Annual meetings and academic forums to be held in Macau over the next two months will attract over 14,000 participants from outside of Macau, the local MICE bureau has estimated.
In a recent statement, the Macao Trade and Investment Promotion Institute (IPIM) has revealed there will be several MICE events held in Macau in March and April. As per its estimation, over 14,000 visitors will come to Macau for these events.
It highlighted that a large enterprise has recently held its annual meeting in Macau. The event attracted nearly 2,000 business travelers from various provinces and municipalities in mainland China.
The IPIM revealed that as well as participating in the annual meeting, these travelers also toured the city and experienced facilities in resorts, such as digital art installations, picnic and indoor high jumps.
They also visited local tourist attractions such as museums, temples and influencer-highlighted small shops.
The bureau-level entity emphasized that the organizer of the annual meeting praised the city’s ability to host large scale MICE events, for it has international-standard hardware, helpful staff and the flexibility to handle ad hoc situations.
The IPIM added that MICE and complementary facilities being located at the same resorts in Macau incentivize MICE organizers to pick Macau as their destination.
The IPIM also announced over the weekend that Macau had secured the organizing rights for the 2024 edition of the Asia-Pacific Conference of The Global Association of the Exhibition Industry (UFI) Asia-Pacific Conference.
The last time Macau organized the event was in 2008.
The news was confirmed at this year’s event. This year’s UFI Asia-Pacific Conference was held March 2 and 3 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It is expected the event will be held around the same time next year.
During the event, acting president U U Sang of the IPIM met with Dato’ Sri Dr. Abdul Khani Bin Daud, CEO of the Malaysia Convention and Exhibition Bureau (MyCEB), Michael Duck, UFI president and Kai Hattendorf, UFI managing director and CEO shared Macau’s MICE intelligence.
The IPIM described the news as elating. “We believe that with the appeal of UFI, one of the most representative associations in the exhibition industry, exhibition managers and professional exhibition organizers from all over the world will be attracted to Macau to participate in the event,” the IPIM said.
“This will not only help enhance Macau’s international status and influence as well as expand the space for international cooperation, but also promote Macau’s various industries and promote the strategy of moderately diversified development of Macau’s economy,” the IPIM added.
The bidding process started before 2019 and the winner was confirmed in that year for the organizing rights for the year-2020 events. Due to the effects related to Covid-19 that year, the event was postponed to 2024, with Macau winning the bid again.
