CINTERMEX

Last September, Mr. Mauricio González, Cintermex's  Conventions and Congresses Manager  was working in the offices of the Leipzig fair, known as Messe Leipzig where he had the opportunity of learning and observing how work is performed in a foreign venue, in this case, specifically a European one.

The trip was especially to two places. The first of them was to the City of Leipzig, the world's oldest fair. Leipzig is located in the State of Saxony in Northwest Germany. Access is through an international airport, highway and Europe's most important, practical and inexpensive means of travel, the railway network with connections to ICE/IC/EC/Interregio /CityNightLine /DB-Nachtzug; these urban trains are the fast, slow, nighttime, inter European, etc. types.... This travel was in the week of September 7th through the 11th, 2009.

The second place that was visited was the City of Frankfurt the continent's financial center, Europe's city, communications platform. City that hosts the planet's most impressive book fair and its skyline highlights the difference with many flatly built European cities. " A city with quality of life, with money for development and as in any metropolis, plurality of languages in the street is most natural." Said Gonzalez.

During his stay in that European country, Mauricio visited the German Conventions Bureau, which acts as a national VCB " whose main objective is to promote their destinations and making that meetings remain in a German city, which is why the office's slogan is "Meetings made in Germany"".- he added.

When asked about his activities during this trip, he commented .- "Being in the venue as just another employee, with the specific task of getting to know the facilities as well as the most important thing, their commercial practices for attracting international events, how the state tourism entity operates and the operation of the venue as a whole, how to request a venue; it was practically an internship project, being inside the venue and being part of the Messe Leipzig team for a few days, discussing work and personal matters, learning about their functions and information about the venue."

Messe Leipzig contains the Leipzig Trade Fair area that is specifically in charge of trade and consumer shows and the Congress Center Leipzig or CCL that is in charge of  Convention Halls.

Messe Leipzig has five interconnected pavilions, each one with one surface of 20.500 m². The north part has an open air surface of close to 70.000 m². A central glass pavilion measuring 22.000m2 connects directly with the fair pavilions and the congresses center. The latter holds the service facilities, several restaurant as well as different spaces for events and presentations. The fair has a congresses center annex with 23 halls with a capacity for up to 3.700 persons.

Mr. Gonzalez recognized that the objective for the trip was achieved, since he was able to differentiate the strengths and weaknesses that come with the handling a site in Europe, with its level of space in m2, management of the facilities, as well as the cost, which is outside of the Mexico / Germany comparative range, transportation, the language issue, management of facilities, set-ups, types of events, etc... And of course the fact that these are gigantic fair cities as to venues. Nevertheless the people (the Messe Leipzig and GCB Frankfurt teams) are very pleasant, very humble.

When asked about his professional and personal growth after this trip, our colleague from Cintermex's conventions area answers  "For a fact, travel opens up our mind, we get to know the unknown, so that I think that if traveling is a learning experience, you learn even more by learning and working with others. Although we spoke in English, this is a different country with a different language and culture, where no one knows you and you know that you will be starting from zero; your greatest challenge when you are in a country with a different language.

Most of my communication with my main contacts was in the English language, and with the ones that didn't speak English....there is always sign language..... that is not a problem, I traveled by cab, subway, bus, etc... having initiative makes it so that we are never at a loss!"

"Learning is basically to know how the work culture functions in comparison with our own, nevertheless all these differences have their good and different sides, not bad ones! people, habits, currency, behaviors are different and I think I can contribute an important point of view about  the work culture in a German venue as a destination".

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