The latest study visit in the It’s Been a While – Let’s Meet in Poland series has ended. This time, incentive travel organisers from SITE Poland got to know Kraków at the invitation of the Polish Tourism Organisation (POT) Poland Convention Bureau and the Kraków Convention Bureau.

The programme of this trip, which took place between 24 and 26 June, included a presentation of the ICE Kraków centre in its new aspect, as the perfect space for holding creative business meetings. The tour of the facility started with a group bicycle ride around the two-level parking garage, led by Michał Zalewski, spokesman of KBF, the operator of the ICE Kraków Congress Centre. The several-minute rally concluded in the hidden, underground Room S5, 10 metres below ground level and 7 metres below groundwater level.

From here, the tour participants and their guides – Paula Fanderowska, deputy director of KBF for the ICE Kraków Congress Centre, and Tomasz Warchał, head of the technical department – walked through floodlights to the music of Survivor’s song “Eye of the Tiger”, ending up on the stage of one of Poland’s best concert venues: the Krzysztof Penderecki Auditorium. Awaiting them was a group of ICE Kraków staff as well as karaoke, which enabled the participants to feel how it feels to be one of the great stage stars who usually perform here.

A few songs later, it was time for a professional photo shoot featuring masks produced as part of Orfeo & Majnun, an international community-driven project that KBF has been implementing in Kraków since 2020, promoting such values as freedom, tolerance and community at the meeting-point of cultures. The next powerful item on the agenda was a concert – with a view onto Wawel Hill – by Marta Kotaszewska, an award-winning cellist, graduate of the Claudio Monteverdi Conservatoire in Bolzano, Italy, where she studied with Prof. Roberto Trainini. She has a great many concerts, scholarships, competitions and festivals to her credit, which have taken her across Europe and to China, the United States, and South America.

After the performance, the tour participants listened to a presentation about ICE Kraków and incentive travel, and then had dinner at the nearby Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology. POT President Rafał Szlachta met with the group as well.

“ICE Kraków is a facility famous all over Poland as an excellent place to hold cultural and business events, but not everyone knows that this space can also be used for incentive travel, for stays organised for employees”, comments Izabela Błaszczyk, director of KBF. “ICE Kraków is a multi-venue that can be adapted in any way a client wishes and provide lots of excitement, as the SITE Poland representatives found out during this trip”, she adds.

The Destination Poland project and the It’s Been a While – Let’s Meet in Poland study visit series is run by the POT Poland Convention Bureau in association with individual city convention bureaux and the SITE Poland organisation. The aim of these visits is to showcase the potential of various cities and regions of Poland to incentive travel organisers, who had to suspend their operations or significantly limit international incentive travel during the pandemic. For the host destination, this is also a solid test of its offering and the compatibility of its products with the expectations of domestic and international clients. So far, the trips have taken participants to Wrocław (4-6 October 2020), Łódź (14-15 December 2020), and now to Kraków.