I have never been a fan of Portugal. There was no great disaster that turned me away from it. In fact it strikes me as odd how you can take against a place for very little apparent reason.
My “reason” – if you really can call it that - was that many years ago I flew to Madeira and had to transfer via either Lisbon or Faro (it’s so long ago I can’t even remember which it was now). On the journey home we had flown back to mainland Portugal without any incidents. However, from Portugal to the UK we experienced extreme turbulence. That wasn’t the problem.
The problem was that on board with my party was a group returning from a religious retreat. The Beyond Dover retreat proceeded to join hands and sing “Abide with Me” and other classic hymns to help us, I presume, survive the turbulence. For many passengers this threw them into complete panic whilst one of my party (a hugely witty Scot named Peter) turned to me and said,
“Thank God I haven’t got shoelaces or a belt or I would have ended this misery permanently.”
From that day forward I have never been able to think of Portugal without thinking of the Beyond Dover retreat, “Abide with Me”, Peter and his lack of belt / shoelaces etcetera.
So Portugal, rather unfairly, became my horror destination. That was until recently. A client of ours was working with one of their Industry Associations to put on a conference and networking event. They were interested in three destinations which were Vienna, Prague and Lisbon. My heart started to beat faster and I began to hyperventilate. No, not Lisbon!
We did the research, put together three programmes and their budgets and to my absolute horror Lisbon worked out the best in terms of budget. As this was of huge importance to our client I knew I could be in trouble.
I had noticed something else though. Whilst we were working through the options and putting each programme together the first person back to us was our DMC in Lisbon. A lovely lady called Ana looked after us and guided us through all the different options. Ana works for AIMS Portugal and was introduced to us by their UK representative at the C&IT Corporate Forum where we were both exhibiting last year. Ana turned each of our requests around within (maximum) 12 hours whereas Vienna and Prague both told us how busy they were and asked us to give them more time. Now of course I am immensely pleased that they are busy ... but so am I, so are our clients.
Our clients had wanted to go to Vienna ... but the budget wasn’t allowing it. Prague just wasn’t doing it for them at all and was even coming in more costly than Lisbon. We all looked at Lisbon.
“Well, I’ve always liked Lisbon,” said Dan, our client.
“We’d better go and see if it lives up to expectations then,” said I (not telling Dan that my expectations were not the same as his).
We flew out, were met by Ana taken to our hotel and then after a quick show around out for dinner. Dinner was food and wine heaven! In one of the many restaurants in the Dock area we sat and ate and talked. This was one of the dinearound options and got the thumbs up from Dan. However, the hotel was not cutting the muster.
“We’ve got another three to see tomorrow,” I reassured. “I’m sure we’ll find the right one. Right Ana.”
“Absolutely,” said Ana.
The next day we recced, looked, ate and saw. The weather wasn’t too bad for early January either and Ana had everything organised to perfection. I was bowled over by a beautiful, cosmopolitan city steeped in history whilst being bang up to date in terms of fashion, culture, food and activities.
Dan and I agreed that Lisbon was the place. We found our hotel - the newly renovated five star Hotel Corinthia (we had thought for our budget that we would only be able to afford a four star property) and still our budget sat at where it should!
Now the only issue we have is to make a final choice on restaurants and activities. Ana showed us her city and in the process completely converted me.
I love Lisbon!
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