What was the nicest thing that an employer has done for you? Given you that raise that you’ve wanted? Allowed you to take an extra few days off for vacation? What about take you on a French vacation for free? Well that’s exactly what Li Jinyuan, CEO of the Tiens Group, did for his employees…and he took 6,400 of them.
We’ve never really seen anything quite like this before, but it’s arguably one of the coolest things that any boss could have done. Li Junyuan took over half of his employees to Paris and Cote d’Azur for four days to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their company. Mr. Jinyuan booked over 140 hotels in Paris, 4,760 rooms in Cannes and Manoaco (all of which are 4- and 5-star hotels), 146 tour busses, and spent millions of dollars on the whole trip. It wasn’t too much for him, considering he is a multi-billionaire.
This was the largest tour group that France has ever received, and the trip started with meeting up in Paris. The group got a private tour of the Louvre, ate at various restaurants, saw the local sights, and had the opportunity to shop at the luxury boutiques. After two days in Paris, the massive group headed to the resorts of Nice where they had the opportunity to spend the remainder of the trip in the beautiful regions of southern France. There they also set the Guinness World Record for the largest human chain that made a sentence, spelling out “Tiens’ dream is nice in the Cote d’Azur” which was visible from the air. Sounds pretty great considering the employees paid absolutely nothing, outside of personal shopping/expenditures that is.
Economists estimate that the economy of France will see an addition of $15 to $20 million dollars from just the vacation alone, as they are still calculating all the expenses that were made. The Chinese are also known as the worlds largest spenders when they go on vacation, so the trip was good news for the French economy.
All-in-all it was a great little vacation for the 6,400 employees of the Tiens Group, and I’m sure they had a good time. I mean, it’s not often that you get to vacation in France for practically free. It was also very impressive that Li Jinyuan paid for the whole thing, and it seems like he would be a great boss.
Photo from AFP/Getty Images
