UNIT 13 – Photocopiable activity 1

Writing – Presentation

Good morning, and welcome to the Annual General Meeting of Lafayette International. I would
like to thank you all very much for coming; some of you have travelled long tiring hours to hear us
today. Let me introduce myself: my name is Joaquín Rodríguez Alvarez and I will be coordinating
this conference.

But first, I would like to take a couple of minutes of your time to go over the details of our most
recent project: the renovation and modernization of the LaRouge hotel.

First, I will give you a short summary explaining how we spent the investment of €2,500,000. Then,
I’ll go into further detail, one area at a time, mentioning major purchases and renovations. Finally,
I’ll illustrate the amenities and facilities our renewed Hotel LaRouge will be offering our clients
from now on. If you have any questions you would like to ask, I’ll be happy to answer them once I
finish.

So, let’s begin with my first point: how we spent the money. Roughly, around €1,500,000 went to
ensuring our clients a memorable experience of comfort and outstanding service. As for the
remaining €1,000,000, two-thirds were spent restoring and renovating the general state of the
building and the décor, whereas some €300,000 were business facilities oriented expenditures.

Moving to my second point, around €600,000 was used to restore and renovate the building. We
tried to keep as much of the original building as we could, as long as it was repairable and it was in
agreement to the current legislations regarding health and security standards. We repaired or
replaced all window frames, wooden handrails and stair steps and structural works in general,
according to necessity. We removed the wallpaper of every room other than the entrance hall,
which was restored to resemble its genuine state. The rest of the walls were painted considering
current trends, and the paintings and sculptures where replaced, removed or relocated following
similar reasoning. In general, the balance between the old and the new was maintained with an
overall sense of elegance and simplicity in mind.

The pieces of furniture, the décor and structural works of carpentry were stored in a warehouse,
for future use in our project in the Southern France.

€1,500,000, as I mentioned earlier, were destined to improve comfort and customer service. New
bedroom furniture was acquired: king and queen size beds, with the latest and highest quality
mattresses and pillows in the market; modern desks and chairs and contemporary styled bedside
tables and wardrobes. Couches and tables were bought for the various lounge rooms and furniture
in general was either restored or replaced in the three restaurants and four bars and in the
conference room. The swimming pool area did not need any changes in furniture, since the
previous owner had bought first-class sun loungers, tables and beach umbrellas right before we
acquired the hotel. Lastly, the whole heating/cooling system was repaired and updated,
guaranteeing our clients will be able to relax, whatever time of the year they stay in LaRouge.
With respect to customer service, a training programme was arranged for the next 3 months for all
personnel, consisting in courses, seminars and daily in-house drills. The aim is to not only make
sure our staff in Hotel LaRouge is always caring. We would also like to test this new intensive
approach to customer service training, so as to ‘export’ it to every other hotel in our chain.

As for the business amenities, we are now proud to announce that all Hotel LaRouge has the
highest wi-fi connection speed available in France. In addition, we now have terminals in each
floor where our business travelling customers can charge their laptops and smartphones, free of
charge. Then, we bought new furniture for our meeting rooms and prepared the reception area to
hold four exhibition stands, to be stored whenever we are not holding a business conference.
Finally, our renewed business conference room has now a wide screen and a data projector, as
well as a sound system which will allow conference speakers to be heard by every attendee, loud
and clear.

This restoration and modernization of the Hotel LaRouge, which took three months, leaves us with
the following facilities: 250 high-quality bedrooms, 2 meeting rooms per floor, 2 large restaurants
and 1 mid-sized, 4 bars, a swimming pool area, 4 stands in the reception area and a large
conference room with space for up to 500 attendees.

Finally, I would like to finish off by telling you that I hope we can hold this Annual Conference next
year in the Hotel LaRouge’s conference room so you could see the results of such an ambitious
project that made me so immensely proud to belong to this company. It has been a pleasure to
share this with you all and thank you for your patience and interest in listening to me. Now, if you
have any questions, please feel free to ask them. Otherwise, we should move on to our next
speaker this morning, Mr. …