Las Vegas - 4
It's always a hard task to sum up Virtuoso Travel Week, VTW, in a few words. One poignant takeaway was hearing the President of Ted Turner Reserves recounting, one-to-one, how in the last weeks of his life that great man had spent every day being driven round some of his 1.1 million acres in New Mexico, passionately connecting with nature.
This year, frankly, it seemed more difficult to run into people at VTW - perhaps media were, except for one excellent morning of planned ‘speed-dating’, more isolated from the general herd. For the record, the media, brilliantly and somehow individually guided by Virtuoso’s Misty Belles – with the support of Alice Marshall, from New York, and Lysbeth Fox, from London – had a programme that included Sunday’s reception at Waldorf Astoria, hosted briefly by GM Brad Rice, above. Monday was the usual press conference, followed by lunch at Bellagio's Martin Brudnizki-designed, Carbone Riviera highlighted by a trip to the resort's terrace for a specially timed water ballet. That evening, media were bused to Fontainebleau for a Mexican dinner for 140 press and travel agents. The last night of the official media timing, Tuesday, was a Rodeo cowboy evening at Bellagio.
Back to the general programme. Full marks to Virtuoso’s chairman/ceo Matthew Upchurch, supported by his ons Clay and Benjy and, increasingly, by his wife Jessica (who, with Virtuoso VP Javier Arrondo, has transformed what was variously called ESG and sustainability into new-name ‘global stewardship’ – see them above, with Misty Belles on left)….
