Monday, September 19, 2005

International Relations


This past weekend my partner Jacqueline McCarthy and I had an interesting encounter with one of our clients. We left our Seattle office a bit early on Friday afternoon and drove up to Vancouver, BC in order to meet up with Cintia Stella of Wow! Argentina. Cintia is a partner at the Buenos Aires based travel agency and she has been touring through Canada for the past three weeks, making her way westward from Montreal, Quebec City, Ottowa, Toronto and finally the last stop on her itnerary Vancouver.

It's another one of those modern business tales of developing a relationship via the telephone, email and Fedex. Sometimes it is halfway across the planet to Buenos Aires, sometimes it's halfway across town, but meeting clients face to face seems to be yet another casualty of the technological revolution. Cintia was so close, and had travelled so far that the least we could do was to take the 3 hour drive northward to meet for dinner. We had a lovely time discussing the day to day life of running a business, the hard work, the long hours and most importantly the successes. Wow! Argentina was recently added to the latest edition of the Lonely Planet Guides. So it is gratifying to see that all the hard work pays off. The conversation ranged from the cultural differences between Argentina, the United States and Canada for that matter, television shows that run in both the US and in Argentina, food and wine and futbol.

It was great to see one of our clients from south of the equator. So much so, that I'm going to make a point to meet with clients from right here in our own hometown.

Of course if you wish to vist Argentina, please talk to CintiaStella and Matias Mancuso of Wow! Argentina. You'll find that their dedication to showing you the best of their beautiful country will have you returning again and again to one of the great countries of the world. Chau!

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