Case study · Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola · Latin America leadership summit in Cartagena, Colombia
Muisca™ Travel & Events produced the Coca-Cola Latin America leadership summit in Cartagena for 330+ executives from three continents, with plenaries at the convention centre, a welcome dinner in a 16th-century house and a gala of awards in a restored 19th-century bullring.
330+ leaders of the Coca-Cola system, three days of work and two nights inside Cartagena’s history, under one idea: Going For Gold.
One of 120+ programmes Muisca Travel & Events has designed and produced in Colombia.
| Client | Coca-Cola |
|---|---|
| Program type | Corporate Summit |
| City | Cartagena |
| Dates | April 27–30, 2025 |
| Group size | 330+ executives |
| Duration | 4 days |
| Muisca role | Corporate Events & Meetings; Production & On-Site Delivery; Legacy & Community Integration |
The Brief
The brief
Once a year the leadership of the Coca-Cola system in Latin America and the Caribbean meets in one place to align on the year ahead and to recognise the best of the year just closed. For 2025 the company chose Cartagena, and asked for a summit that could hold serious plenary volume, five breakout rooms running at once and two nights of recognition without losing warmth, pace or a sense of place. The audience was the most demanding a destination can receive: 330+ executives from more than thirty markets on three continents, arriving on dozens of flights over a single day, staying in eight hotels of the walled city and expecting the same standard in every one of them. The brief demanded more than a conference shell. It had to make Colombia a credible host to a regional leadership, and it had to make the recognition feel earned.
The Creative Concept
The idea
The summit carried one idea, Going For Gold: gold as the standard of the system’s excellence, from the welcome signage to the trophies of the closing gala. Muisca gave the idea a place to be literal. Cartagena is the walled city Spain fortified to guard the gold of the New World, so the programme was built so that each moment sat in a venue with its own history: the business at the convention centre, the welcome inside Casa 1537, a house founded four years after the city itself, and the awards in La Serrezuela, a 19th-century bullring restored under a glass dome. The design principle was simple. Let each environment do one specific job, and let the city carry the emotion.
The experience
The programme
Four days in which 330 leaders lived Cartagena from the inside. Welcomed in their own language and housed in eight hotels of the walled city run as one, they worked through three days of plenaries and simultaneous sessions, lunched at tables dressed with recycled Coca-Cola glass and Colombian flowers, dined behind the wooden doors of a house founded in 1537 with drummers and coconuts at the gate, and closed in the arena of a restored 19th-century bullring, where the system’s Excellence Cup was presented in gold in the city that was built to guard it.
The film
The Results
The proof
The summit did what it was convened to do: the leadership of the Coca-Cola system in Latin America and the Caribbean left Cartagena aligned on the year and having recognised its best, and the client said so directly afterwards. For Muisca it is the clearest proof that a convention of this scale can be run in Colombia without flattening the destination: every transfer on time, no incidents across eight days on the ground, and two heritage venues turned into the stage of a regional leadership’s most important nights.
The numbers behind the programme
- 330+ executives from more than 30 markets on three continents
- Eight hotels of the walled city run as one, with a hospitality desk in each
- 70+ commercial flights coordinated across arrivals and departures, from ten airports in eight countries
- 1,000+ room nights over the programme
- 30+ vehicles rotating, every transfer on time
- 50+ dietary requirements managed individually, without a single incident
- 350 chairs made to order for the plenary room
- Seven months of planning and four inspection visits before the first guest landed
- Nine of every ten dollars of the production stayed with Colombian suppliers, more than a hundred of them
The community layer
Nine of every ten dollars spent producing the summit stayed in Colombia, across more than a hundred Cartagena suppliers, from companies to individual artists, musicians, technicians and interpreters paid directly, several of them small businesses led by women. Not one single-use plastic bottle was used across the programme: water came in glass, the welcome coconuts came with biodegradable straws, and the team recycled more than 150 glass bottles by hand into the décor. What remained at the close was kept in use rather than thrown away, and the guests took home Colombian chocolate marked with the brand.
Capabilities
What this programme demonstrates
What a buyer can take from this case.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Questions about this programme
Yes. For Coca-Cola, Muisca ran eight hotels in Cartagena’s walled city as one property, each with its own hospitality desk, and moved the whole group between the hotels, the convention centre and two evening venues on time throughout. Scale is a matter of design and lead time, not of the destination.
This one took seven months from the first request to the first arrival, with four inspection visits in between, including one where the tables, glassware and décor of the social nights were set up for real. Six to eight months is the honest window for a leadership summit of this size.
They have to. Here, three days of plenaries and simultaneous breakouts sat between a welcome dinner in a 16th-century house and an awards gala in a restored bullring. The venues did the emotional work, so the sessions could stay entirely about the business.
Yes. Muisca often works as the destination producer for an agency that holds the client relationship, and keeps the same standard in both directions: one senior team accountable to the agency, and a programme the end client experiences as seamless.