EVENT - AMANDA FRASIER, PRESIDENT STANDARDS & RATINGS, FORBES TRAVEL GUIDE: “THE SUMMIT AIMS TO INSPIRE THE GROWTH OF BRAND OPPORTUNITY AND INDIVIDUAL GROWTH ” (Monaco)
For the first time, The Summit comes to Monaco to bring together luxury leaders from February 25 to 28, 2025. Amanda Frasier, President of Standards & Ratings and head of The Summit organization, shares with us the highlights of the event. |
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EVENT - AMANDA FRASIER, PRESIDENT STANDARDS & RATINGS, FORBES TRAVEL GUIDE: “THE SUMMIT AIMS TO INSPIRE THE GROWTH OF BRAND OPPORTUNITY AND INDIVIDUAL GROWTH ” (Monaco)
For the first time, The Summit comes to Monaco to bring together luxury leaders from February 25 to 28, 2025. Amanda Frasier, President of Standards & Ratings and head of The Summit organization, shares with us the highlights of the event. |
Catégorie : Europe - Monaco - Économie du secteur
- Interviews et portraits
- Tourisme - Interviews
Interview de Vanessa Guerrier-Buisine le 03-02-2025
 Monaco to host The Summit from February 25 to 28
Crédit photo © Forbes Travel Guide
For this 2025 edition, the guide has chosen the unique and prestigious setting of the Principality of Monaco to show off to the 750 privileged professionals gathered for the occasion. This marks a first for the organizers, who have pulled out all the stops to dazzle and inspire participants. The Oceanographic Museum or the legendary Salle des Étoiles will provide an exceptional setting to welcome participants. Educational cycles and prestigious presentations will provide inspiration and tools to take away with them.
For Journal des Palaces, Amanda Frasier, President of Standards & Ratings at Forbes Travel Guide, reveals some of the ingredients of the event she and her teams have been organizing with passion for several months.
Journal des Palaces: When it came to choosing Monaco as the venue for Summit 2025, what were the main criteria? How does this destination embody the values and excellence advocated by the Forbes Travel Guide?
Amanda Frasier : For its inaugural event overseas, The Summit sought a location that aligned with its goals to continue to deliver an elevated, one-of-a-kind experience. Infrastructure and ease of access for our global attendees was, of course, key.
Beyond this, but of equal importance, we wanted a destination that not only embodies warm and gracious service within its hotels, dining and other luxury brands in its marketplace, but also innovates across the fields of tourism, hospitality and education. The executives across the Principality at all levels have been tremendous partners, and we have worked together with great enthusiasm for more than a year now to design what will be an incredible show.
What will be the highlights of Summit 2025?
We have some wonderful surprises planned with the main program, offering the attendees the chance to design much of their time their way. It was important that we provided ample opportunity to learn and network but without leaving our guests exhausted or hurried from place to place. Taking over a destination is new for The Summit, so thinking about the attendee experience from their point of view has been a guiding point for all involved.
Highlights each day will, of course, be the opening Symposium with some phenomenal speakers taking the Salles des Princes stage in the Grimaldi Forum to present topics such as the future of design, leading a luxury brand and the latest consumer travel trends. We also will recognize our Best of the Year winners and Verified Air Travel winners live on stage. It is an honor for us to host His Serene Highness Prince Albert II, who will open the show, and we look forward to his conversation with journalist Peter Greenberg around the future of the Principality and his passionate approach to sustainability.
The afternoons are filled with breakout Discovery Sessions, and new for 2025 we have built a Travel Professionals Pavilion where The Summit is hosting more than 80 travel professionals from all over the world for attendees to meet in an open house environment. We have also built a Media Studio and Wellness Studio — so there is plenty of choice on how to spend your time.
We are well-known for our world-class evening entertainment, and this year will be no exception with our special guest lineup to be announced soon! Our opening party is not to be missed, as we are transporting our guests to a stunning location at the “top of the rock” in Monaco at the Oceanographic Museum. This location is hard to top, but our closing party, the black-tie gala dinner, will take place in the dramatic setting of the Sporting Monte-Carlo in the very befittingly named Salle des Etoiles. Monaco’s famous Rose Ball provides the inspiration for the evening’s experience, and we look forward to a truly memorable night for our guests.
Can you give us an overview of the major themes that will be addressed during this edition?
It’s a show where travel and luxury meet. That tag line was very intentional as part of our CEO’s strategic vision across our entire organization, and at The Summit, we have this incredible platform to bring that opportunity to life for our attendees. A common thread of education and conversation around authentic luxury collaboration and partnership to inspire the growth of brand opportunity and individual growth is the ever-present theme that ties the entire show together.
Opinion leaders and influential speakers are invited every year. Can you tell us about the experts who will be speaking at Summit 2025, and the topics they will cover?
We are exceedingly grateful to the dozens of experts who will spend time on our stages to share their thought leadership with our audience.
We open with His Serene Highness Prince Albert II, who will reveal his vision for Monaco as a city state, its future growth and his passion for sustainability. Our Future of Design panel, led by Charlotte Lamp Davies, will be presented by Frette. Joining its CEO, Filippo Arnaboldi, on the stage will be some of the world’s leading architects of hotels and super yachts, including Tara Bernerd, Piero Lissoni and Nuvolari Lenard.
Maz Zouhairi leads the Luxury Panel with a stellar lineup of speakers touching on how to navigate the balance of brand heritage and innovation, amongst other topics. Maz is joined by Stéphanie de Boüard-Rivoal, President of Château Angelus; Laurent Kleitman, CEO of Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group; Shalini Hinduja of the Hinduja Group for The OWO; and Bénédicte Épinay, CEO of Comité Colbert. In the afternoon, The Academy heads up the education session with many guest speakers from the world of hospitality on topics ranging from well-being to elevating guest experiences through storytelling. Guests also will have the chance to meet some of the world’s best hospitality educators, including our own ATELIER CX and the International University of Monaco and Sommet Education leaders.
In the Wellness Studio, guests will hear from Sammy Gharieni on the latest in touchless wellness, and our partners at Myndstream are presenting a not-to-be-missed Discovery Session, Beyond Words: Music as a Universal Language with Professor Adam Ockelford and child prodigy Derek Paravicini.
Networking plays a central role at the Summit. What specific formats or moments have been planned to foster exchanges between participants and encourage new collaborations?
We have had extremely positive feedback with our Braindate networking lounge, which allows invited attendees to “prepopulate” conversations they wish to engage in and invite other like-minded attendees to join them. We have once again built a beautiful lounge for our attendees to participate in multiple topics over the two days.
In addition, we are expanding our Travel Advisor engagement platform for owners and GMs. Richard Lebowitz, SVP, Travel Industry Outreach, heads up our advisor community, and to align with the growth of the overall show, Richard will host more than 80 advisors in the pavilion from as far as Australia, India and the Middle East, as well as the U.S., of course.
Our amazing Brand Officials, including Jalin, LATHER and Five Star Napkins, have all created some incredible activations to help our guests connect. And new this year, we are bringing Astria Live! to The Summit for attendees to meet select luxury vendors from our recently launched online luxury supplier platform, https://www.discoverastria.com/.
Participant experience is at the heart of the Forbes Travel Guide's priorities. What initiatives or special attentions have you planned to offer guests a memorable experience throughout the event?
We are keeping a few surprises up our sleeves, but taking The Summit from a single-location show to a destination-wide show naturally required a completely different approach to the flow of the attendee experience.
Guests will enjoy breakfast at their leisure in their hotel before taking our courtesy transport — or a short stroll — to the Grimaldi Forum. This provides a much more relaxing start to the day and offers the chance to enjoy their hotel to its fullest.
It was also important to us to try to give our guests the chance to see as much of Monaco as possible, and rather than conduct all our events in one venue, we are making sure they see some historic sights and spectacular views — no one really loves being inside for two days, even in February!
I would be remiss not to mention some very special partnerships we forged to help elevate this year’s gala, which include some incredible wines from Château Angelus and champagne from Billecart-Salmon to toast the 2025 winners and the accomplishments of all our attendees. And while our own FTG editorial team will be there in full force to cover all the news, to help attendees amplify their latest brand updates, we have added a Media Studio to the event where they can present to the almost 30 global media we are bringing to The Summit to cover everything happening across our industry directly from those making it happen.
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