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The Refinishing Touch

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Trade show roundup: The Refinishing Touch attends three conferences during October

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The Refinishing Touch team has remained busy throughout the month of October – not only have we been preparing the third quarter edition of our digital newsletter, InTouch, but we’ve also been attending various tradeshows all across the nation.

The month kicked off with the 10th annual ACUHO-I / APPA Housing Facilities Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico on October 2nd through the 6th. The trade show was held at the Hyatt Regency and Convention Center (a brand we’ve worked with before), with more than 250 attendees from colleges and universities joining together to discuss sustainability.

The Refinishing Touch spent most of the event networking with key decision makers and speakers, along with learning about the future of housing in the higher education sector. Several attendees expressed an interest in refinishing, one of our specialties, and it’s easy to understand why – our furniture asset management services can save up to 90 percent of a project’s estimated carbon emission output and 80 percent of a company’s budget when compared to buying new.The Refinishing Touch tradeshow events

Our next stop brought us to booming Las Vegas, where we attended the Best Western International Conference & Trade Show on October 10th. Over 2,000 owners, general managers and property management companies gathered at the conference, giving us great insight into the current and future direction of the hospitality industry. While there, The Refinishing Touch connected with potential prospects and attended a Supplier Training Course, where we learned how to navigate through Best Western’s supplier site and effectively use the brand’s templates. To top it all off, the event raffled off 65 Apple iPads and several other great prizes.

If that weren’t enough, next we headed out to BITAC West at the Hyatt Regency Resort and Spa in Indian Wells, California. While there, our team held 22 face-to-face meetings throughout two full days. Over the years, we’ve found one of the most rewarding aspects of tradeshows is being able to convey the benefits of our sustainable furniture asset management services to past, current and potential customers, alike. During the second day of the three-day event, The Refinishing Touch president and founder, Mario Insenga, gave an informative speech during lunch hour. Our favorite line was, “Remember: the last three letters in trend are ‘e-n-d’”. This couldn’t be more true of the hospitality industry, which has seen its fair share of trends come and go, especially through the recession and recovery.

Were you at any of these trade shows during the month? We’d love to hear your thoughts and takeaways! Send us an email at [email protected].

For future event listings, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter by visiting: https://www.therefinishingtouch.com/news.php. The next edition is coming soon!

TRT visits Charlotte, NC to take part in housing and facilities discussions at 8th annual ACUHO-I event

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It’s event season and here at The Refinishing Touch it’s full steam ahead as we hit the road, meet prospects, wow clients, and mingle with associates.  There’s a whole range of events (hint: to see out all the events we’re attending and have planned, check out our website) and we’re showing our whole range of services: from furniture re-engineering and refurbishment, to hardware replacement and reupholstery.  As our customers and our business is across hospitality, government and eduction, there’s a variety of events we attend.

Last week was one of our education events, as we showcased at the 8th Annual ACUHO-I/APPA Housing Facilities Conference in Charlotte, NC.  The conference, this year subtitled ‘Keeping on Track: Providing the Foundation for Quality Student Housing: Foster Leadership, Address Challenges, and Explore Trends in College and University Housing’, is a key gathering for Housing Facilities professionals to assess the challenges and the solutions open to them.

The Refinishing Touch shared the platform with other vendors and key members of housing departments from universities such as Wake Forest, East Carolina University and the University of Notre Dame to talk about housing facilities and to demonstrate and learn about how colleges and universities can improve sustainability and usability at their campuses.   It’s a topic close to our hearts – and an area we’ve worked extensively in, having completed refinishing and refurbishing projects with more than 100 colleges and universities across the USA in the last 30 years.

Consider the college campus: students come and go, just passing custodians in a place they want to feel safe and call home for the standard four years. While many  colleges and institutions market the history of their location, buildings and architecture, the pressure to maintain high standards in aging facilities is a tricky one.  Every college bursar and facility team we speak to has one key concern – how to maintain the quality and standards of their school and its facilities, to maintain the high standards that help them attract students, scholars- and also great staff – and to do so within their budgets.

Following the opportunity to show our services and examples of completed projects on  Wednesday, the remainder of the week was an opportunity for registered guests to attend seminars, learn and share ideas around dozens of topics – from general facilities management and master planning for housing, to the LED University program that is helping colleges and universities around the world begin deploying LED lighting to significantly reduce their energy use.  Fanning out from the central theme of housing facilities, discussions were based on sustainability, maintenance and operations, custodial, construction and technology.

Education is going through an interesting phase – the economic downturn, the strain of meeting new environmental opportunities – and demonstrating this to new green-aware students and prospects.  These challenges mean that now, more than ever, is the time for facilities professionals in the eduction sector to seize the opportunity to innovate, and for the industry to debate, discuss and share their ideas.

Under the program committee, chaired by University of Florida’s Tanya Hughes-Joiner and North Carolina State University’s chair-elect, Barry Olsen, this conference certainly did that, fostering a sense of innovation, networking and leadership – and showing that the eduction sector really can teach other sectors, while keeping open to learning about new ways to improve themselves.