Monday, October 8, 2018

LAS VEGAS CITY COUNCILWOMAN MICHELE FIORE (W6) NEWSLETTER 10/08/2018



The Last 2 Weeks Have Been a Whirlwind.

As your Councilwoman, a mom, a grandmother, and a businesswoman, the great things in life come with balance. To be able to do it all comes with a commitment to balance.  
Meet Jackson Oliver Willis, my newest grandson. He was born on October 4th at 4:20 PM and weighed 9 lbs. 3.2 oz! He's a BIG BOY! My daughter Savanah with her love Kyle, did an excellent job during labor and delivery, everyone is home and doing great!
TRAVELING ABROAD
I'm very grateful to be a member of the LVCVA Board, where I work with brilliant experts on "keeping heads in beds" in Las Vegas. We had 44 million tourists last year, and last week we traveled to Tokyo and Sanya to look at direct flights and great partnerships.
Traveling abroad can be a grueling schedule and I absolutely love it, and love representing Las Vegas. I flew on eight planes in seven days, landing in Tokyo at 2:30 pm on the 19th, getting to the hotel by 4:00 pm and entering our first meeting at 5:30 pm. It was really go-go-go. We met with top officials of three different airlines, our US Embassy representatives, The Brand USA Team and also had our own LVCVA Booth at the Tourist Expo at Toyko's Big Site Convention Center with many foreigners lined up around our booth to learn how to visit Las Vegas.  100% SUCCESS!
Mr. Hitomi Tagawa, Chairman of the Japan Association of Travel Agents (JATA), and the former CEO of JTB, the largest Tour Operator in Japan.
Remember Borat the movie in theatres years ago. While I know that it wasn't an accurate representation of the country, I was able to meet these awesome guys promoting Kazakhstan! I visited their booth and invited them to visit ours!  
THEY WERE GIANTS! Giants from Kazakhstan! 
This is them with Rafael Villanueva, Director of LVCVA.
This is them with Mynor Guerra of Maverick Helicopters, and them with me!
Rafael and I, sitting with the executives of United Airlines.
It was exciting to meet the people from The USA Brand. They have tourist agencies worldwide and create films and books about our country, our National Parks, etc. to promote tourism in America. We viewed the screening of America's Musical Journey, and it was fantastic. Of course our City of Las Vegas had a BIG Role in it!
When in Japan, do as the Japanese do! I ate a whole little crab and it tasted like a crunchy Frito. 
What I found to be most pleasant in Japan were the people of Japan. They were so polite and helpful. If someone saw that I looked confused while I was out and about, they would reach out and ask if they could help me find something - just super helpful.

Something else that I found extremely pleasant was the standard of the restrooms in Japan. In every restroom I went to, there were bidet-style toilets with heated seats and waterfall sounds. It was an entirely different public restroom experience.

Japan was different in so many other random ways. Notice the woman smoking in the background? People can still smoke at restaurants in Japan! It caught me off guard a little bit and reminded me of my childhood. And oddly enough it didn't bother me at all and I do not smoke cigarettes. 
  
On Monday and Tuesday, I went to Sanya, China. I met Mr. A Dong (to my left), Mayor of Sanya Municipal People's Government, and Mr. DAI Yuming (to my right), Vice Mayor of Sanya Municipal People's Government, along with Mr. Zhou Ming (to the left of the Mayor), Chief Director of Hainan Province Foreign Relations Bureau.

Sanya is like 
the Chinese Hawaii. It is a tropical paradise that has 737,000 residents, and 67 million tourists per year. Less than half of 1 percent of their tourists are from America. I didn't even know Sanya existed.  All of the people I was fortunate enough to meet were very kind and even though I'd never been there, the connection of familiarity and comfortability just felt as if I've known these folks for a long time. We just all hit it off fabulously. They love Las Vegas, they love our Mayor Carolyn Goodman & Mayor Oscar Goodman too!
There are 232 hotel chains in Sanya, and one of them is Atlantis in Haitang Bay. It has incredible aquariums and Undersea Suites! People in scuba gear were interacting with the beautiful sea creatures of the aquarium. 

Our team stayed at the MGM resort, had meetings, tours, more meetings, more tours and about 6 hours of sleep, and then got back on a plane. Still, even under time constraints, everywhere I turned in Sanya was beautiful and fascinating. I look forward to going back.
In Sanya, I toured the lovely, Haitang Bay Duty Free Shopping Center and this caught my eye. Gucci used a mature model and I feel that Kudos are in order. As a mature woman myself, I really appreciate this and think it's great to see fashion marketing to an array of ages in the fashion world. Many mature women enjoy shopping and being fashionable, and we tend to lack that kind of representation in public marketing. This was a simple, but a refreshing sight. 
VEGAS STRONGER
I went to the Healing Garden and Remembrance Wall on October 1st to acknowledge and pay my respects to the 58 people who lost their lives at a festival, a place they went to enjoy themselves. I remember calling my kids in the middle of the night last year wondering where they were, fearing for their safety, and being so relieved that they weren't there. I really can't imagine losing anyone that way, and I feel for these families and for all of the people whose lives that were taken way too soon. On the Wall of Remembrance, there were so many faces with stories behind them, so many different people that were lost and now remembered. We'll never forget October 1st. We were strong during, and now, we are even stronger. #VegasStronger
PASTA TIMES!
(We've had 3 pasta parties in the last 30 days)
It was a pleasure hosting US Congresswoman Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen, who represents American Somoa. She is also an RNC Committeewoman. It was a wonderful pasta night!
We had a pasta dinner with US Congressman Steve Scalise and Congressman Cresent Hardy!
Silverstone Pasta Party
Our City Team had lunch with our 2-Star Major General Bradley D. Spacy, at Creech Airforce Base. At lunch, we discussed developing a master plan community, to make sure that our Air Force and military men and women have enough housing out here in Ward 6, and also all the support businesses needed to help them serve Nevada and America.  We LOVE our military!
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