Integrating the Management participation for MICE Tourism & Events Industry in Sri Lanka-

The Hospitality Industry is one of the fastest growing and changing industries worldwide. And of its aspects, MICE tourism plays a prominent role in bringing forth internal and external customers to establishments. The terminology MICE stands for Meetings, Incentive Travels, Conferences, Exhibitions and Events.

Sri Lanka is a country which offers many aspects of tourism to the world and MICE tourism is one which is getting a considerable amount of attention in the present days. Although the lack of suitable infrastructure limits the country’s potential to grow as a MICE tourism hub, the development which is happening across the island with showing positive outcomes which will in turn aid in the growth in MICE tourism

As Sri Lanka offers a vast amount of entertainment, the MICE market has more opportunities of becoming a contributor to leisure tourism, increasing the benefits the country gets from having a healthy MICE tourism. MICE tourism is becoming one of the key contributing factors to the economy and Sri Lanka Tourism. The Sri Lanka Convention Bureau and other authorities are collaboratively working hard on following areas towards the development of MICE tourism in Sri Lanka.

1.     To identify new opportunities to expand MICE business

2.     To encourage the innovative and analytical thinking for developing unique and novel MICE related products and packages

3.     To provide knowledge on how to develop, market and operate in MICE and hospitality products and packages which go beyond the conventional boundaries and horizons

4.     To provide a useful and instrumental publications as a reference document and source of information for hospitality experts to promote MICE and Hospitality Development

Identify a Business Lead, Ascertaining Target Markets, Segments in Association Meetings, Corporate Meetings, Incentives Travel and exhibition

 MICE is a great deal as a whole and portrayed what is to be in Sri Lanka With over 70 MICE events held in 2015, Sri Lankan MICE industry is entering a new era. It also helpes to make the destination more aware of the opportunities in the workforce and that the industry is not limited just to hotels.

MICE tourism is not only limited to conferences in the modern context; social events such as weddings, musical shows are all part of the MICE industry. Although it is not as prominent as leisure tourism, MICE is one of the sub industries which attracts a multitude of tourists to the island. If marketing is done properly, Sri Lanka can surely benefit from MICE tourism, with businessmen travelling to the country with their families for a vacation after the conference is over. MICE leads to a high influx of tourists, higher occupancy and revenue for the hotels.

People do travel for the MICE industry. There are a lot of professionals who are involved in this and a higher yield can be expected from the MICE business. They travel out of their countries to reach various destinations and Sri Lanka is one of the ideal destinations for MICE because of the good weather and the country’s natural beauty.

 Regarding the future, Sri Lanka is moving towards a new era in tourism with the MICE market. With a target of 4 million in 2020 an immense growth is expected. This market is a key point. Looking at marketing in a subject level everyone knows the importance of a product; Country needs to develop the product and bring its level up. So there’s no surprise in the government considering an open sky policy; connectivity will be broadened and business can be fortified. Targeted businesses are given consideration to as people need to travel to the country.

Having more than 450 international airports throughout the world and all the countries looking for growth in that area MICE is becoming a very competitive market. Sri Lanka’s connectivity with the Middle East via air lines play a prominent role in getting the appropriate market to travel to the island for various events. As Sri Lanka is one of the top islands of South East Asia with safety, good weather, quality people, eye catching beaches, a vibrant culture, heritage, mountains and wildlife, getting MICE business is not a difficult area. As everybody is involved in promoting their product, encouraging people, giving benefits to their staff, motivating their people, companies change their normal destinations and countries like Sri Lanka benefit from this.

India is one of the top areas to look at because it has all the global ranks. All the people who are working are Indians and it’s much easier to get the Indian market as one flight from Bangalore to Colombo would be the same time frame as an internal flight. MICE market should target destinations where it’s easy to get people from. And apart from simply conferences and exhibitions, attention should be given also to holding Indian weddings in the country. Indian weddings are held for 4 or more days with 5000-6000 guests and an immense amount of money is spent. Millions of dollars are spent on one Indian wedding at the hotel. So the MICE market is not limited to conferences and exhibitions. People can be attracted to the country by having events featuring top entertainers. Events that will make people participate from other countries need to be given consideration to.

In this region, there’s a growth in the Asian market as people are traveling. Sri Lanka’s geographical location and associations with the Far East and Western countries have a major impact on the country getting business. Sri Lanka can provide safety for cruise ships. There are MICE events where they take a cruise and come to a MICE event in the country, have their conference and then get back to the cruise. This is the reason behind a cruise terminal being considered to be built in Colombo in the future because this is an important factor in tourism

Bidding for Events, Pre and Post bid Activities, Direct and indirect lobbying

MICE is a name given to a special segment which covers Meetings, Incentive travels, Conferences, Exhibitions and Events. All these mini segments coming within MICE call for different strategies. Although Sri Lanka Convention Bureau (SLCB) has been in existence for over 30 years, the country had to be happy with around 25,000-50,000 MICE arrivals every year until recent times due to the conflict of 32 years. But now everyone is talking about MICE and every year the numbers are increasing and the government is now concerned about having value tourism.

 As MICE encompass Meetings, Incentive travels, Conferences and Exhibitions it’s a very complex area where different kinds of events with various importance are being handled.

Bidding for an event is expressing your interest to have an event in your country or establishment. But there’s a legal requirement in bidding; after an expression of interest has been made by way of a bid, in writing with signature, it cannot be withdrawn. Thus the bid is a firm offer, against simply making an expression of interest. Sri Lanka Conventions Bureau is an institution that has handled the most number of bid documents in Sri Lanka. There are 3 examples that can be given from the recent past regarding bids that Sri Lanka has made. One is Sri Lanka’s bid for Commonwealth games which was lost to Glasgow. The Sri Lankan government incurred a cost very close to 1 billion rupees just for the bid document to submit the funding and we lost it.

MICE tourism also brings in the high end, up-market business to a country. They spend more time and there’s an 80% likely hood that the travelers can come back to the same destination for an event. Generally conference delegates arrive and after spending about 2-3 days realize the country’s beauty and that they should bring their families. Thus they almost always come back which is an advantage.Events are linked to creating investments where spinoff benefits can be created. As MICE also calls for additional support services more people are needed, thus creating more direct and indirect employment. It is easy for a country to promote MICE and then move into leisure. \

But Sri Lanka considered MICE as an extension of tourism even though it is a separate industry. Unfortunately Sri Lanka does not have a purpose built multi-purpose convention center. Even though the island nation has BMICH, Nelum Pokuna, Water’s Edge and so many other places, none of these are purpose built convention centers.

Although MICE is growing alongside tourism in Sri Lanka, the targets for MICE arrivals is not as ambitious as tourism figures and the reason for this is that infrastructure needs to be developed before holding any major MICE tourism campaigns. The difference between MICE and leisure is that the target audience for MICE tourism is the associations, corporations and institutions.

Right now the bidding process is being conducted by the SLCB and relevant institutions. When basing on the topic Events, there are many events. Entertainment events are some of the successful events that have been gained for Sri Lanka in the past.

When Sri Lanka is bidding for an event there are other competitors who are looking to have those events in their countries; the bidding process is such. Before Sri Lanka bids for an event the reason for having a particular event and its impact on the country’s tourism and economy is taken into consideration and researching is done to a high extent. After having identified events that should be bid for, the bidding process continues in 2 forms; either associations come to the SLCB and inform them that they need to hold a particular event in the country or events are found by the ICCA database. In the first approach the private organization informs the SLCB about their hopes of holding an event and the Bureau evaluates whether it can be held in Sri Lanka or not.

ICCA or International Conference and Congress Association has a database which shows all the events that are being held and that are to be held across the continents. The research officer at the SLCB office monitors all the conferences that are taking place and considers the ones that can be brought to Sri Lanka based on specific criteria. And then communication with the owner or the franchise holder of the event commences and interest to bid for the event is expressed. For any event, there are conditions to be fulfilled; specifications that the host country or the host organization has to follow.

A lot of information needs to be found out in the course of the preparation of the bid document: the history of that event and where it was held, how it was held, the program, pros, cons, advantages and disadvantages. The competition must always be analyzed.

At the point of the presentation of the bid, the committee needs to be impressed by the enthusiasm portrayed by the potential host country. This is a moment to showcase the theme of the whole event.Then the submission of bid document is always followed by inspections. Sometimes the bid will be rejected if the preparations do not reflect the capability of delivering what was promised in the bid document.

Second Aspect is there’s a bidding process which is a tendering process. In the bidding process, country is supposed to compete, understand and there’s a lot of work you have to do in the research area to understand what kind of client is dealing with and what kind of conditions that needs to fulfill when you’re submitting a bid.

Sri Lanka, despite of difficulties and infrastructure needs continues to do well in the MICE sector and that is what brings the high end, up-market visitors to this country. And that is what Sri Lanka needs.

Planning, Organizing and Implementation of MICE and Events and Monitoring Performance

The MICE is a sub industry of the immerging travel and tourism industry. The career development in this area yields a high rate now with universities and colleges introducing MICE related diplomas and degrees.

But in order to survive, one has to be creative as this is expected from employees in the MICE industry. People always want a different experience. If you can’t create something new, you won’t be able to survive. But if you can then clients will be ready to pay anything that they are asked to.

You also have to be very fast when responding to hold foreign events in the country as there are other countries which are competing with you for the same event. You will also have to compete with local competitors as well; speed is very important.

Travel purposes may be for leisure, business, medical reasons and sports activities. When it comes to the MICE industry traveling is done for events, meetings, conferences, incentives and exhibitions; which is why the industry is called ‘MICE industry’. Leisure tourism and Incentive travel should not be mixed. Although some people think that MICE is a part of leisure tourism, there’s a big difference between the two.

The Sri Lanka Association of Professional Conference Exhibition and Event Organizers (SLPCEEO) is the private sector or the industry body for meetings, conference and exhibition organizers. There’s talk about new convention centers and infrastructure development. Types of MICE it was traditionally referred to as Meetings, Conferences, Incentives and Exhibitions. But now the modern MICE stands for Meetings, Conferences, Convention, Congress, Incentives, Exhibitions and Events. Events, under MICE, are now a big market. Take for example weddings; mainly foreign weddings like Indian weddings which bring in a lot of revenue as they come with a group of people with accommodation needed up to 200 rooms sometimes. Wedding planners are recognized as a MICE industry stakeholder. When taking into consideration Sri Lankan MICE industry stakeholders, a company might do all 4 activities or most of the activities. For example, the SLPCEEO handles meetings, conferences, exhibitions and incentives but doesn’t handle weddings or other musical type of events. When taking a foreign perspective, there are companies that handle only meetings which are called Corporate Meeting Planners and they don’t handle conferences. Similarly conference handlers are called Professional Conference Organizers or PCO. People who handle incentives are Incentive Houses and exhibition organizers are called PEO and wedding planners and other event organizers as event management companies. That’s the organizing point of view.

In the suppliers’ point of view, MICE stakeholders involve conference centers like BMICH, exhibition centers like SLECC, Hotels and Cruise ships. Unfortunately we don’t have cruise ships in Sri Lanka but foreign organizers have events and conferences in cruise ships. The usage of the Meetings and Convention departments of hotels is now a growing trend. It has become a threat to official companies like SLPCEEO because these hotels have started having their own conference departments and they will handle everything for the client.

When focusing on Planning, Organizing and Implementation of Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, Exhibitions and Events, when you’re planning for an event, you have to first identify the objective. There are different objectives which will differ from one event and client to the other. Then you have to always be creative, when you take on incentives or conferences. Today Sri Lanka doesn’t have a purpose built exhibition or convention center with all the facilities. The biggest convention center is the Temple Tree convention center which has 4000-5000 theatre sized seating. If you get a booking for an event of 500, class room style you have to be creative. If the facilities are unavailable or it’s impossible to create something, put a marquee up or come up with creative suggestions.

Response time is also very important. For example European event proposals will need to be submitted in about 10 days, Far Eastern in about 3-4 days and mere hours before the deadline from neighboring countries. Balance between customers is important. Flexibility is of importance as well: client might ask for a thousand things so you have to be flexible. We have to always be flexible and try to understand the customers’ needs and service accordingly. There should always be good leadership with a person within the team to lead the project and be responsible. Knowledge in finance is a key necessity, because some clients will give the budget whereas some will not and an understanding of the destination point of view and the local competition is needed to do the financing.

Macro & Micro Environmental factors on MICE, Government Policies and Level of Integration of MICE into other Economic Development

The perspective of MICE tourism delivered herewith will be different from the rest as it’ll be more on out bound tourism, outgoing business and on being customers or participants for event held locally or abroad. The macro aspects and the environmental aspects that are having an impact on MICE tourism will be discussed.

association for Professional Event handlers. These 2 associations state that in the last few years, MICE has taken a different perspective with many changes happening in the meetings, incentives, conferences and event industry. Because of the changes of technology, people’s perspectives and many other aspects like global recession, economic turmoil and economic power houses are being differed from the European and US front to Asia.

The MICE industry is now facing a hyper competition. It has always been a competitive industry as we have to equally work with almost all the parts of the globe in some cases. The most important city when it comes to MICE is Paris, taking in the largest number of events because they create their own events and they market their culture, heritage and their culinary aspects and have a well established work plan. Competing with a country as such is really difficult for the other parts of the world which is why these destinations are not changing their competitive stage. Cities like Paris, Barcelona, Madrid are all top meeting destinations in the world historically and are not being changed.

From the economic point of view, most of the traditional MICE customers and providers; the corporate houses; have been facing economic restrictions since 2009 and are recovering. But the power houses are being changed. Most of the present day billionaires, pharmaceutical and IT industries are shifting to Asia, either to China or India. India’s richest man is a pharmaceutical giant: SunPharma owned by Shanghvi. These people are part of a different corporate set up. But most of the traditional MICE destinations are not able to cater them because there’s no understanding of the perspectives and the culture and other aspects the new and immerging markets are searching for.

This economic cycle is a very important role in the global MICE market. The other important factor is the culture. When thinking about the cultural aspect, the traditional MICE destinations like Paris, Madrid and Venice rely on their culture. They put more weight on the culture; their arts and ancient traditions etc. But at the same time there are certain destinations that developed in the recent times having an artificial environment that attracts most number of people. The most important MICE destination in Asia which is Singapore doesn’t have a culture older than 100 years. Singapore has become a hub for new culture and new generation. People are being attracted to the country and every year something new is being added to the destination. The same scenario applies to Dubai which was previously a colony of Pirates. But currently Dubai is one of the most attractive nations for MICE tourism in the Middle East. So either it is created values or traditional.

Sri Lanka has a traditional culture on which much weight can be given to. But similarly, many other Asian countries have traditional cultures. Countries like Indonesia, Thailand and India all have their own particular cultures. What we do is adding value to the culture with new aspects; new convention centers probably with a particular web 3.0 generation of technology and various other technical aspects. As such culture still plays a major role in MICE tourism.

The Tourism and Hospitality industry has faced a lot of diversification due to globalization. The trained workforce travels around the world wanting to work in different countries, wanting to gain experience and thus diversity starts. Mostly all aspects of race and gender are balanced to form the composition of the staff in order to make sure the right proportions and percentages are created. By recognizing this it is possible to deliver the expected services to the guests and merge the gap between MICE tourism and a multicultural society. A multicultural workforce will be an asset when handling MICE events which cater to a multitude of people from different nations and cultures