2016 Awards Announced at 9th FTA Dinner

Bangkok (Thailand) – June 16, 2016 (travelindex.com) – The Ninth Annual FTA Summer Dinner at Bangkok took place last night at the 5 star W Bangkok hotel hosted by Tina Liu, General Manager.

Now a popular and much-anticipated annual event in Bangkok’s busy social calendar for hoteliers and hospitality executives, it was an evening of friendship and outstanding culinary creations, expertly matched with new and old world wines, and all put together by local philanthropist Fred Tibbitts and his sponsors.

With many of the hotel and hospitality industry leaders present the 2016 FTA Hospitality Awards for Excellence were announced last night. The official presentations, along with a scholarship in each recipient’s name, will be made later this year at the FTA Dinner in Hong Kong in October and in New York in November.

The 2016 FTA Hospitality Excellence Awards & Recipients are as follows:

– 2016 FTA Hospitality Award for Excellence as an Operator – North America

Henry Michaud, Vice President, Food & Beverage, Columbia Sussex Corp.

– 2016 FTA Hospitality Award for Excellence as an Educator

Georges Halpern, MD., PhD, Honorary Professor, Culinary Arts, Faculty of Management & Hospitality, Technological & Higher Education Institute of Hong Kong, Vocational Training Council

– 2016 FTA Hospitality Award for Excellence as an Operator – Asia Pacific

Qian jin, President, Wanda Hotels & Resorts

– 2016 FTA Hospitality Award for Lifetime Excellence

Wayne Buckingham, Senior Vice President Asia Pacific, FRHI Hotels & Resorts

Fred Tibbitts & Associates is a Bangkok and Phnom Penh based global, social entrepreneurship, operated as an NGO, serving the global hospitality industry. Organising relationship-building, hospitality humanitarian dinners in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Ho Chi Minh City, Singapore, Bangkok, New Delhi, Mumbai and New York. These dinners bring together key hotel and restaurant National Account executives, key press, educators and industry VIPs with hospitality industry marketers and suppliers as “Communions of Hospitality Souls” to benefit the FTA Hospitality Schools Scholarship Fund and their direct humanitarian efforts in Thailand & Cambodia.

Fred, a former successful lawyer based in NY, has driven FTA over the years and now retired, he continues to passionately support the project he loves and cherishes.

The FTA dinner has three key objectives. Firstly celebrating all that is good in the hospitality industry and in particular the food and beverage service industry, and promoting camaraderie and friendship; secondly, recognising individuals in the industry deserving special recognition. And finally to support the charity work of FTA.