People and ILTM and luxury hotels

You meet such fascinating people at industry events, says the gal.  The top blogger here, at ILTM Americas – gathering place of any luxury hotel worth its salt – is Tiffany Dowd, who looks like a different cover of Vogue every time you meet her.  This time last year, she was on a boat trip exploring the Mayakoba area, which is a total 1,605-acre community with 11 miles of Mexican Caribbean coastline. It was explained then that the Mayakoba developers planted 228,000 mangrove seeds to produce 47,000 different mangrove patches…

This year there was no time for a boat trip.  It was biking, and watching BBC News on the hour, if I could make it, on an elliptical in the gym.  By using stairs rather than elevators to get from the Fairmont Mayakoba’s main building entry up to the ground floor lobby level, and by walking fast, I save a little bit of time here, a little bit there. It was easy to understand the need for a cupcake, or sandwich, from the deli that the hotel had set up just outside the main conference room of ILTM.

My only off-duty lunch was back in the breakfast room, which turns to à la carte for other meals.  My tuna-sashimi salad really exceeded expectations, as did the just-made fries that went with them (I know they were made specially for me, with no salt). And what with the view over the terrace to the water, and the birds, that was a memorable lunch – as was another on-duty lunch, loads of fun, same venue, same smiling staff.  Mexicans do smile a lot.

For four days straight I was meeting people, and one of the most fascinating was Felicia Yukich, a live wire who makes me feel like a slug.  She heads social media for Four Seasons – whoever would have thought that esteemed luxury hotel brand would lead the way with Pinterest, for instance? The company has two brand pages and 70 local pages for individual hotels, and its recently-launched Pin.Pack.Go has already resulted in over 100 trips definitely planned by social media-savvy consumers.