QUALIFIED VISITORS, INTERNATIONAL PRESS AND SPEAKERS GENERATE THE SUCCESS OF AN INCOMPARABLE PROFESSIONAL MEETING POINT
At 5.30 p.m. on 20 January 2008, The Monaco Spa Event drew to a close, yet at 4.30, only one hour earlier, the conference room was still packed with visitors who did not want to miss so much as a single word of what the speakers still on stage had to say. There could be no more eloquent evidence of the event’s success.
Three events in one
From the word go, The Monaco Spa Event set out to be three events in one: an exhibition space with the additional qualification of the presence of “ambassadors”, an international conference, in the shape of the Monaco Spa Symposium, and a professional meeting point generated by the many events that brought together international visitors, speakers and press. Three distinct souls that blended and synergised successfully during the three days of the fair.
95 exhibitors and 3,873 visitor entries are the statistics that tell it all about The Monaco Spa Event’s excellent performance, but what made it so successful was the list of the names of the event’s visitors: not the quantity, but the quality of the visitors and speakers on the scene. One significant contribution in this sense came from the partnerships established with École Hôtelière de Lausanne, Hotelverband Deutschland and Wellness Hotels Deutschland, Relais & Châteaux, Syndicat des Hôteliers Nice Côte d’Azur, the Tyrolean Future Foundation – Cluster Tyrol Wellness, ADI, FNSAI, the Thai Spa Association, montecarlospa and Metropole ESPA Monte-Carlo.
Professional Meeting Point
Visitors had plenty of opportunity to get together and network during the many ancillary happenings on the agenda: although networking was one of their primary aims, they were also designed to give the whole event an informal, relaxed atmosphere. On Thursday, consumer and trade journalists from all over the world and the speakers at the Monaco Spa Symposium were the organisers’ guests at the Thermes Marins and the ESPA in the Metropole Hotel, where the treatments on offer helped them get into the spirit of the event. That same evening, they had a chance to get together at the restaurant of the Thermes Marins for a “wellness” dinner prepared and illustrated by the chef Jacky Oberti. On Friday and Saturday, the Healthy Hour, devised by Patrice Demangel, the chef at the Sofitel Miramar in Biarritz (Accor Group), and set in the Karément Café at the Grimaldi Forum, provided more than four hundred speakers, selected visitors and representatives of the international press with another exceptional chance to meet. Rounding off the series of networking opportunities in ideal fashion was the concluding LeaderChic dinner on Saturday evening, in the finely decorated setting of the Belle Époque room and once again starring Patrice Demangel, who described each course in the dinner, which totalled no more than 600 calories altogether, to the 400 selected diners.
Sensorial Itineraries
The event’s structure was built around the sensorial itineraries that guided visitors on a voyage of discovery of the world of spas and of wellness. Passing through sensorial gates designed by the architect Simone Micheli, visitors entered a scene of senses and wellness, where they were conducted towards the sensory areas. Technogym, Bang & Olufsen, Bisazza, Carthusia and ArtedelRicevere, the “Les Ambassadeurs” of The Monaco Spa Event, presided over their respective sensorial areas, each in its own splendid stand representing the excellence that the event set out to express.
Milk Spa
Simone Micheli was also the man behind the idea for the Milk Spa, an evocative trend-setting scenery that translated the Italian architect’s conception of wellness and the ideal spa so well that more than 40 firms agreed to contribute their products to make it happen. Crowded at all hours, the Milk Spa hosted the opening press conference.
Monaco Spa Symposium
The Symposium was an unmitigated success, reaching the ambitious target it had set itself: to provide a fundamental input of content to the sector by inviting leading international managers to describe their experience. Three days of lectures and “Ask the expert” focus group sessions, averaging more than 300 participants every day, who did not want to miss a single chapter of the case histories illustrated by Ray F. Iunius, Director, and Stefan Fraenkel, Deputy Director of EHLITE (École Hôtelière de Lausanne Institute of Technology and Entrepreneurship), by Marco P. Nijhof, Senior Vice President Gulf Region of Jumeirah Group, by Jacques-Olivier Chauvin, CEO of Relais & Châteaux, by Andrew Gibson, Group Director of Spa at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, by Jean-Paul Blissett, Managing Director of Syntax, by Rolf E. Brönnimann, Managing Partner of SH the Swiss Hospitality Group, by James L. Oschman, author of Energy Medicine. The Scientific Basis, by Karl Landauer, Managing Director of Atelier Landauer GmbH, by Piergiorgio Calcaterra, Medical Director of Terme di Saturnia Spa & Golf Resort and by the other 21 speakers present.
A select number of exhibitors had the chance to benefit from an agenda of appointments with the speakers that had been drawn up especially to ensure that The Monaco Spa Symposium becomes a business as well as a training opportunity (for the speakers’ biographies, see www.monacospaevent.com – Conferences & Events area).
See you again in 2009 in Monte Carlo
An international capital of hospitality and wellness, Monte Carlo was the perfect setting for meeting hoteliers, architects, designers and all the sector’s leading actors at world level. Helping to make the event so successful was the assistance and patronage of the Monaco Ministry of Tourism.
On Sunday evening, as the sunset over Monte Carlo reflected in the glazing of the glittering Grimaldi Forum, the unparalleled setting of The Monaco Spa Event, many were the visitors, speakers and journalists who were already making appointments to meet again next year, from 12 to 14 February 2009.
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Email: press@cosmoprof.it
