Historic meetings

In a clever promotion, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts presented another way to think about the importance of face-to-face meetings. You probably don’t need any proof, but we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to pass it along (slightly abbreviated).

“What if they never met?”

From war to peace, meetings that have changed the course of history are a good reminder of the importance of in-person collaboration. Despite today’s technological conveniences and virtual conferences, a look back in time proves that tremendous world-changing outcomes can happen when great minds — or great legs — get in a room together… just imagine if the following famous meetings had never occurred:

• During the spring of 1945, the UN Charter was drafted in the Garden Room at The Fairmont San Francisco and signed by 50 countries.

• In March 1943, the finance and foreign affairs ministers of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg gathered at The Savoy in London to discuss the notion of a post-war “customs union” that might one day allow people, goods and commerce to travel freely between the three countries — laying the groundwork for the free trade, free passage and single currency of the European Union today.

• The Northern Ireland peace talks at the Fairmont St Andrews, Scotland, in 2006 led to the St. Andrews Agreement, the cornerstone to peace in Ulster today.

• Nicknamed “The Girl With The Million Dollar Legs” after her famous gams were insured by Lloyd’s of London, Betty Grable was singing in the lounge of the Fairmont Miramar Hotel & Bungalows, when her talents were noticed and appreciated by a meeting of MGM studio executives. Grable famously posed for the swimsuit pin-up in 1943 named by Life Magazine as one of the “100 Photos that Changed the World”, inspiring a generation of World War II G.I.’s, including one by the name of Hugh Hefner.

The first meeting of The Other Club, a private dining club founded by Sir Winston Churchill, took place at The Savoy in London in 1911. The club, which still exists today, holds dinners with prominent leaders and thinkers from all across the political spectrum to engage in camaraderie and civilized debate of current affairs.

• Behind the Lalique glass doors of the Ninth Heaven room at the Fairmont Peace Hotel in Shanghai, relations between China and France were restored in 1964, following a successful meeting between the Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai and his French counterpart Edgar Faure.

• When John Lennon and Yoko Ono held their famous Bed-In for Peace at Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth in 1969, they were hardly alone. The peaceful pair spoke to some 150 journalists a day as the former Beatle penned the lyrics of “Give Peace a Chance.”
Excerpted from “Fairmont Imagines ‘What if they never met?’” fairmont.com