Tour East Singapore

TOUR East Singapore has been recognised at the Singapore Experience Awards as the Meeting/Incentive Organiser of the Year for helping with Telstra GES LKO 2014 held at the Marina Bay Sands last July.

The international meeting was held by Telstra, Australia's No 1 telco, to launch its annual Global Sales Kick-off for 2014. This is the first time that Telstra held the event outside its home country.

Margaret Soh, director of sales at Tour East Singapore, says that the group consisted of some 1,200 sales executives, staff and top management executives from Telstra's worldwide offices including Singapore. Seventy-eight per cent of the delegates were Australians and the rest came from Asia, Europe and America.

The social highlights of the meeting which contributed to the company's win were the "Dive into Singapore" dinner and the gala dinner.

"Both events were very successful and enjoyed by all. We showed our creative and innovative planning capabilities to provide a great experience for a large meeting with a minimum of hassle," says Ms Soh.

Tour East Singapore organised "Dive into Singapore" as a dine-around programme at 10 selected restaurants at Dempsey Hill. It needed to provide a simple and casual sit-down dinner with a choice of international cuisines, a relaxing and Singaporean ambience, and it had to be off-site.

The restaurants at Dempsey Hill fitted the bill as they offered a good range with similar food and service quality. Dempsey Hill also offered space and natural environment not often found in a busy city. The evening turned out great and was enjoyed by all with much praise for the food, drinks, organisation and mostly the beautiful evening setting of the restaurants on Dempsey Hill.

"But the challenge was to select 10 restaurants that offered similar standards of food, drinks, service and price. This required much patience and even more when we needed to persuade the restaurants to accept buy-outs (booking of the whole restaurant), provide a choice of main dishes for 100 or more guest at one time and to ensure high service and health standards," says Ms Soh.

The gala dinner at Marina Bay Sands ballroom was another great hit. This was to be the main event with a big budget. The theme was "Global Strategy".

The programming for the evening was done in Australia and the production executed in Singapore included having a 36-metre curved multi-visual screen, a great band from the Philippines, cultural numbers and a dazzling light and sound system. To emphasize the global theme, the four -course menu comprised cuisines from Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. To top it all, desserts were from Haji Lane in Singapore.

"The outcome of this event was most satisfying as we capitalised on our innovative solutions and this was appreciated by all who attended. Overall, it was a great success and everyone enjoyed themselves," says Ms Soh.