It isn’t easy to manage the flow of 30,000 people and to feed them, but the venue operator sails through with strong partnership and creativity
Event brief
The Singapore FinTech Festival is the world’s largest gathering of the global financial technology community. It is an event that offers cutting-edge content and high industry impact in terms of collaboration, networking, innovation and talent building in the financial technology space.
The 2017 second edition of this week-long festival attracted some 30,000 participants from more than 100 countries. Festival participants engaged in a series of interwoven events comprising the Global FinTech Hackcelerator, the Innovation Lab Crawl, the FinTech Awards and the Investor Summit.
A three-day conference was held concurrently and focused on nine themes including global market insights, data analytics, technology risk, sustainable fintech and regtech or regulatory technology, among others.
Challenges
Adrian Sng, general manager of SingEx Exhibitions, highlighted two main challenges.
He said: “With the festival attracting such a large number of delegates, catering for delegates’ meals at designated gaps within the conference programme was a challenge. Transport to and from the venue also proved to be challenging, with multiple precinct bodies involved in the coordination of traffic flow for an event of such scale.”
Solutions
The venue operator worked on managing the entire precinct from the start of the event planning process to better manage traffic flow and access to different car parks in the vicinity. Close collaboration with the traffic police, Land Transport Authority as well as transport operators proved crucial for a better site access experience for participants.
As for the catering challenge, Sng commented: “We turned the challenge into a unique experience for all delegates instead by offering all-day dining options involving multiple cuisines. This helped to ease the congestion during key meal times as well as to provide better delegate flow among the exhibits throughout the day.”
Sng added: “Focusing on innovation in event design, the festival weaved a Singapore experience throughout the event platform. From serving a fusion of local food favourites, to being surrounded by locally inspired architecture in our dining and discussion areas, to offering locally designed merchandise, participants had access to not only valuable community insights and networks, but also a glimpse of Singapore as a destination.”
Key takeaways
Staunch support and the strong relationship between the Monetary Authority of Singapore, The Association of Banks in Singapore and SingEx Holdings were instrumental in ensuring the success of the festival, an event spokesperson said.
By organising the event from a user’s standpoint by mapping individual journeys and touch-points from pre-event, onsite, to post-event contributed to the success factors for the event. By enhancing the overall experience of a visitor will potentially translate into prospects for return on participation.
The festival’s unique event design approach enabled participants to immerse in the Singapore experience, and the locally-inspired architecture, showcases and F&B were key highlights that worked well.
The venue’s director of sales, Janice Yee, observed: “Being able to offer a full suite of services and multiple platforms enabled the venue operator to address the customer’s immediate needs. But it did not stop there and also looked ahead to pre-empt, and prepare for, future needs to retain the client.”
The Singapore FinTech Festival 2017 won three awards at this year’s Singapore Tourism Awards organised by the Singapore Tourism Board for Best Business Event, Best Trade Conference Organiser and Best Business Event Service Provider for Jublia, a home-grown event technology start-up.
Event: Singapore FinTech Festival 2017
Organiser: Monetary Authority of Singapore, The Association of Banks in Singapore and SingEx Holdings
Venue: Singapore EXPO and MAX Atria
Date: November 13 to 17, 2017
Number of participants: 30,000 from more than 115 countries
