A Chinese billionaire has made a serious claim for the title of best boss ever, after taking half of his employees – over 6,400 people – on an all-expenses-paid nine-day holiday to France, to celebrate his company’s 20th anniversary. The epic trip is expected to cost a whopping 33 million euros, of which 13 million will be spent in Paris, and 20 million in Nice.
Li Jinyuan, the chairman of Tiens Group Company, booked rooms in 140 three, four, and five-star hotels in Paris for 6,400 employees, and made reservations at some of the most popular attractions, including The Louvre museum.
The huge group, consisting of Chinese, Russian, and Kenyan employees, has also traveled to the breathtaking French Riviera, where Li Jinyuan booked a whopping 4,760 rooms in 79 hotels in Cannes and Monaco
On Saturday, he arranged for 147 buses to transport the
employees from their hotels to the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, where they
formed a human chain that spelled out the words ‘Tiens’ dream is Nice in the
Cote d’Azur’.
The chain was meant to celebrate 20 years of collaboration
between the company and the French region. Guinness World Record officials who
were present at the occasion confirmed that it was the largest human chain ever
created. The group also visited luxury department store Galeries Lafayette,
which was open exclusively to Tiens’ employees for the day.
57-year-old Li Jinyuan founded Tiens in 1995. It has now
grown to an international conglomerate with businesses in biotechnology, health
management, e-commerce, and hotels and tourism. The trip has been in the
planning since December, with the French Tourism Development Agency working
hard to organize the itinerary. It will probably go down in history as the most
expensive team-building trip ever.
You have to wonder though, how do the rest of Tiens’ 12,000
employees feel seeing their colleagues having so much fun?
Quite a shot in the arm for French tourism, what? One could argue
that Greece needs the help more but Greece is not so easy logistically to move 6,400
people and Paris probably had more appeal. 6,400 people – that’s more than the
population of Cornwall, Ontario where Nong and I live (4,700).
As a former meeting planner used to organizing hundreds of people on tours, I can only imagine the chaos of organizing 6,400 Chinese tourists most of whom I would suspect have never been far from their home city. Yikes!
See ya, eh!
Bob
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