Winter is approaching and the urge to live the first “real” Christmas in a while without any restrictions is growing. Hotels are at the forefront in offering their guests a series of thematic initiatives for the coming festivities. We asked Fiorenza Peyrot, deputy manager at the Bristol Palace in Genoa, to help us understand how to organise a perfect Christmas with family, friends and colleagues.

Let’s start with families: Christmas is, by tradition, a holiday in which relatives gather round sumptuously laid tables. What are the advantages of spending Christmas in the hotel, and do you make it memorable?

Holding a Christmas party at home involves a lot of work: it means getting the dining room ready, putting up the decorations, coming up with a menu that makes everyone happy, shopping for seasonal delicacies and other food, and cooking for hours. A hotel offers an interesting alternative. If you leave all the chores to the professionals, you can devote yourself to other things: greetings, chatter and all the other pleasant intimacies of a family get-together. You relax in a context which, among decorations, lights and special recipes, plays up all the magic of Christmas. This is also a perfect way for meeting up and spending more time with relatives who live far away. Plus, you can treat yourself to a brief holiday in the city, too.

More and more people like to celebrate Christmas with friends and colleagues. It’s a formula based on the desire to meet and exchange presents before returning to their cities of origin for the holidays. What do you suggest?

Small groups might like to organise a Christmas dinner in the art-nouveau dining room of the Ristorante Giotto, with frescoes on its walls and ceiling. In this setting it is possible to enjoy the dishes on the à la carte menu, maybe giving preference to the traditional ones. Besides Christmas, guests also enjoy New Year’s Eve, by definition an event for socialising: every year we have live music and a special lavish dinner. We organise a party that goes on through the evening and accompanies guests into the New Year with performances by artistes and musicians and, at the table, original recipes. This year Genoa will be in the spotlight more than ever, since a stone’s throw away from the Bristol, in Piazza De Ferrari, Mediaset will be broadcasting their New Year’s Eve party live. It will be a chance for everyone to feel part, all together, of a special moment.

How would you organize and decorate an office Christmas party? How would it differ from a family party?

The office party is much loved by businesses as a way of creating a link between clients, colleagues and employees, of fostering customer loyalty and improving team spirit. This is why it is important to book well in advance, especially if you are expecting a lot of people to attend. We offer a selection of bespoke menus, the Silver, the Platinum and Gold. They offer an immersion in Ligurian gastronomy and are paired with specially selected DOC wines. Habits have changed recently, and nowadays clients often prefer a sit-down dinner to a buffet. Having said that, they still love pre-prandial stand-up aperitifs, which are stylish and particularly suited to a place like the Bristol.

What must never ever be lacking?

Attention to detail. A thematic centrepiece, the setting, Christmas decorations … better still if the evening has a guiding thread, or even a special theme, as in weddings. It’s fun and it creates atmosphere. If we add to this first-rate food, select wines – and in Italy we set off with a head start in this regard! – and a historical location such as ours, then the party is bound to work perfectly.