July 2019

Seoul provided a compelling backdrop on July 5 to help encourage nationwide youths to join the meetings industry at Seoul MICE Future Day 2019, held at Floating Island Convention within the city’s Hangang River. The event is the latest of Seoul’s efforts to upscale its support for home-grown meetings industry providers, in particular small-to-medium business events companies as well as college students and young jobseekers trained in related fields.

Hosted by the Seoul Tourism Organization (STO) and sponsored by the Korea MICE Association, the inaugural MICE Future Day attracted 200 MICE supporters from convention bureaus nationwide. MICE supporters are trained by regional convention bureaus to provide operational assistance at events hosted by their host destination. The Seoul MICE Supporters program in particular assist around 100 business events a year, with an average of 20 supporters assisting at each event – all part of the city’s PLUS Seoul support program.

The Seoul MICE Future Day included a keynote speech on the topic of ‘Trends in the Digital Age and Effective Marketing’ by Kim Taewon, Managing Director of Global IT Group. Also featured was a quiz show, talks by other industry experts and a competition challenging teams of supporters representing each convention bureau to come up with creative ways of promoting inter-regional cooperation.

Describing the motivation behind Seoul MICE Future Day, STO head of MICE marketing Lee Gyeongjae said the event “established a place for talented people who are interested in, and passionate about, the MICE industry,” adding also that it “will expand upon our interactions with academia and related businesses to grow tomorrow’s professional labor force.”

The initiative follows the June 25 opening of the new Seoul MICE Small Business Support Center, designed to provide expert consultation for small-to-medium-sized business events enterprises on a range of matters, including judicial, tax, labor affairs, and key management issues. SMEs account for 85 percent of Seoul’s meetings industry providers, some of which are members of the Seoul MICE Alliance.

“We aim to make the Seoul MICE Small Business Support Center a gateway for SME companies to become empowered contributors to business events in our city” said Ju Yongtae, director of the Seoul Metropolitan Government’s tourism and sports department. “In so doing, we will actively help MICE companies to create a business-friendly environment for our meetings industry.”

Seoul currently ranks in third place worldwide for the number of meetings hosted the previous year, according to the latest UIA International Meetings Statistics Report – a position it has now held four years’ running. The same report places Korea second worldwide in the country rankings category.

More information about PLUS SEOUL, along with the Seoul MICE Alliance, which includes over 300 city-approved local event venues and service providers, is available at www.miceseoul.com.

This year sees, Thailand hosting the 86th UFI Global Congress, from November 6 to 9 in Bangkok welcoming more than 400 of the global exhibition industry’s movers and shakers. In total, 22 international exhibitions held in Thailand during 2018-2019 were certified by UFI the global association of the exhibition industry, representing the highest number of UFI-certified exhibitions in ASEAN.

TCEB also supported and won bids for 17 new international exhibitions in 2019 – a record number with more than half being focused on Thailand’s 10 S-Curve industries. They include: four events on smart devices from China, Singapore and Malaysia; one event on digital from Germany; an event on energy from Singapore; two food events from Thailand; and one each on logistics and health from Thailand.

In the pipeline, TCEB-Business is also eyeing an additional 22 possible events, mostly focusing on the 10 S-Curve industries including three digital events, two food events and two events each on energy, smart devices and logistics.

According to Nichapa Yoswee, TCEB’s senior vice president-business, new trends are emerging where international organisers are utilising Thailand as a gateway to the ASEAN region and are, keen to explore the many business opportunities provided by the Thai government’s ‘Thailand 4.0 – EEC’ (Eastern Economic Corridor) initiative; which is considered ASEAN’s largest in terms of investment values and development potential.

These include prestigious events such as CEBIT ASEAN Thailand (Digital) from Germany, Infocomm Southeast Asia (Smart Devices) from Singapore, ANDTEX (non-woven material for the manufacturing industry) from the United States and SILMO (Optical) from France.

New events that are returning for the second consecutive year in 2019 include CEBIT ASEAN Thailand, Bangkok Beauty Show (Health Tourism) and Medical Devices ASEAN (Integrated Medical Service).

She added, this record setting performance is driven partly by TCEB’s ‘360 Degree Exhibition Success’ campaign. The ‘Exhibiz in Market scheme’ has so far supported six national pavilions at various exhibitions in Thailand, including in China at CEBIT ASEAN Thailand, LED Expo and METALEX; South Korea at Propak Asia, SILMO and Medical Devices ASEAN; Singapore at Infocomm Southeast Asia; Malaysia at CEBIT ASEAN Thailand; Taiwan at Propak Asia and Medical Devices ASEAN; and the United Kingdom at Propak Asia.

The ‘ASEAN+6 Privilege’ element assists business missions in bringing trade visitors from ASEAN+6 countries, including China, to Thailand for business meetings during exhibitions held in the Kingdom.  Recently TCEB confirmed 250 trade visitors from Vietnam for business meetings at trade shows on food and agriculture, construction, infrastructure, health, retail, lifestyle and automotive events. Also confirmed are 70 trade visitors from Myanmar for business meetings at trade shows on medical and pharmaceutical, food processing and packaging, retail, logistics, sports and tourism.