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Last minute cancellation gifts Melbourne homeless lunch at the Intercontinental

Tomorrow at lunchtime a hundred homeless and disadvantaged people will be heading to the swish Intercontinental Melbourne Rialto for a free lunch.

Tomorrow at lunchtime a hundred homeless and disadvantaged people will be heading to the swish Intercontinental Melbourne Rialto for a free lunch.

According to Nine News Melbourne, it’s all thanks to Consulting and Training company, The Langley Group who were forced to cancel a breakfast event and then found out it was too late to get a refund from the five-star hotel.

“If they weren’t going to go ahead with their event, they decided to donate it to a charity instead,” Langley’s Mahta Manzouri told nine.com.au.

“These are people that would normally never have the opportunity to come into a place like this. They are going to have a full five-star dining experience,” Manzouri said.

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“The hotel’s been fantastic in working with me on this idea.”

Among the group of diners are homeless youths and asylum seekers.

But getting a hundred disadvantaged people to a free lunch with less than a week’s preparation is not an easy task, Manzouri said.

Manzouri had to call more than a few charities, but few were able to organise that many diners in such little time. But Melbourne City Mission, St Mary’s House of Welcome and Brigidine Asylum Seekers Project were all able to hurriedly gather people together.

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Pic: House of Welcome, Melbourne

House of Welcome’s Lee-Ann Boyle said 30 of their regulars would be heading from Fitzroy for lunch at the Intercontinental.

“We’ll be packing out a tram and hopefully having an awesome day,” she told nine.com.au.

Boyle said the 30 people coming from the House of Welcome are the “kind of people who have fallen out of the system”.

“The common thread between all our clients is social isolation and mental health,” she said.

“Some of them are homeless, some of them are suffering with other issues that make them extremely socially isolated. So to be part of an event like this extremely special.”

Several of the younger attendees at the lunch are looking to restart their lives with careers in hospitality, so the Intercon is taking them for a tour of the hotel after lunch.

The Intercontinental Melbourne Rialto will also play home this weekend to the Australian National Travel Counsellors annual Conference with agents and suppliers from all over the country flying in as well as key leaders from Manchester in the U.K where the companies headquarters are located.

Travel Counsellors

Travel Counsellors Global CEO, Steve Byrne who will attend the TC conference

As the mantra for Travel Counsellors, ‘Caring for people’ will continue to be central to the groups conference theme and message with the event running from Friday evening until Sunday afternoon including sessions at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and evening functions at the Intercontinental Rialto Hotel.

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