FN hotelaria’s 40th anniversary brings international speakers to Lisbon

BERNARDO TRINDADE
president of AHP – Associação da Hotelaria de Portugal (Portuguese hospitality association)

With family roots on Madeira island, he has a remarkable professional career that began in banking, went through the business sector, the political life and, more recently, is marked by civic intervention in the associative sector.

With a degree in Business Organization and Management, and having attended several executive programs at Universidade Católica, he is a member of the board of PortoBay Hotels & Resorts group and the current president, for the three-year period 2022-2024, of AHP – Associação da Hotelaria de Portugal, the association that represents the majority of hotel groups in Portugal, with around 700 members. From 2016 to 2022 he belonged to the board of this association, as vice-president of the board of directors.

From the early years of his career, on his resume he has companies such as Citibank, KPMG or BES, but his critical and attentive view at regional reality and his interest in civic intervention brought him closer to politics through the Socialist Party. He was a congressman in the Legislative Assembly of the Autonomous Region of Madeira and, between 2005 and 2011, he was Secretary of State for Tourism. He belonged to the administration of TAP, as a non-executive director, between 2017 and 2021. He would leave the National Secretariat of the Socialist Party, when joining the AHP – Associação da Hotelaria de Portugal.

It is in this new role that we now find him, deeply dedicated to facing the challenges of the Portuguese hotel sector.

JUAN PABLO NEIRA
magician speaker

He presents himself as “a creative by profession and an illusionist at heart”. Juan Pablo Neira takes creativity, innovation and… magic to the biggest international conferences!

He was born in Colombia and currently resides in Mexico. He specialized in event production at George Washington University and founded LIVE, one of the largest companies in the events sector in Latin America. He is director of WOBI - World Of Business Ideas for Colombia, author of several books and founder of several publications related to marketing areas.

Widely recognized for his presentations for the biggest global brands, he presents his vision on corporate themes such as branding and innovation and his experience in creativity, leadership and service through surprising and real magic tricks.

Helping people and organizations to tell their stories to better sell their ideas is one of the purposes of his work. Strongly dedicated to the innovation theme, he invites people to think differently and to believe in their ability to imagine and create.

It is through magic and his transformative power that this speaker, coach and writer has been inspiring and motivating his audience in over 30 countries.

KRISTIAN BRASK THOMSEN
“a sommelier turned professional bon vivant and culinary ambassador” – Forbes Magazine

Master of storytelling, communication guru and organizer of impossible events – this is how he is described by many.

His professional career is linked to the hotel sector and that allowed him to get to know the reality of restaurants at all levels. It is this in-depth knowledge that he applies to his activity as a gastronomic ambassador.

He was born in Denmark and now resides in Barcelona, but the world is his stage. Specialized in culinary diplomacy, he organized exclusive events - such as “The Dinner Party” - in some of the best restaurants in the world, which would literally catapult him to high flights with the initiatives “Dining Impossible” and “DI:JET – Dining Impossible Jet”, the latter a real “extravaganza” that consists of offering customers the experience of exploring the best of gastronomy, in the best restaurants in the world, traveling by private jet for 4 days.

Bon Vivant Communications, the company he founded, has been operating since 2011 in the fields of communication, public relations, cultural marketing, film production and entrepreneurship. Today the agency is responsible for the brand management of a wide range of chefs and restaurants, gastronomic festivals and luxury hotels from 3 continents. This company also ensures, namely, the communication of the event “The Best Chef Awards” and signs the documentary “Michelin Stars: Tales from the Kitchen”, shown at the San Sebastian Film Festival in 2017.

Kristian Brask Thomsen recognizes that the last decade was the golden age of gastronomy, which enabled the emergence of a group of people willing to travel to experience the most sought-after restaurants on the planet, a niche market in the field of gastronomy that Bon Vivant identified and explored, realizing the vision of its founder according to which gastronomy is our common language with a definitive role in uniting peoples.