With ASEAN Tourism Forum taking place on home ground this year, the Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau (TCEB) has taken the opportunity to elevate its yearly effort to connect South-east Asia’s business events stakeholders by launching the ASEAN MICE Conference.
The one-day event took place yesterday at Shangri-La Hotel, Chiang Mai, and featured prominent speakers from across Thailand and beyond who shared intelligence, ideas, perspectives and projections of business events development across the South-east Asia region.
Speakers included notable individuals such as Paul Vallee, managing director of BestCities Global Alliance; Pairach Piboonrungroj, director of MICE Excellence Centre, Faculty of Economics, Chiang Mai University; Amelia Roziman, chief operating officer of Sarawak Convention Bureau; and Yungho Park, executive director of Gyeongju Convention & Visitors Bureau.
Supawan Teerarat, senior vice president, strategic business development & innovation with TCEB, said the programme content was carefully curated to offer attendees “valuable learning opportunities and a global perspective” on how their country and the region in general can grow as a destination for business events.
Prior to the debut of ASEAN MICE Conference, TCEB organised an annual networking event in Thailand that brought together NTO officers and business events stakeholders from across the region.
“We’ve been doing that since 2014, but it is a small gathering. When Thailand started planning for ATF 2018, TCEB approached the Ministry of Tourism and Sports though minister Kobkarn (Wattanavrangkul, the former minister) and asked if we could do more for the business events community. The conference was hence born,” explained Supawan.
She added that it was imperative to facilitate deeper conversations among ASEAN members on the development of the region’s business events capability because “there are countries that are not as active as others in attracting business events (and they can benefit from knowledge and best practices shared by) the forerunners, the strong and leading destinations”.
The programme also brought in CVB heads of successful second- and third-tier cities in Asia for this purpose of learning from the best.
“We want to convey the critical message that it is not only the capital cities that can welcome business events. Second- and third-tier cities can too, as long as the infrastructure and community are ready,” she said.
When asked by TTGmice if the conference would be hosted at future editions of ATF, Supawan said: “We have not started that discussion, and on whether TCEB would support (future editions). But we certainly hope something will happen and that the conference will be continued, at least in cities that are strong in business events.”
