Pirelli Tire at Eden Roc

by Angela Wibking

Gentlemen, start your meeting!" That was the rallying cry for the 1,500 tire dealers and members of the international press who met in Miami in January for a new product launch by Pirelli, the tire manufacturer based in Milan, Italy. It was also the rallying cry for the Eden Roc Resort and Spa, where the meeting was headquartered—and which just 10 months earlier had been in the midst of an extensive renovation when Pirelli came to town looking for a host hotel.

Randy Griffin, director of marketing for Eden Roc, says his property faced a huge challenge going after the Pirelli meeting. "The best hotels in town were bidding on this business," Griffin says. "And when the Pirelli meeting planner came in, our renovation hadn’t even started."

Designed by Morris Lapidus in 1956, Eden Roc is a gem among Miami Beach Art Deco structures. Over the years, however, normal wear and tear and some misguided design decisions—like painting the rare rosewood columns in the lobby white—had dulled its sparkle considerably. The $24 million renovation was intended to improve even on the property’s original glory—but it wasn’t expected to be complete until a mere six weeks before the Pirelli meeting.

Not surprisingly, Jeffrey Hockersmith, executive vice president of Jornee Unlimited, the corporate meeting and incentives house that planned the Pirelli meeting, passed on the Eden Roc at first.

"I walked into the Eden Roc and walked right out," recalls Hockersmith, whose firm has offices in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Connecticut. "It just wasn’t suitable to the Pirelli style of hotels. They usually choose properties like the Ritz Carlton and Four Seasons. I give the Eden Roc tremendous credit, though, because they came back to me and put on a full dog-and-pony show"

"We did everything we could to show Jeffrey the project was on time and that this would be a Pirelli hotel that would live up to the company’s Ritz Carlton and Four Seasons experiences," says Griffin. "We took Jeffrey to the construction office and introduced him to the general contractor. It turned out he had used some of the contractor’s other hotel projects. Then we met with the architect and went through the blueprints and the decor designs."

The Eden Roc did have availability and location in its favor. "Pirelli wanted to do this international product launch in North America and they needed to do it in January or February 2000," says Hockersmith. "That meant I had to look at a warm-weather destination where there was a suitable hotel—one that was near a race course for one of the meeting’s events. We also had to have a hotel that was available for almost a month, and Pirelli really wanted a beachfront property. That’s hard to find in peak season. There also aren’t many beachfront hotels in Miami with the number of rooms and the facilities we needed. Plus we didn’t get word on this meeting ourselves until 10 months out."

Eden Roc met those needs and a deal was struck to buy out the hotel for the meeting. Then the entire Eden Roc staff hit the gas.

"We knew the Pirelli meeting could be our first signature group— one we could hang our hat on and say ‘Here’s the new Eden Roc" Griffin says. "The meeting became our light at the end of the renovation tunnel. We used it as the model for training our staff and for hosting other groups. We held pep rallies for the staff before the Pirelli group came in, during their stay and after they left. We kept everyone in the loop, from the front desk to housekeeping to the bellmen."

Such communication proved essential because of the complex nature of the meeting itself. The Pirelli delegates came to the Eden Roc in 13 waves of about 150 people each, over a three-week period from Jan. 18 to Feb. 8. So as one group was departing after three days of meeting activities, another group was already descending on the hotel for a replay of all events.

"The first day the groups arrived there was a welcoming dinner. The next morning there was a general session with a corporate overview from Pirelli and a presentation on the new P-Zero tire. The third day we showed them the tire in action at the Miami International Speedway," says Hockersmith. At the speedway, delegates drove Lamborghinis, Porsches, Ferarris, Jaguars and Mercedes outfitted with the new tires through five different testing stations. Each delegate also took a spin in a racecar driven by a professional driver around the speedway at 190 mph.

The hands-on experience didn’t end there, though. After a catered lunch, the Pirelli delegates were given more cars equipped with P-Zero tires. They drove a route over city streets and the interstate and then out to the Everglades. After each group put the Pirelli tires through their paces, crews came in at night to wash, wax and detail the sports cars so members of the next group could step into pristine vehicles.

Because Pirelli had bought out the hotel, Eden Roc gave them considerable leeway in redecorating and sometimes rebuilding parts of the hotel. "They brought in an A/V company and set up a 360-degree video presentation in our Cotillion Ballroom," recalls Griffin. "To do that, they had to take down the huge chandelier in the center of the ballroom – and that alone took three days.

Other alterations to the hotel’s public spaces were achieved with lavish use of live plants, shrubs, trees and flowers. "We created a Venetian garden in the main ballroom, where we had the farewell dinner every third night, by adding truckloads of shrubs and flowers, covering all the walls with fabric and installing fountains and marble statues," says Hockersmith.

Pirelli required one dramatic visual statement that challenged the Eden Roc staff. "The client wanted to put sports cars on our pool deck," says Griffin. But the Eden Roc’s pool deck overlooks the Atlantic Ocean and is flanked closely on both sides by other hotels. "Also, the only area where the 12-story crane needed to lower the two Ferraris could come in had new sod with an irrigation system in it," he adds. "Pirelli covered the cost of any damage and replaced the sod afterwards."

One area the hotel wasn’t willing to see altered, though, was its lobby. "Groups love to hang long banners on hotel lobby walls," says Griffin. "We have a stunning lobby with Italian marble, mahogany, rosewood and Ralph Lauren wallpaper and we didn’t want banners on any of that. So our convention services team came up with the idea to project the Pirelli logo on the walls. It was in color but it was much cheaper than a banner and it took minutes to put up. That solved the question of banners for this meeting— and for all future meetings."

If solving the signage problem was a snap, keeping track of the different amenities delivered by the housekeeping staff to each delegate’s room every night was anything but simple. Because groups were arriving and departing every third day, duplicating or missing delivery to some guest rooms was a very real possibility. "That was our biggest challenge," admits Griffin. "So we created three turndown teams to make sure the proper amenities got to the proper room every night." The first-night team handled the distribution of Pirelli logo wear and bottles of wine. The second-night team passed out one-pound blocks of milk chocolate stamped with Pirelli’s logo. The third-night team distributed 300-page Pirelli coffee table books.

In the end, of course, the logistical headaches were worth it. "When we were doing our wrap-up pep rally after the delegates had gone, Jeffrey asked if he could attend, which I thought was a little unusual," says Griffin. "He got up and offered a $100 bill to anyone on our staff who could tell him where the next Pirelli USA meeting was going to be. The staff member who answered ‘Eden Roc’ got the money and you could feel this sense of pride from all our associates. Pirelli was so satisfied with Eden Roc, they’re coming back."