Forget the Italian Job, the Germans are coming to town

“I told you. I wake up every day, right here, right in Punxsutawney, and it’s always February 2nd, and there’s nothing I can do about it.” The line is from Groundhog Day, in which Phil Connors, played famously by Bill Murray, coldly resigns himself to the fate of waking up every single morning and facing the same day on a never-ending loop.

My thoughts turn to the iconic 90s movie after speaking with Elaine Hamilton, the Managing Director of destination management company Hello Scotland. Elaine is just preparing to do the billing after a rather exhausting two-and-a-half-week rolling product launch for German car manufacturer Opel, which chose Festival Square in Edinburgh as the location for unveiling its new Mokka X sports utility vehicle in September. And the schedule, repeated in exactly the same manner every day, sounded pretty relentless: with an average head count of 60 people flying into Edinburgh each day (650 in total for the duration), comprising mostly motoring journalists from all across Europe, not to mention the legion of car cleaners, mechanics and production staff, Hamilton had her work cut out.

“We had to have the same the lunch venue, coffee stop and dinner venue each night,” says Hamilton, who is clearly demob happy after successfully stewarding an event which involved bringing a fleet of cars each day onto Festival Square in Edinburgh, entailing endless negotiations with the city council, outdoor advertising giant JC Decaux, which manages the space, not to mention local taxi drivers, whose rank the cars would be cutting across.

“I’ve been doing this for 15 years with Hello Scotland and this was a complete learning curve,” she adds. “It was a lot more than your normal incentive because you’re dealing with drivers’ insurance public liability insurance, which had to be increased for Festival Square, and we had to walk the square to check how many cracked tiles there were and report the damage.”

“And that’s not including all the risk assessments and making sure there were 40 spaces cordoned off at the car park at Edinburgh Airport every day (note: there was one ‘rogue’ car which spoiled the symmetry, but no one seemed to mind). It was challenging but seeing it all come together made it all worthwhile.”

Each day itself was long. The cream of Europe’s motoring media would arrive at Edinburgh airport early in the morning, pick up the keys to the vehicles they would be test driving and then head up to Dalmeny House for a ‘briefing’ from Martin Golka, Opel’s Manager of International Product Communications. Golka, who like most Germans I’ve met, speaks word perfect English, even describes the event as “spot on”.

After a hot lunch at the stately home, which overlooks the Firth of Forth and is regularly hired out for events by Lord and Lady Roseberry (the latter who would often pop in to join the groups with her dog Suki), the groups then took the cars across the road bridge to Fife, through to Knockhill, the Crook of Devon, Comrie, Loch Earn and then for a coffee stop at Mhor 84, on the A84 at Balquhidder.

The route – which had been meticulously planned by Hello Scotland’s founder Bill Thomson – had even been configured as anti-clockwise so that the Europeans – unfamiliar with driving on the ‘wrong side’ – headed into, as opposed to cross traffic.

“That was part of the event planning,” says Golka, with an air of satisfaction of a details man. “We did the scouting trip with Bill – which was one or two days in the car. He understood the brief very well, choosing the location and the test routes. And he proposed the idea of a soft off-road track, which worked very well.” After coffee and cake at Mhor 84, the journalists then returned to Edinburgh where they would disembark their vehicles on Festival Square and enter the Sheraton Hotel. The cleaners and mechanics would swing into action – taking the vehicles off to be cleaned for the next day – whilst inside the hotel staff offered the journalists their very own take on the occasion with a distinctive Mokka cocktail, comprising gin and Irn Bru no less, before a final press conference took place, with the vehicle itself in situ and surrounded by a back wall evoking the Scottish landscape the drivers had just enjoyed.

“We took a bit of the Highlands feeling into the hotel,” adds Golka. “We picked Scotland [over Krakow in Poland] because it’s a rugged country and it combines this dramatic, scenic landscape with the bustling city of Edinburgh, which is also the two faces of the Mokka.”

Suitably ‘refreshed’ guests would then make their way to the Cannonball restaurant on the Royal Mile (catering at lunch and dinner was provided by Continis), where the experience would come to a close.

“It all ran very smoothly, actually. I was very pleased with the outcome,” adds Golka. “The hotel really lived up to our expectations, in terms of the standards that we expect for our guests. They needed to cater for 70 rooms per night, the 60 guests, plus some internals, so the amount of rooms is one criteria and the location was also really important. We could not be more central than that. We were able to drop the cars off and pick them up the next morning. We also got a lot of visibility for the car on Festival Square, and had the garage facilities to cater for the vehicles.”

So were there any highlights?

“Dalmeny House,” he adds, without hesitation. “That was the jewel of the event to be honest. At the beginning you knew it was historic, it almost smelt like a museum, the more you think about it, the building and the estate was fantastic for the TV groups because they had tracks without any traffic and no disturbance so they could do their footage right away. Dalmeny House was just outstanding; you can’t get more Scottish than Dalmeny House.”