California’s beach and desert resorts target the UK market

Two promotions executives were stranded in London when the volcanic ash prevented them from flying back home. They were Mark Graves, Executive Director of Marketing and Communications for Palm Springs Desert Resorts and Daniel Guerrero, Director of Communications of Newport Beach.

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.

‘Conference business still buoyant in Turkey’

Cantekin Temizer, Vice-President of MEP, tells ITCM ‘MICE business in Turkey is standing up well’. That is the experience of MEP, one of the country’s longest established destination management companies. Vice-President Cantekin Temizer, who was on the MEP stand at EBTM in Barcelona, says that 2009 was good thanks to a number of big conferences. ‘One of these was the Annual Meeting on October of the Boards of Governors or the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Although the numbers of delegates was a little down compared with previous IMF events, it was still a major piece of business for Turkey and for us. We handled as many as 5,000 of the delegates from six banking organisations.’
He also goes on to say that a number of good contracts are already signed for 2010, so the coming year will not be a bad one for MICE in Turkey.

World Cup investments will give South Africa more status on the world MICE scene

‘The FIFA World Cup is a great opportunity for South Africa and we are making sure we grasp it with both hands and make the most of it.’ When Roshene Singh, Chief Marketing Officer for South African Tourism, made that statement, there was no doubting the excitement and the determination in her voice. Obviously this is an unrivalled chance for South Africa to show the world that it has planning ability and organising knowhow; that it can host 450,000 visitors from every corner of the world safely; and confirm that it is one of the world’s most beautiful and most fascinating countries.