Rio de Janeiro: Location of GPLN's 2010 Meeting

I am writing this mail to draw attention to loads of new information that we have put up on our website about the GPLN Global Meeting in Rio de Janeiro, as well as the Intermodal South America in São Paulo a few days before. First off, you may notice a new red button in the menu on our home page. By clicking on this button you will go to a sub-website that has been created for these two events. In that sub-website is all the information concerning dates, costs, accommodations, visa information, etc., that you need to be able to plan your trip.

You might note that since we will be in a special location in Brazil we will have two optional events for those who are interested in sight seeing and / or enjoying a traditional dinner with other GPLN colleagues. First, we will have a savory barbecue dinner at a famous churrascaria, Carretão Churrascaria, and the next day there will be a half-day tour of Rio de Janeiro. These are optional events but for those of you who plan to go to Intermodal South America or those who would like to be in Rio a few days early, this is a great transition to the meeting and a good introduction to the host city.

Regarding the hotel we are doing something quite different this year with our booking. In the past we have secured a meeting rate for our members and left everyone to make their own travel arrangements. This year our system will be a bit different which is due to the fact that the hotel where the meeting will be held has only 245 rooms, which means that we would be possibly taking up 40% of the vacancy or even more which puts a major strain on the hotel to provide the space we will need under the old way we booked. To get around this issue we have had to financially guarantee the space up front. As such, we will ask when booking that the hotel will be paid in advance. There is a big positive to this arrangement though. Since we have paid in advance for the space, we have very, very preferential rates on the rooms. Booking directly is considerably more expensive than the rates we have. We will be staying at the JW Marriott Rio de Janeiro, which is right on the world famous CopacobanaBeach. Another reason that I recommend that you book with us are the facts that whenever you stay in the same hotel with other members you will get much more social activity with them and build your relationships within the group that much easier.

Further to the point about booking, as we cannot know exactly how many people will be coming to the meeting we have made our guarantee based upon our best estimate. This means we will have a fixed number of rooms that we have guaranteed for the members. Beyond GPLN’s guaranteed rooms the hotel room availability is on a first come first served basis. So book now!

As we have mentioned in other announcements, prior to our meeting will be the Intermodal South America exhibition, which GPLN will take part in. Intermodal South America is by far the largest transport and logistics event in Latin America, with more than 45,000 visitors at the last event. The only logistics event in the world that is bigger is Transportlogistic in Munich. I would highly recommend participating with us in the booth if you are serious about promoting your company in Latin America. The timing couldn’t be better as our own meeting is just a few days later. Please note, though, that we’d like to know your intention about this the sooner the better due to the fact that there will be only so many spaces in the booth. And if you already know that you want to participate with us in this booth you can register for Intermodal South America on the same form as our meeting registration.

Our one-on-one meeting scheduler is found in the same menu and will be up and running soon so that you can make appointments with other GPLN members. There will be a separate announcement on this in the near future.

You may also want to note that the payment terms and conditions are posted on the sub-website and we will adhere to them strictly.

Finally, I would recommend that each and every one of us check the Brazilian visa requirements in advance for Brazil and make arrangements as early as possible (now, if you can). This is very important as we want to avoid anyone having any problems with last minute visas as we have had in the past.

For any information about either of these two events please contact our commercial director, Luzius Haffter.  To e-mail Luzius Haffter directly click here.

For updates keep checking this blog space or follow us on Twitter.

I look forward to seeing you all there!