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Unique Cruise Solutions The news you need to know |
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Cruise News for the Corporate Travel Professional |
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Jim Castle's reflections on the 2012 IRF event at the JW Marriott, San Antonio. |
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I was fortunate enough to be invited to the International
Research Foundation's (IRF) annual major event held this year just outside of
San Antonio, Texas at the JW Marriott Hill Country Resort and Spa. My gracious host was Mr. Freddy Muller, Director, Corporate, Incentive and Charter Sales for Prestige Cruise Holdings, Inc. for those that don't know they market the Regent Seven Seas and Oceania cruise lines. For me the event got off the bad start even before I arrived at the Marriott, having landed early in Dallas, Fort Worth airport I found myself completely stuck there. A rental car was the only solution, so after a five and half hour drive I pulled up at the JW Marriott, weary, hungry and fed up with the "Joy's of Travelling". From then on things started to go better.. after checking in to a couple of the educational sessions which were most interesting, Freddy and I decided to take a break and go play some golf. It was my pleasure to be able to host Freddy for a round on the TPC Oaks course... wow, what a course. We played reasonably well even though we where both very rusty from not having picked up a club for months.. by the turn we where wondering if we still had enough golf balls to finish out the round. Happily by then we both had got our game going (to a degree) so the back night went much smoother for us both. Over the course of the next couple of days we entered into the spirit of the event, made some interesting new contacts, caught up with clients and ran into colleagues not seen for a while. The IRF does know how to run an event and in fairness I must say that The Opus Group and their team did an amazing job of organizing and following through with the program. In my mind this has to be one of the premier events in the calendar of anyone in the meetings and incentive industry. The JW Marriott was a a great venue for the event and our hosts pulled out all the stops to make it memorable. The various events I attended all ran like clockwork, the final gala evening even had probably the best banquet meal I've had in years. My hats off to all the staff who where not only the most friendly folks but also extremely efficient. From my point of view as a hosted buyer it was a wonderful opportunity to network on both sides of the fence as not only does Worldwide buy product from many of the vendors present but we also have relationships with a large number of the buyers as well. Sunday came around all to soon and it was time to depart, lots of well wishes and fond farewells with promises to keep in touch and try to send business where we could and then - it was all over - just the " Joy of Travelling" home, hopefully without incident this time. |
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Worldwide Travel & Cruise Assoc., Inc. 150 S. University Dr. Ste E, Plantation, FL 33324 - USA Tel: +1 954 452 8800 Fax: +1 954 252 3945 EMail: sales@cruiseco.com |
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Designed & Published by: Worldwide Media. |
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