[PatJordan]

Greetings from a freezing Dublin!

Hope you have a lovely luscious lunch. I’ll raise a glass to you on the 13th.

Safe travels to all.

[MartynSinclair]

The dinner was a big success. 7 relative strangers sat together for a feast (thanks to donkeyasia). The group represented 5 countries, Thailand, UK, UAE, Singapore and India. Fantastic restaurant, where the wine and conversation flowed. The strangers ended the evening having become friends.

We are going to try and keep this event going on an annual basis.

I know not everyone on the Forum is interested in meeting or arranging dinners. But for those that are interested, they are pretty easy to arrange, great fun.. and there are so many location possibilities…

[capetonianm]

Glad you all enjoyed the occasion. I trust nobody took any E-cigarettes along.

I think there’s at least a couple of people who would enjoy a get together in CPT and I would be happy to organise that and would suggest a venue at one of my favourite wine farms. On a practical note lunch might be better, firstly to enjoy the lovely views and secondly because a lot of people understandably don’t want to drive back to town at night. Alternatively we could arrange accommodation near or even at the wine Farm, the one I have in mind has a boutique hotel on site which is about R1400 a night.

[K1ngston]

I just want to also say the meet up in Bangkok was an excellent evening, full of anecdotes plenty of specialist conversation and awesome food and perhaps one or two glasses of wine thank you donkeyasia brilliantly arranged

When you have 7 interesting people sat around a table who travel to the extent we do, some of the stories, ideas and direction have been duly noted and already have been added to my repertoire which is wonderfully enriched by the experience

I am already looking forward to next years meet up

[thebigseats]

I will add my thanks to all who organised & participated in the event. It was a most interesting experience, that I found very enjoyable.

Cape Town next year sounds very good – I plan to be there in early December, so that might work nicely!

[FDOS_UK]

How about arranging a meet up in’t frozen wasteland of t’North?

I’d be happy to organise one, if anyone’s interested.

FDOS_UK at gmx dot co dot uk

[FDOS_UK]

Apologies, please use dot com instead of dot co dot uk for above email.

[stevescoots]

apologies i had to bail out at the last minute, was looking forward to it but the customer comes first, which was unfortunate as i got hit with food poisoning when i could have been in BKK!

FDOS, if my schedule fits ooop north would be ok for me

[canucklad]

Mmmmm, there’s not much further “ooop north” I can go Steve !! : )

[capetonianm]

I’m up for a meeting up north depending on how far north. At this time of the year am not inclined to go into the frozen wastes of the Arctic!

[K1ngston]

Are we talking Phnom Penh? Hanoi? when we say “ooop north”? If not sounds “cold” 🙂

[seasonedtraveller]

Guys

Very sorry that I could not attend.

The news I received on the 31st October meant that I had to cancel all business travel for the rest of 2017.

I did have a trip booked to China, Japan, Korea and Philippines and had booked my return flight to the UK from BKK but sadly of course, it didn’t happen.

Glad to hear that all was well and the evening a success.

Cheers
ST

[Tom Otley]

Good morning / afternoon / evening.

We’ve been asked quite a few times if there was a way we could facilitate excellent ideas such as this, and we have been considering the best way to do it.

In a few weeks we will be launching a Business Traveller Events website.

One of the functions will be that we can arrange meet-ups between interested parties for events such as this.

At the moment, the idea would be for us to schedule a number of dinners throughout the year in different cities (London, Bangkok and Hong Kong are ones that seem obvious, initially). We would also list events such as our evening drinks and sponsored Editor’s Lunches.

The website would have the option of registering and signalling interest in attending an event.

eg: evening supper in London at X restaurant, private room booked for 12.

We would have provisionally booked the room, and then we would take payment from those interested in attending. There would be no profit margin added by ourselves.

If not enough people register for an event, the money is refunded.

I can see a number of potential problems with the idea, but also think it is worth trying.

One of the problems is if the suppers are immediately booked up by consultants wanting to conduct free reader research of those attending!

I suppose it would be amusing if all 12 places were booked by consultants, but less entertaining if there was one forum user and 11 consultants, and the reader had paid for the privilege. Yet at the same time, we also don’t really want to be vetting people for these events, merely providing a way for them to happen.

Anyway, I’d be interested to hear your opinions on this.

I haven’t started a separate thread on this just yet because I know those who contributed to this forum thread were interested in the previous meet-up arranged by MartynSinclair.
Thank you
Tom

[traveldoc1]

Love the idea! I’m Bangkok-based, but HK is only a short hop, and I’m back in UK from time to time and could schedule my trip to coincide with a dinner. Was really disappointed to miss the inaugural event, but I left BKK that day for my Christmas break and so missed what sounded like an excellent evening.

[capetonianm]

Good idea. Please add CPT to the list.

Maybe you could only allow attendees who have had ‘x’ months as contributors to the forum. Or make it a private forum only accessible by existing members.

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