The Grand Hotel Principe di Piemonte in Viareggio (Lucca), renowned venue for corporate events thanks to both the wide disposability of fully equipped conference rooms and the incomparable Versilian atmosphere, has a new Sales & marketing manager: it’s Laura Balbarini, former President of the Convention Bureau of Pisa as well as of the “Pisa dei Miracoli” corporate network.
This appointment turns very meaningful in view of the future strategies of the Grand Hotel, as Laura Balbarini is one of the most famous Italian professionals in the Mice industry, even outside the national borders, and has a specific experience that only few can boast.
Formerly event organizer, managing director of an important PCO agency (L&B Studio) from 1997 to 2005, where she mainly managed Mice activities in territories such as South Africa and Asia, she founded at the end of 2005 Meridiana Events & Education, an innovative PCO that deals not only with logistics, but also with educational and training content within the health professions. In 2008 she ventured into the leisure segment with Meridiana Destination DMC, focusing mainly on corporate luxury incoming. Since October 2013 she had been involved in intense territorial and incoming marketing activities and has coordinated a group of excellent Tuscan coastal companies by establishing the Convention Bureau Pisa Tuscany, thus involving the local institutions and promoting the culture of the industry’s relevance. A woman of great communication skills and high culture (she graduated in Political Science, International and Administration at the University of Pisa), multilingual, a dense network of contacts in Italy and abroad and a proven attitude towards institutional representation, she gets involved as Sales & Marketing Manager of both the Grand Hotel Principe di Piemonte and the other chain member, the Hotel Brunelleschi in Florence, on Thursday November 2nd.
A statement from Laura Balbarini
“I accepted this assignment with great honour because the Grand Hotel Principe di Piemonte stands out on so many other Italian hotels for the incomparable magic of its atmosphere, which makes it an international benchmark. It is a well-known venue all over the world, appreciated by top-notch clients both in the leisure and in every segment of the events industry, including wedding. In this sense, helping it expand, as it has overwhelmingly been doing in recent years, is more than just an opportunity for me: it is a very important point of arrival. I think I can make a valuable contribution to the valorisation of this wonderful location, as well as of its Florentine twin, and to effectively interact with both event planners and leisure operators.”
A statement from Claudio Catani, General Manager
“We enthusiastically welcome in our team such a big professional as Laura Balbarini, who we are sure will be giving the Grand Hotel’s awareness, in the Mice as in the leisure, the needed impetus to crown the great growth of recent seasons. With Laura, the organic is completed as excellently as it could, and now we can really say that we have great professionalism in each role.”
