The column in which you will discover the Club Esse faces behind (and in front of) your holidays is back: “About us” today will introduce you to Lisa Michelino.
Among the smiles of the Club Esse universe, probably among the many that (unfortunately!) you will hardly meet, there are those of all the collaborators and operators who strategically and meticulously enter your reservations in the hotels and resorts in Sardinia, Calabria, Sicily and Abruzzo or on the Alps of Valle d’Aosta.
Today it is the turn of the “Lady of hotel bookings”: the true expert of dreams that come true, and allows all guests to always have what they have chosen, and even more. She knows every secret of the reservations and passes them on to all the opratrors in her department. Ladies and gentlemen, Lisa Michelino.
Hi Lisa, introduce yourself!
Hello everyone! I am Luisa Michelino, but since I was little, everyone has called me Lisa. Sometimes I have to be careful because I am so used to this name that I risk to book my holidays for someone else.
I am the Booking Manager of the Club Esse Group, but I should say that my job is to build puzzles, because I assure you that managing all the reservations in so many tourist facilities, with so many types of rooms, with the different treatments and all the requests is a really delicate and complicated task; and all the pieces must necessarily fall into place.
My goal, and that of all the operators in my department, is to ensure that foreign and Italian travel agencies, tour operators. direct clients, in short, everyone, have exactly what they have booked for and, if possible, even more. So far we have satisfied everyone and there is no reason to believe that we will stop doing it!
Why did you choose the world of tourism?
It was actually a consequence of my past as atourist entertainer, which began in 1996, and then moved to the Club Esse offices in 2000. Later, after the first 10 years in which we managed entertainment staff, we started a management path of hotels and resorts (the first was the Cala Bitta in Baia Sardinia) which led the company to become a real chain hotel, with 16 tourist facilities under management.
The weirdest requests you received?
You could write a book about it. The funniest anecdotes are those about discounts. It is not uncommon for the question “How many are you?” to be answered “It’ll be me, my husband and the little one”, discovering later that the “little one” for which you would not want to pay anything, is nothing less than a 17-year-old 90kg huge guy.
Or when they ask for a discount because the wife “Poor thing, she eats just a little”. Just a few days ago, since we are Pet Friendly (ovvero che accettiamo, volentieri, gli animali da compagnia), a guest asked me if he could take his pig whit him…
It often happens that they ask us about the water temperature, or if we can send them a photo of the sand. Someone wanted to know the material of the tiles in the bathroom to make sure they won’t slip.
Perhaps the funniest anecdote was when I was explaining to a travel agent the possible excursions from our Club Esse Pila 2000, in Valle d’Aosta. When I told him that guests could visit the Christmas village set up in Cormayeur, he told me “No, it won’t be possible because their passport has expired”.
Your ideal holiday?
The one I take as often as I can, and unfortunately the pandemic has taken me away, but only for the moment.
My concept is one trip per year, but for at least one month. I leave for distant countries, often alone, and for a long time, in order to really immerse myself in local realities, and live in close contact with the country I visit, knowing as much as possible its peculiarities, populations and their traditions. When I go on vacation to one of these places I want to be able to say that I have known and visited it.
My 2020 target was Namibia and unfortunately I had to give up. But tomorrow…
Tell us about the time when …
There are many. Visiting many places, I have obviously had many adventures, even curious ones.
What makes me laugh the most is the time when I was in the extreme southern tip of Latin America, with some people I met there, and we were going on an excursion that included the use of canoes in the Strait of Magellan, which is characterized by very cold waters and often rushing currents. When I was getting into the canoe, one told me “put your left foot”, the other one “no, no, get on with your right”, and the other one said “first sit down and then pull up your legs”.
In short, the end was that I fell into the freezing water, and thank goodness there was a rock near that saved my life … I risked drowning, but only from laughing! Long story short: I went back, change my clothes, and the excursion was postponed to the following day.
Tell us your biggest dream
It may be naive, but what I really want is equality and peace in the world. I have seen too many ghettoizations and too much violence, and I really wish I would never see them again.
What if it was a dream holiday?
I have no doubt. A journey around the world in a balloon, a feat that was successful in 1999 at the Swiss Piccard. I’d like to see the world from above, but not too much, and with the slowness necessary to fix every detail in my mind, stopping every now and then in remote but fascinating places.
A wish
This is simple too: the end of this nightmare that the pandemic has covered the world with. But I go further, wishing all the true and essential values for a life worth living: health and serenity.
As the Club Esse motto says: Choose Happiness!