The Seoul Tourism Organization (STO) celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Seoul MICE Alliance (SMA), as part of a full-day hybrid business event themed Sustainable Transformation ON, Seoul.
Held at the Fairmont Ambassador Seoul grand ballroom on November 18, 2021, the hybrid event was livestreamed, and featured sessions named MICE and Climate Change Response, Engagement With Local Communities, and Digital Transformation.
During the event, Yoo Yeon-chul, former Ambassador for Climate Change at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, spoke about the successful hosting of P4G 2021, Korea’s first environmental summit. He added that environmental, social and corporate governance, as well as sustainability, will “play an important role in attracting future international events”.
Other speakers included Kim Tae-young, who shared domestic and foreign examples to demonstrate how the meaning of space could be reinterpreted and how those reinterpretations could energise urban regeneration; as well as Hwang Jun-won, CEO of Future Channel MyF, who explored emerging business domains in the increasingly diverse online business events industry.
In another session, seven members of Korea’s Plus Cities – a growth programme for the business events industry and local governments that the Seoul Metropolitan Government has been promoting since 2019 – came together to conduct joint marketing activities related to business events, as well as share best practices. The seven members are Seoul, Gangwon-do, Gwangju, Gyeonggi-do, Gyeongsangnam-do, Jeollabuk-do, and Chungcheongbuk-do.
The hybrid event rounded off with the annual meeting of the Seoul MICE Alliance, which celebrated its 10th anniversary. Attended by 300 SMA members, industry officials, and students both onsite and virtually, plans for 2022 were unveiled, and four new division leaders were introduced.
CEO of Exporum, Shin Hyun-dae, will head up SMA’s exhibition division in 2022. He stressed that SMA will work closely with STO and overcome the pandemic together, while working towards the goal of sustainable development.
SMA members jointly attracted a total of 17 international conferences in 2021, including the 2025 World Congress of Neurology that would bring 5,000 attendees to Seoul.
