Billed as Europe’s leading B2B conference for the online entertainment industries, The European Summit (TES) 2011 was held in Prague, CZ at the Hotel Praha. While the show was said to last from September 20-23, that was stretching it. The show itself was really on the 21st and 22nd with some warm-up activities provided by YNOT and Cybersocket. I am not sure what, if anything, went on the 23rd. Most people were headed to London or Munich from what I could see.

The Venue

The Hotel Praha is huge. Sadly, there are only 136 rooms. If it was Las Vegas they would have made it into a 700 room hotel. In Prague they make the rooms very large. The result was inevitable, the show hotel sold out quickly. Several of us stayed at the Silenzio Hotel which was just down the hill. I know others stayed closer to downtown Prague. It seemed that attendees were pretty spread out, more than normal.

It was pretty obvious that the hotel and staff were not prepared for the influx of business at the bar. I arrived fairly late Monday evening after traveling from Amsterdam. There were several of us that had the same thing in mind, and that was food. The front desk told us there was none to be had in the hotel and no one knew of much other than a KFC that would be open past 10:00 PM. I opted out of the KFC option and discovered that there was some food that could be ordered at the bar. What they failed to mention was that the bar only had a very limited number of beers in stock. That was gone in a flash. Yes, they had other alcohol available, but I really wanted a beer. (more…)

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These photos are from the flight to Prague for the European Summit; and our arrival at the Hotel Praha and the Silenzio Hotel, where several attendees stayed. The flight to Prague from Amsterdam was loaded with show attendees. It would have been a huge loss to the adult industry if that plane went down. After checking in to the Silenzio a few of us went off in search of food. The first stop was the show venue, Hotel Praha. There were several people in the lounge and the crowd grew by the minute. You could tell this was going to be a good show.

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This was my second time attending The Barcelona Summit and I will be returning for future events. I have to give much credit to Andreas, for not only organizing a very business orientated event, but for his willingness to listen to his sponsors and those that are making the journey to Spain to attend. When he first announced the dates of this show, there was a lot of noise on the boards because the dates conflicted with Webmaster Access Amsterdam, even though the dates had not been formally announced at the time. After careful consideration, he decided to change the dates so that people could attend both events. Personally, I thought this was a great concession and I did not have to make a decision between the two events and I was able to make one flight across the Atlantic.

The Barcelona Summit was held September 21-24, 2010 at the Le Meridien Ra Beach Hotel & Spa in El Vendrell, which is about 40 minutes outside of Barcelona, on the coast of the Mediterranean. This B2B adult webmaster event was loaded with many activities including go-kart racing, a Paella cook off, a wine tasting and tour, speed networking and probably a dozen seminars covering many topics of concern in today’s marketplace.

The Venue

Since Le Meridien was full the night I arrived, I spent the first night about a mile down the strand from the host hotel. Since I did not arrive until after midnight, it did not really matter to me that the room was small and the guy at the desk spoke zero English. The next morning we packed up our stuff and walked up to the Le Meridien. When I walked into my room, my immediate response was, “wow.” This hotel is probably the nicest I have ever stayed at, even though the rates were about half of what it would cost to stay at The W or the Hilton in New York City. I am afraid that future hotels I stay at have their work cut out for them as far as elegance is concerned.

View From Our Room

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