This has been a wonderful and very busy week with many different events and meetings in Southern France.
On Monday we started with meetings of three of our advisory boards followed by some time for all people present to come together and mingle having some nice food and drinks.
Tuesday we had our Leadership Day with many of our sponsors, some of our Advisory Board members from various Advisory Boards, some of our global HSMAI staff, and a handful of other invited guests.
Taking place for the second time now the Leadership Day is an annual event where we invite the guests for free for a day programme with food and drinks as well as some nice free time spent together, so that they just pay for hotel and travel and we pay all the rest.
On the agenda this time we had updates from our many advisory boards as well as other presentations ÐÊincluding presenting our initiative, Service Pledge, focusing on raising the service level in the industry in general, as well as identifying and communicating the Service Pledge of each individual company, municipality or other party involved.
From the presentation and discussions that took place throughout the day we received the confirmation that this initiative is really something we would like to do pan-European. One day it might also be global!
We also had our first participant-driven session with no agenda, moderated by the visionary Michael Levie, Founder and COO of citizenM Hotels. There were lively discussions around topics such as Customer Centric Service, evolving commercial roles, and loyalty and millennials.
On Wednesday we spent time on the Mentoring programme and our first mentor-mentee teams met in person to start off their 12 month programme, and the rest of the group had a meeting about our global certifications. In the afternoon we had some nice social events including aÊwine tasting trip to nearby island Abbaye de Lrins at Ile St Honorer.
Read more about the mentor meetings here
From all these events and discussions we received many wonderful ideas and thoughts to bring up in our internal Global HSMAI meeting we had yesterday with the President of HSMAI Global and Americas Bob Gilbert, President of HSMAI APAC Jackie Douglas, and myself representing HSMAI Region Europe. We have many exciting developments to come, both in Europe and globally!
Have a wonderful weekend!
Warm regards,
Ingunn Hofseth
President & CEO
HSMAI Region Europe
