Event 9th Annual Training Session of China Star
Venue Hotel Kunlun, Beijing
Group size 120
Date February 6-8

The brief
China Star is one of that country’s leading conference and incentive organisers. It wanted to host its annual staff training programme in Beijing so that its regional staff could network and become more familiar with colleagues from other parts of China. The company also wanted to reward its best-performing staff over the past 12 months.

Challenges
China Star has now held this training programme for nine consecutive years with almost the same group of people. Therefore having a different theme party and awards ceremony is one of the biggest challenges it faces each year.

“We spent a lot of time working out the best way to ‘wow’ the staff with something original,” says Liu Ping, China Star’s CEO.

“Last year, the theme was the ‘100 Years Olympic Dream – Olympic Drama Show’. This year, we held a ‘Multicultural Theme Party’, which turned out to be very popular.

“The key to its success was to let everybody get involved and motivated. We selected a great venue called Marble Hall inside the Hotel Kunlun. The staff there was also very cooperative.”

Execution
The China Star training session was held over three days. There were two and a half days of seminars, workshops and panel meetings to summarise the previous year and to plan the upcoming year.

Presentations on key issues were given by distinguished international guest speakers. These included Kitzia Morales, the immediate past-president of the Society of Incentive Travel Executives (SITE) Mexico Chapter (awarded as Chapter of the Year 2008), who spoke about global trends in incentive travel.

Yu Debin, deputy director of the Beijing Tourism Administration (who was previously also deputy director of the Beijing Olympic Village), also gave a presentation titled ‘Unveiling the Secret of Zero Complaints in Olympic Village’.

Delegates took part in a site inspection tour on the last half-day and also went on a tour of the new China National Convention Center and its nearby Olympic sites, the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube.

The theme party and awards ceremony was held on the last evening. “The purpose of the theme party is to inspire the staff, stimulate their passion and carry forward the team spirit,” says Liu. “We also rewarded those employees who had done a great job over the past year.”

Comment
“China Star represents the highest degree of professionalism and knowledge in the meeting and incentive industry in China,” says Liu. “Our continuous staff training programmes play a big role in this success.

“China Star believes that ‘good’ is the enemy of great. That’s why we invest a lot in continuing staff education. The annual training session has helped China Star become a well known brand in the tourism industry in China.”