Belgium Fields New Options To Attract Visitors

As much of the United States swelters, a cool wind blows across Flanders from the North Sea, and the thermometer tops out at 80. Still, the traffic is noticeably light, as American and Asian tourists, and especially meetings groups, are postponing trips until after the summer season, insiders say.

The travel industry is hopeful, though–and doing its best to encourage their return, as the Brussels troubles fade into others around the globe, and no place really seems much safer than any other. So Visit Flanders, the CVB shared by Brussels and Antwerp, this week put together a press trip that flew in reporters from across the United States to show off what’s on the fall agenda.

In Brussels, the Radisson Blu Royal Hotel, the chain’s flagship, has just completed a $7 million renovation of its meeting spaces and two floors of sleeping rooms (with the rest to follow in coming months). All the rooms measure 280 square feet and offer free WiFi and premium TV channels, espresso machines, three-hour laundry service, and cozy robes and slippers. In the Radisson Blu tradition, the property also offers some elements of the local culture—including painted clouds floating atop a meeting room, in the style of Belgian artist (and muse of the Beatles) Magritte, and a restored fragment of the 12^th-century city wall that towers over the lobby space.

Like most of Europe, “we’re hurting,” acknowledged senior sales manager Nel Watty. “April and May were tough all over Belgium. June was okay and now it’s the slow summer season.” Other cities in Europe have picked up the slack for Radisson, though, she said, and “Amsterdam and Dublin are doing great.”

The first property in the trendy Radisson Red brand is here in Brussels, too; it opened in May. Like other brands designed to appeal to a young and hip audience, it sports a friendly bar and lobby that act as a “Social Hive” where guests and locals mingle and, literally, create a buzz. There’s no room service, but guests can order food from the bar-restaurant and take it up to their rooms, where the desks have been replaced by tables that can be used for eating or working.

Every Wednesday there’s a DJ and the bar is often packed, says Athena de Moustier, a 20-something “creative” who steps forward to greet me as I enter the lobby. She is not a front-desk clerk, as there is no front desk; she has been hired for her people skills and creativity.

“We don’t have to follow a process when we speak to our guests,” she says. “They just want us to be ourselves.”

When one guest checked in with a skateboard under his arm, for example, de Moustier glided across the carpetless lobby floor, taking turns with him. “We bring life to the hotel,” she says, and guests seem to love it; feedback about the property on Trip Advisor “is all about the staff,” she says.

A tourism major in Paris when she saw Radisson’s help-wanted ad on Facebook, De Moustier entered a day-long tryout right out of “American Idol” to get the job. They asked her to bring two personal items, one showing a strength and one a weakness, so she brought a pheasant feather, as she thinks sometimes she is too sensitive, and a folder of her drawings, which she thinks shows her best strength, her creativity. She was among the 20 who made the cut from the 70 applicants.

The Brussels Hilton, meanwhile, has refurbished its kitchen, rebranded its restaurant as Brasserie La Place, and launched a new menu focused on more local offerings.

The group of journalists forges on to Antwerp, Europe’ second-largest port city, where Napoleon met his Waterloo. Both Brussels and Antwerp are filled this week with visitors to Tomorrowland, a giant—and growing—annual electric music festival. That likely adds to the focus on young travelers among new properties here. A new youth-oriented hotel, the Park Inn by Radisson, is in the works here as well.

Meanwhile, the Flanders Meeting and Convention Center has just opened a 2,000-seat conference venue rich in natural light and top-notch acoustics inside Antwerp’s historic zoo. The unique “room with a zoo” offers corporate dinners and events backlit by an aquarium, and after-dinner strolls among the animals in the dark.

And back in Brussels, we visit the reimagined BELvue Museum. It reopened this past weekend, featuring a new exhibition that takes a personal approach to Belgium’s culture and history, including not only artifacts but also videos of people off the street riffing on the themes of democracy, pluralism, migration, and solidarity. It seems particularly timely and interesting given the events of this spring and summer, here and across the European Union.

In a survey released yesterday by Allianz Insurance, 6% of Americans said they have canceled a trip due to terrorism, 5% said they changed their destination, 4% changed their travel dates, and 3% changed their accommodations.