years with the Althoff Collection, for whom I opened the Schloss Bensberg Hotel in Cologne. My experience, therefore, has been in running hotels, providing service to event organisers and selling MICE facilities. I am now ready to give a great service in buying group facilities on behalf of clients.’

Within a very short time of announcing that Life In Motion was ready to go, Thorsten’s team was able to start work on some prestigious tasks. KMG has given Life In Motion the assignment to co-ordinate the hotel accommodation for the heavyweight championship fight in Duesseldorf between Eddie Chambers and the current world champion Wladimir Klitschko. The fight is taking place in the World Cup 2006 arena in Duesseldorf. ‘I will personally be on the ground making sure that everything goes to plan’, says Thorsten. Several different hotels and other services are involved’.

The West Coast-based firm DAMC are sending a group to the World Cup in South Africa. Life In Motion is handling the whole trip, including flights, match tickets, hotel accommodation, leisure programme and everything. ‘Interestingly enough’, concludes Thorsten, ‘we are already being approached by many high-profile individuals asking us to book their personal travel and long-haul holidays. We have no problem meeting their needs, of course’.

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