T-Fest, the seventh to be held annually at Fairmont Mayakoba. And this year it was bigger than ever, a total of 650 split between exhibitors, known as suppliers, and buyers, known as travel advisors, top travel concierges from many lands. The hotel could cope brilliantly because it's got 401 rooms anyway and is part of the great RLH-owned Mayakoba complex, also near to hand and reached by a buggy, golf cart, in around six minutes. You have, in alphabetical order, Alila, Banyan Tree and Rosewood. A few stayed off-site at the St. Regis. Another reason for T-Fest being so successful is that every year the organising team knows the orchestra and how it plays even better than the last symphony. Before it all started, here, standing in a grassy area outside the Fairmont Convention Center, are, in green, Emily Brooks, right-hand man to the MD of Private Luxury Events, Christy Kublic. Everyone loves T-Fest. It's work, but it's also play. On the work side, there are 12-minute meetings with constant refreshment and networking breaks, and the hotel supplies enough people to make sure that coffee, hot and cold, and water and fruits and healthy snacks never run out.
And then there are the evening events. Alila used the occasion to launch itself, hotel and brand, properly into The Americas marketplace. Their party, hosted by hotel GM, Patrick Schori, stood out because of the amazing music. You can just see in the picture below two of the leopard-skin-clad dancers wearing somewhat unusual green hats that look like horizontal palm tree tops. There was something on every minute of the day and much of the night. Fortunately, all the evening events were unseated, plenty of chairs available, plenty of places to sit, plenty of tall tables at which to stand and eat: mobility rather than confinement to one’s assigned seat undoubtedly helped with networking - and networking, when you're with this crowd, equates to business…
