event space, including breakout rooms, board rooms, “Mad Men”–era bars and lounges, a 500-person theater, and the 1,400-square-foot Grand Ballroom. Our next mode of transport was a tuk-
tuk — a sort of three-wheeled, motorized rickshaw popular in some Dutch cities — which zipped us over to the Wilhelmina Pier, a former dock from which many ships left for the United States during the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Today the pier is home to some of Rot- terdam’s tallest, most modern buildings, helping give the city its local nickname “Manhattan on the Maas.” Six venues on the pier have banded
together to market themselves as Congress Island. We met with rep- resentatives of the initiative at one of the venues — Hotel New York, which occupies the former headquarters of the Holland America Line, the pas- senger line that transported hundreds
of thousands of people to the United States from all over Europe. The 72-room property has seven high-ceil- inged meeting rooms, and is steeped in the history of Holland America, with large turn-of-the-century photos of blank-faced emigrants, original boardroom furnishings, and other period décor. The other venues making up Congress Island are the 1,535-seat Luxor Theatre; the solar-powered Floating Pavilion, consisting of three experimental “hemispheres” that are designed as examples of sustainable, “climate-change-proof” architecture; the historic Cruise Terminal Rotter- dam, with a variety of function spaces; LP2, in the Las Palmas “cultural warehouse,” with a 4,100-square-foot exhibit hall and a 150-person audito- rium; and LantarenVenster, a cinema house with five screening rooms and a multifunction hall.
My final trip in Rotterdam was also
via tuk-tuk, to Witt de Withstraat, a lovely street lined with cafés, art galler- ies, restaurants — and Hopper, a bright, casual coffee shop where my Rotter- dam Marketing escort and I enjoyed fresh sandwiches and good, strong coffee. Then it was back to Rotterdam Central for an express train to Amster- dam Airport Schiphol, and my flight home, during which I realized, belat- edly and somewhat sheepishly, that I hadn’t learned a word of Dutch during my entire trip. Everyone I met — not just the hospitality and travel profes- sionals who hosted me, but everyone
— spoke perfect English. It’s one of the many things that make Holland friendly and welcoming, and primed for international business.
. —Christopher Durso For more information:
nbtc.nl
PCMA.ORG
SEPTEMBER 2013 PCMA CONVENE
25
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108