For the last four years, we’ve held our WIT Japan at the Hotel Nikko in Odaiba and over the years, I’ve come to regard it as home. That Rainbow Bridge right outside my hotel window inspired the theme for our inaugural event in 2012 – “Building Bridges”. The staff know us. They know our event. And they just make it happen.
The bridge that inspired our first year’s theme.
This October, after 19 years of being a Nikko, and just six months short of its 20th anniversary, the hotel becomes a Hilton due to a change in ownership and the decision by the new owner to rebrand it to Hilton Tokyo Odaiba.
I for one will be sad to see the Nikko flag go. There’s something special about staying in a Japanese hotel in Japan. As foreign as the experience felt the first time I stayed there, I felt I was in Japan. The way the staff interacted with you. The way they looked after us.
I am not saying that will change when Hilton takes over – I am sure service standards will be exemplary as they are everywhere in Tokyo – but it will be different.
I feel compelled to write this because I want to recognise the staff and management of Hotel Nikko for their role in helping our event grow and make its mark in Japan. I want to hail it as a case study of a true partnership between venue and event owner. From the start, it was never an organiser-vendor relationship, but a partnership committed to making the event a success because it benefitted both parties.
It takes teamwork to make an event successful – Nikko’s general manager Makoto Motonkakano, left row, third from left – heads up one of the meetings between WIT Japan’s team and his.
When we started WIT Japan four years ago, we were groping in the dark. We had been warned Japan was difficult and expensive, and there’s the language barrier. Plus we didn’t know what numbers to expect, what response we would get.
It was a new idea for a traditional industry used to conferences run a certain way. A conference focused on online travel that would bring global leaders and Japanese leaders together in one room to discuss market opportunities, global expansion and the future of travel. And mostly in English.
The original idea was to create an by-invitation-only forum – no delegate sales, only sponsorship. But as word got out of the names we had assembled for this forum, we got requests for entry – and so we charged a nominal fee. If people were interested, it meant they wanted to learn and we shouldn’t turn curious minds away.
(Left): The first year’s staging – over the years, they got used to our requests for furniture which stood out. (Right): Japanese garden setting for our coffee breaks in 2014.
Thanks to strong local relationships, Hotel Nikko came in as a partner. They co-sponsored it by subsidising some of the costs and hosting the closing cocktails. Nikko saw in the event an opportunity to align themselves with innovation, something new and different, and hosting powerful travel influencers was a side benefit.
Priceline Group’s Glenn Fogel speaking in 2013. A sense of place is more important than we think in influencing what we say and how we say it.
Said Aya Aso, CEO of Agora Hotels, one of the co-founders of WIT Japan, “General manager Makoto Motonakano immediately understood the purpose and mission of WIT and made the decision to support it with his full authority. None of the other GMs did, after visiting so many hotels in Tokyo. He had the aspiration to create an international-style event in line with industry strategy to welcome more MICE.”
When our guests arrived for the first event, they received WIT-branded badges, WIT-branded collateral and special access to the lounge. The staff expected and anticipated us. My favourite story came from Peter Harbison, executive chairman of CAPA (Centre for Aviation), who told a staff about a Japanese movie he had watched on the plane coming in and how he wanted to buy the book for his grand-daughter. The next day, he found the book in his room.
The smile that makes the difference
Now I don’t know whether that happened because Peter was speaking at WIT or it would have happened to anyone, but it showed the level of detail and attention this hotel was capable of. The Nikko is known for having the lowest turnover among hotels in Tokyo and many of the staff have been there since day one.
Attention to detail
Their attention to detail came through in how they executed our events. As we got to know each other – actually by the second year – all we had to do was tell the team our theme and they’d get to work on it.
In the more than 10 years we’ve been running WIT events, this is the only WIT we run where we do not have to think about the staging, the AV, and production. We show up the evening before to be surprised by the creativity and imagination of the hotel. It’s something we look forward to. I am told it’s something they look forward to as well. They tell us that they love working on WIT because they get free rein to use their creativity and surprise us with new ideas.
The one that stood out was 2014 when they turned the stage into a cherry blossom kind of affair with lots of golds and reds. You couldn’t help but know you were in Japan and it lent a powerful element to the discussions on stage. A sense of place is more important than we think in influencing what we say and how we say it.
(Left): The opening of WIT Japan 2013. (Right): The rehearsal for the opening of WIT 2014 and the banquet team is there to make sure it plays out as planned.
I remember that year too being cued by the banquet manager for the opening – he had taken on the role of director of the opening set and he told me when to get on stage and where I should stand. Of course, I forgot when I was on stage but he didn’t bat an eyelid and the opening, which featured a Japanese drumming performance, went like clockwork.
The silver and purple decoration that stood out against a black backdrop this year.
This year, they went dramatic – a black background but with this silver birdcage-like sculpture housing purple orchids and a make-no-apologies-I-am-red sofa. After the first year, they got used to finding colourful furniture to put on stage and each year, they have fun picking out pieces they can use on our stage.
As much as the staging made a statement, so did the food & beverage. Let’s just say delegates to WIT Japan are possibly the most spoiled of conference attendees – the spreads we got were always high quality, delicious, diverse and, not to mention, beautifully-presented.
In particular, the closing cocktails which they host each year and always, the chefs at hand to ensure the food is served fresh – you know it’s a good party when people say, “You remember those little fish swimming in the glass bowl and how delicious they were” two years after.
Moments that stay in your mind forever … well, Hotel Nikko certainly created many of those for us over the four years.
When we were there this June, I did try to speak to some of the staff about the brand change but most were reluctant to speak about it. You could sense the sadness though at the passing of an era. Motonakano-san said goodbye to us at the closing cocktails this year. And he thanked us for holding our event at his hotel.
I think we’re the ones who have to thank him and his team for being absolutely the dream partner that’s taken our event from 120 delegates to 440 and, each year, exceeds our expectations of how a WIT Japan should look and feel like.
He and his team set the gold standard to which other hotels should aspire.
