The largest business regatta in Croatia will take place in October.
In October, nearly a thousand businesspeople from Europe will travel in 120 sailboats from Trogir to Hvar and back in a relaxed atmosphere to exchange business ideas, said Tomislav Gavazzi, the event director and the managing director of Business Sailing Experience Agency (BSEA), reports Novac.hr on August 4, 2018.
“The main goal is to transform sailing into a B2B platform, but also to enable people to get to know our coast and have fun,” explained Gavazzi, a well-known Croatian organizer of business conferences, as well as a sailor with more than 30 years of experience.
Conventional conferences, business gatherings and teambuilding events usually take place in hotels and resorts, but Gavazzi’s original idea is to combine sailing and conferencing, offering quality content and added value to sailing in the Adriatic. BSEA is involved in organizing business regattas, educational programs and teambuilding. In May, they organised the Big Data Sailing Academy, which brought together people from Western Europe. The participants were introduced to the Croatian coast, as well as topics such as big data and artificial intelligence.
From October 6 to 9, BSEA will organise the first Croatian edition of Ariane’s Cup for the European space industry. This will be the 39th edition of the traditional business sailing event. According to Gavazzi, the delegations from the space industry are certain to be impressed despite their already extensive experience in business tourism, including at top destinations such as the Caribbean. Some of the participants have already expressed their wish to continue sailing in Croatia even after the formal part of the event is completed.
Among nearly a thousand representatives, employees and associates of the European space industry, members of major companies such as Airbus, Daimler, Inmarsat, and others are expected to take part. “Since Croatia is not yet a member of the European Space Agency (ESA), it will be a great opportunity for local scientists and engineers to connect with foreign experts in an informal setting and to develop business cooperation,” said Gavazzi.
In addition to the overall space theme, BSEA will organise three separate business sailing cups on the topics of the European digital industry, open innovations, and the circular economy. For this, they have invited more than fifteen speakers from major corporations. Dejan Cvetković, chief technology officer at Microsoft, Harry Van Dorenmalen, IBM’s former president for Europe, Laura Bermudez, the software development director at eBay, and Fares Nimiri, the head of social innovations at Airbnb, are just some of them.
Organising such an event is logistically extremely demanding, explained Gavazzi. Since they cannot count on local stores, they have organized a truck from a Croatian retail chain that will provide fresh food to the participants. The sailboats will be accompanied by a special ship from Badel, a Croatian beverage producer, so it is certain that the participants will not be thirsty, and there will also be medical teams and divers available.
An additional challenge is waste disposal, but Gavazzi has found a solution. All sailboats will be equipped with special bags for paper, plastic, glass and organic waste. “We want to take care of this. It is important to be ecologically cautious in the Adriatic Sea,” he said, adding that, in addition to raising environmental awareness, they want to introduce the participants to the concept of the circular economy.
Translated from Novac.hr (reported by Filip Pavić).
