2nd "loop" luxury trade fair: Buyers and hoteliers make good deals
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| Rotating in 15-minutes windows: exhausting, but efficient. |
Frankfurt/M (March 20, 2015). The "cake design" has proved itself, just the same as the 15 minute tempo for intensive conversations between hoteliers and buyers. The fact that the Offenbach-based marketing representatives, Lobster Experience, had touched on a nerve with their "loop" premiere the last year was impressively underlined in the second edition: Only beaming faces everywhere. As a result, loop, short for "luxury on our planet", has been able to establish itself as a valuable B2B trade fair in Europe. This year, the large hotel chains were present with their luxury brands for the first time.
Last week, 100 hoteliers and 100 buyers met at the Kempinski Gravenbruch; 30 more of each than in the year before. The demand had been there from the very beginning. Thus, the banquet rooms within the elegantly renovated and extremely chic Kempinski were also completely used to their capacity (the new lobby once again has a Grandhotel format!). The discreet, luxurious event frame corresponded perfectly to the unconventional, but efficient style of the event itself.
It seems to have found its ideal format in this dimension. Over the course three days, including an evening event, it was still possible for around 250 people to become acquainted. This was promoted during the day through the cake-like design of the conversation roundabout in which the intensive exchanges of information and sales talks took place in the acoustically counterbalanced "cake slices". When the music started, the buyer would slide over to the next cake piece (see link to last year's report).
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| All participants love the special "cake design" proving its quality at the luxury fair a second time. |
Good contacts and good business following loop1
Only rarely did a buyer chair remain empty. Perhaps when one already knows the hotel partner from the previous year, like Klara Recker of ReiseArt from Muenster. Or after five minutes of conversation, it is already recognised that the hotel offer does not match with the wishes of those individual customers. "The matching system can still be optimised," she believes. However, this is only a marginal note to them – the renewed participation in loop generally held no question for them. She praised the personal character of the event with the green clover – and spontaneously enumerated ten bookings that loop itself had provided in 2014 and had also provided a very solid revenue for her travel agency.
Rolf Hinze, with his Destination Asia agency, was already delighted again in the second morning: He will organise a tour through two challenging Asian countries for an extremely pampered married couple. "At minimum, the quality of the buyers is at least as high as in the year before," was the judgment of the experienced travel professional. Six FIT bookings had arisen from his participation in loop1: "This has been worthwhile".
New with loop2: Chains and exclusive five-star hotels
Two-thirds of the buyers were new this year; buyers from Poland and Bulgaria were also present for the first time. With this, the charm is also preserved for the participant hoteliers. This time around, half of the hotels came from Europe and the other half from the rest of the world. Likewise for the first time, the large chains looked toward the loop flag: Starwood with their two St. Regis and Luxury Collection brands, Hilton with Waldorf-Astoria and Conrad and Accor with Sofitel. "We are meeting buyers here that we would not find otherwise," said Ines Dlugos of Hilton Sales Worldwide.
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| Superb platform for demanding hotels and buyers: Wilhelm Luxem, Managing Director at the Baur au Lac, and his Director of Sales, Carole A. Baumann. / photo: map |
Also new in the circle of the groups were the Croatian Losinj Hotels & Villas and Amanresorts – and extraordinarily, also the city of Vienna! "We market the destination as such," Markus Kustatscher from Tourism Sales explains the presence. "Naturally in this circle, we have a demand for top hotels in Vienna, for gourmet addresses in the city and for cultural events."
Among the individual suppliers, there was an increase in exclusive yachts and ships (Ponant, Dunia Baru, Tiger Blue) and an increase in extremely prominent individual hotels such as the Atlantis The Palm Dubai or the Baur au Lac from Zurich. Wilhelm Luxem, Managing Director of the Baur au Lac, had simply included a stopover on the way back in Switzerland to find out: Just the same as his Sales and Marketing Manager, Carole A. Baumann, he seemed to be very excited about the set-up and participants: "Super, very efficient," the luxury hotelier summarised contently.
Loop 3 is guaranteed for next year. There is generally no doubt about this for Astrid Oberhummer and Andreas Mueller, the two Managing Directors of the Lobster Experience organiser. The demand on the part of the hotel industry is great, the circle of sponsors has solidified and new names are already inquiring … (www.loop luxury fair.com).
As a media partner of loop, hospitalityInside.com will keep you up to date. / Maria Puetz-Willems
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