For a limited time only, earn triple points per US$1 spent for new meetings and events bookings made before March 31, 2018 and completed by December 31, 2018.
The offer is valid at participating properties within the Hilton portfolio of brands across South-east Asia for new event bookings.
Website HiltonHonors.com/SEA3XRewards
Santosh Kumar, previously the director of corporate solutions of HRS India, has been promoted to helm the company as managing director.
He has extensive experience in business development and partnership management in the business travel industry.
Further details have emerged on the Philippines’ new MICE roadmap to reclaim the destination’s place as a business events powerhouse a decade from now, through measures such as reducing the cost of doing business events and addressing other issues that hamper the sector.
A review of the country’s tax regime is on the cards to reduce the cost of doing business, said tourism undersecretary Benito Bengzon Jr., at the launch of the Philippines’ first MICE roadmap. He further noted that the common carriers tax and billings tax were removed in recent years.
The focus is on attracting business events groups from Asia – comprising 70 per cent of foreign arrivals – and the Middle East, a new market which was chosen for its potential, ability to grow and competitiveness.
When asked why the target was not the longhaul markets, Bengzon pointed out that they could not be everywhere and had to choose a focus.
“We have to have a strategic approach towards all MICE activities. We try to maintain a certain discipline for plan formulation that’s not simply a calendar of events but issues that have to be addressed,” Bengzon emphasised.
Among other issues to be tackled by a technical working group from both the government and private sectors include what kind of policy intervention was needed; what infrastructure was required; whether the support infrastructure for business groups need to be upgraded; the kind of focused advertising and marketing needed; and the data required to make informed decisions.
PACEOS (Philippine Association of Convention/Exhibition Organizers and Suppliers), which helped craft the MICE roadmap, said it will help organise the business events sector, and in turn, increase government awareness of how business events can contribute to the Philippines.
Monette Iturralde-Hamlin, who is part of PACEOS’ board of trustees, said the average spend of business events delegates was six times that of ordinary tourists, and has far-reaching effects as participants bring their families, friends and businesses into the country.
She added that the roadmap will be a big boost to Philippine business events which in the 1980s was the top conference destination in Asia and ranked eighth in the world.
Hyatt Hotels Corporation will realign its corporate leadership team and operations to allow for faster execution of its growth strategy, announced president and CEO Mark Hoplamazian.
The key changes, expected to be completed in 2Q2018, include the formation of a new commercial services portfolio at the Executive Committee level to combine guest and customer engagement functions under a new chief commercial officer position.
The company is also consolidating managed and franchised hotel operations and owner relations into one portfolio, reporting to Chuck Floyd, global president of operations. The legal and corporate services portfolio is also being realigned under new leadership.
“In order to achieve our growth potential and capitalise on opportunities that come from rapidly-emerging consumer, industry and competitive developments, we must be leaner and more agile,” said Hoplamazian. “This starts at the top with our leadership, and we are making changes to streamline the Executive Committee and to better enable us to maximise our core hotel business and continue our expansion into new lines of business.”
Reporting directly to Hoplamazian, the chief commercial officer will oversee a portfolio that includes global sales functions, global marketing functions, the global contact centers and information technology. The selection process for the chief commercial officer is expected to complete in the second quarter.
As a part of the organisational realignment, two executives have decided to transition out of Hyatt later this year. Global chief marketing officer Maryam Banikarim and global head of capital strategy, franchising and select service Steve Haggerty will leave Hyatt in the coming months. Their positions will be eliminated upon their departures.
Banikarim will continue to lead the marketing organisation through the end of April, and Haggerty will remain at Hyatt as a special advisor to the CEO through July focused on executing important transactions, among other things.
Margaret Egan, who has served as interim general counsel since last October, is promoted to general counsel, reporting to Hoplamazian.
The loyalty and new business platforms area led by Mark Vondrasek as well as the data, innovation and business transformation area led by Alex Zoghlin will remain in place, with both Vondrasek and Zoghlin continuing to report directly to Hoplamazian.
Venue booking software, Meetingselect, has become the seventh member of Event Tech Tribe, an event technology collaborative.
Established in 2007, Meetingselect is currently recognised as the world’s largest independent meetings distribution system and online venue booking tool. The Netherlands-based company will be integrating with all existing Tribe products as a part of the expanding suite of integrated solutions offered. It was recently named a one of the Top 10 Meetings Innovations of the Year.
“Our long history in the hospitality industry means we understand planner and marketer requirements innately, and love to help them solve what’s typically their first challenge, sourcing the best venue and giving them access to numerous datam duty of care solutions, meeting policies, reporting systems, loading preferred partners and many other options,” said Meetingselect’s co-founder, Judith Huisman.
Meanwhile, the Event Tech Tribe works with over 500 customers, and curate applications to join the Tribe ‘family’ to ensure the experience for planners is optimum.
“We’ve always felt that planners shouldn’t have to compromise on tech just to get systems that work well together – or navigate complex platforms to create integrations themselves. Having a world class venue booking tool like Meetingselect in our tech stack further rounds out the offer for planners wanting options outside of the old school all-in-one tools,” said founding Tribe leader, Leonora Valvo of Swoogo..
Despite a slowdown in its economic growth, China is already the biggest business travel market in the world with total spend expected to reach US$350 billion in 2017.
However, as China’s economy transitions to the new normal of single digit growth, the attitudes and priorities of key stakeholders in China’s travel ecosystem continue to evolve and adapt.
A survey of more than 100 travel managers in China by CWT Solutions Group – the consulting arm of global travel management company Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT) – and TTG Events found that while managing costs and driving savings still remain key priorities for travel managers in China, more attention is now also being paid to duty of care and the traveller experience.
More 52% of the travel managers surveyed identified the need to deploy fare tracking and rebooking solutions as an area of focus for their travel programmes. Significant fluctuations in airfares are making it extremely challenging to manage travel costs and budgets. Travel managers are increasingly interested in fare tracking solutions that enable them to re-book flights and hotels at lower rates if prices drop after the initial booking has been made.
At the same time, travel managers in China are also looking at ways to improve the traveller experience, with 50% of the survey respondents identifying the need to better manage travel-related stress and improve traveller well-being as a key priority.
The third-most common priority is to streamline expense management processes, with 49% of survey respondents saying they would be looking for ways to achieve this over the next year. As travel spend increases in China and transactions get more frequent and complex, companies in the market will need to adopt new tools and processes such as travel and expense consolidators, and follow a strategic sourcing approach to manage expenses efficiently for air, hotel and ground travel.
At the same time, travel managers in China continue to keep a close eye on economic and geopolitical developments globally, as they see these trends having the greatest impact on their corporate travel programmes.
With lingering concerns and uncertainty over the health of the global economy, it is of little surprise that 55% of the respondents said they expect this will have a considerable impact on their travel programmes in the coming months. At the time of this survey, many travel managers expressed concerns of freezes and budget cuts being imposed on corporate travel. The weak global economy also may result in stiffer supplier management, cost controls and savings goals.
Interestingly, social media is also seen as major area of change in business travel in China, with 54% of travel managers in the survey listing this as a key trend.
More than half the travel managers in the survey (51%) also said that political developments will continue to impact their travel programmes, keeping in view the increasing regulations and control on travel to the US, as well as China’s own diplomatic relations with its key economic partners, and how this might influence issues such as visa application, air travel and freedom of movement.
Lastly, bleisure has been widely discussed in the corporate travel landscape in recent times. While this trend is more commonplace in Western countries, the trend is much less visible in Asia, especially in markets such as China where traveling for work is perceived as a privilege extended by employers, and not to be ‘taken advantage’ of by employees.
However, a key finding in our survey came as a surprise – more than half of the respondents (57%) said their companies allowed for, and in some cases even supported or encouraged, bleisure.
The full report and analysis will be discussed at an education session during CTW China 2018 in Shanghai this March. Please visit http://www.corporatetravelworld.com/china/ for the latest programme.
Play-Doh was developed in 1933. The product was supposed to help clean dirty wallpapers, and 20 years later Joe McVicker discovered that the formula of flour, water, and salt could be used as workable modelling clay. Finally, it was put on sale for kids in 1956.
Virtual Reality in events may go through its own Play-Doh phases right now. There are plenty of useful applications of VR during events (e.g. interactive product configuration and displays in exhibitions), but the system development and hardware cost to create truly immersive experiences appear to be only justified for media assets that can be used long-term.
Those types of assets are traditionally developed not from event organisations but from advertising agencies or in-house marketing teams. VR in the current concept of event management might be just cleaning the dirty wallpapers.
On the other hand, it appears rather boring to think of VR only as a tool for the current event ecosystem. It might be significantly more interesting not to look from the position where we currently are to the future but look from the future back to where we are. From this perspective, VR will close some interesting gaps. As a matter of fact, VR appears to create opportunities that redefine the current event execution framework.
Here are two examples:
Flexible collaboration spaces: Conferences have become a creative space for discussions and collaboration on issues and solutions. The event setup permits not just the temporary teamwork of a unique group of experts but, very importantly, it has also become an accepted workspace and test-bed for new ideas and experiments.
VR now gives the participants a significantly more powerful canvas to try, simulate, and fail, and try, simulate, and fail, and try again. Imagine a Slack-&-TED online, in which you can significantly increase the reach and participation of global experts on a specific subject, even if they just step out from their lab for an hour. An environment in which exceptional thinkers can simply work on a topic multiple times even if it breaks. Could VR maybe create a space of unique collaboration as a subsequent next step of current conferences?
Imaging a sophisticated virtual environment of exhibitors, product experiences, social experiences, moderated discussions, experiments and other content that is dynamically generated and morphing to participants’ interactions and preferences. Already today you can join a circle of friends to experience virtual environment jointly (unfortunately those environments are still very basic). Once all currently existing technologies are combined, an event may not require any space at all. Existing revenue streams from hybrid events solidify and entirely self-driven virtual conferences may crystallise new market segments.
The way we think of VR is as a tool that can improve our current event experience. We try to answer what can be done better of what we already do. In this context, the applications remain rather limited and expensive marketing gimmick that slowly loses its appeal. If we think of VR as a tool that creates an entirely new context, the technology may become our next Play-Doh blockbuster.
So what’s next? How do you get involved?
The above steps will provide safe-zones for the organiser to learn, without creating much of operational risk. Play-Doh was also not invented to be one of the most successful children modelling compounds. It started somewhere and morphed to this function. VR can start with small stepping stones which might not require VR headsets or programming. After all, the market for VR-driven events will be there, the question is only, will you still try to sell a product to clean wallpapers at that point in time?
Felix Rimbach is the regional director for research & development at Globibo, responsible for around 1,200 projects throughout Asia, Europe and North America each year. His key focus area is the marketing impact of technology solutions with special attention to learning, collaboration and communication. Rimbach is also one of the leading researchers on AI architectures, modelling and knowledge representations.
Sister properties Shangri-La Rasa Sayang Resort & Spa and Golden Sands Resort in Penang have come up with unconventional destination meeting ideas to satisfy a growing demand among corporate clients for meetings with play elements.
Suleiman Tunku Abdul Rahman, spokesperson for both resorts, said: “We brainstormed ideas on how we can meet and fulfil the meeting dreams of our corporate clients, which cannot be done within a city set up. We are taking advantage of our prime location at Batu Ferringhi to set up a meeting mixing business and pleasure amid nature.”
Sunglasses@Work was the result, where one-of-a-kind meeting ideas and unique set ups transform the usual boardroom sessions, teambuilding activities, and special business meeting events into a fun and memorable experience.
The Sunglasses@Work themes include “Live, Love and Laugh”, with individual activities themed under each word. “Live” is about group activities that promote wellness and physical activity; “Love” is about engaging in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities that bring love to children and individuals with less fortunate backgrounds; “Laugh” is about fun activities.
Activities for Sunglasses@Work include a yoga breakfast at CHI, The Spa’s pavilion, challenges on the slides at the Adventure Zone, an Iron Chef Challenge, a Dine In The Dark dining experience, and an eco treasure hunt.
Suleiman explained that the eco treasure hunt incorporates the latest gadgetry designed by in-house events specialists for a unique teambuilding activity. “It blends CSR initiatives around the resort and the challenge of completing tasks in highly competitive situations,” he said.
He revealed that green meetings are in demand these days, and the resorts offer environmentally-friendly meeting options that incorporate recycled crates and boxes for signages, food stands and snack tables.
“An eco menu incorporating a Rooted in Nature concept is available for such meetings, using organic herbs and spices picked from the resorts’ spice garden and incorporating sustainably-sourced seafood and poultry,” he added.
Brought to you by Singapore Tourism Board
With a vibrant cityscape that is safe, well-connected and technologically advanced, Singapore continues to punch above its weight as a prime destination for international MICE events.
Lure of the Lion City
Singapore continues to outshine its Asian counterparts with its accolade of being the top Asian city to be ranked among the top 10 convention cities in the world by the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) in 2016.
Steadily maintaining its position as Asia’s Top Meeting City by Union of International Associations Global Rankings 2016, Singapore delivers a bold and fresh landscape of opportunity for MICE events that keeps them fun and exciting for attendees, while delivering international standards for creativity, quality and innovation.
With its stellar reputation as a global business and tourism hub, recognised for its quality infrastructure, safety, stability, connectedness and accessibility, Singapore is a strategic choice for meetings and incentive groups.
Multi-stop destination
Apart from its award-winning meeting venues, Singapore also offers a plethora of fun and unique incentive activities, making it a dream come true for the creative planning of meetings, conferences and incentives in one compact destination.
Sentosa, long known among families and leisure travellers for its sun, sand and sea, has in recent years evolved to become a one-stop MICE destination. Today, the rejuvenated island is home to 21 hotels, over 30 attractions and more than 100 F&B and retail outlets. New attractions include the city’s first 50-metre Bungy Jump in Singapore at AJ Hackett Sentosa.
Resorts WorldTM Sentosa (RWS) alone houses six hotels, versatile convention and meeting spaces, as well as the renowned Universal Studios Singapore theme park, which is perfect for the unique combination of meeting and incentive travel groups.
Creative spaces abound in iconic attractions like the Flower Field Hall at Gardens by the Bay which enchants guests with a periodically changing flower field display on one side and a spectacular view of the Marina Bay skyline on the other, bearing testament to Singapore’s standing as a City in a Garden. This indoor space also boasts a ceiling adorned with special LED lights that create a fairyland atmosphere.
For unique encounter with nature, meeting planners can consider the Night Safari’s An Evening in the Wild package which features the attraction’s diverse wildlife. It is designed for events organisers looking for an intimate venue where guests can enjoy a three-course meal in a tepee tent and get up close with the animals at the same time.
Fresh offerings with Passion Made Possible
Discover deeper stories and experiences of Singapore with a variety of new tours which revolve around themes such as food, outdoor adventure and culture.
For instance, delegates can connect with the passionate spirit of Singapore’s new generation of hawkers, who have rejuvenated their offerings while still staying true to their heritage roots, through Wok n Stroll’s “Next Generation Hawker” food tour.
A novel way to explore Singapore’s first heritage town, Joo Chiat, is in a vintage Vespa sidecar. Zip along with Sideways “Joo Chiat + Katong Vespa Tour” to uncover hidden gems, time-honoured visual arts and crafts, and Singapore’s famed hawker delights in this colourful enclave.
Planning events with industry support
The possibilities go on and on for meetings and incentive travel planners with the enhanced Singapore MICE Advantage Programme (SMAP).
The Singapore Exhibition and Convention BureauTM (SECB), Changi Airport Group and Singapore Airlines have enhanced their Singapore MICE Advantage Programme (SMAP) with new partners – luxury airport terminal JetQuay and ride-sharing giant Uber – to offer more benefits for event organisers.
With SMAP’s new and improved benefits, qualified events can enjoy features such as customised support through SECB’s Business Events in Singapore (BEiS) Scheme; exceptional fares to Singapore offered by Singapore Airlines and its subsidiaries SilkAir and Scoot from more than 130 destinations in over 30 countries; complimentary welcome desk to greet participants, plus shopping and dining vouchers for attendees to use throughout Changi Airport; arrival into JetQuay, Asia’s first standalone luxury airport facility for VIP delegates and 10-percent discount on intra-city rides for all attendees, up to a maximum of 2,500 rides per event on Uber services.
For full details on the Singapore MICE Advantage Programme (SMAP), download the brochure, visit the website or email secb@stb.gov.sg
Till Martin has been appointed to helm Hyatt Regency Beijing Wangjing, which is scheduled to debut in 2Q2018, as general manager since November 2016.
Hailing from Germany, Martin’s hospitality career with Hyatt Corporation began more than 20 years ago. The Hyatt veteran boasts experience working in various positions across the company’s properties in Europe, the US, the Middle East and Asia.
He was most recently the hotel manager of Grand Hyatt Beijing, and prior to that was previously executive assistant manager – F&B at Grand Hyatt Seoul and Grand Hyatt Dubai respectively.
