This summer holiday will see 35 MICE events being held in or followed up by Macau, Sam Lei, local trade and investment official, disclosed yesterday afternoon.
Lei is a member of the Executive Committee of the Macao Trade and Investment Promotion Institute (IPIM), which in the past few days hosted a group of 40 regional MICE stakeholders, such as event organizers, exhibitors and industry critics, on a familiarization trip in Macau.
The aforementioned 35 events – which will include some professional meetings with over 1,000 participants – are expected to draw over 240,000 cumulative participants, Lei added.
Reiterating the IPIM’s stance, Lei emphasized the confidence in more events in the rest of the year, reaching the target of having 1,000 MICE events in this year.
Looking into the future, Lei disclosed that the IPIM would lead delegations to MICE events in the Thai capital of Bangkok in September and Barcelona in Spain in November to promote MICE in Macau-Hengqin. The event in Spain, he underlined, will have international impact.
Yesterday saw the negotiation session of the familiarization trip. A multitude of local enterprises, such as venue owners, MICE groups, event coordinators, leisure facility operators and Air Macau, held discussion sessions with stakeholders.
Lei highlighted that the trip was conducted both online and offline. Over 400 matching sessions that connected 27 MICE-related companies in Macau and Hengqin as well as 168 mainland and international buyers were held.
Before yesterday’s physical discussion sessions, Lei briefly introduced Macau’s conditions to participants, highlighting facts such as the city having 240,000 square meters of event space and 39,000 hotel rooms. He emphasized that Macau is one of the few locations in the region that is capable of hosting events with over 10,000 participants.
Delegates astonished by new facilities
When asked to recap their visit to Macau, several delegates made special reference to the new arena at the Galaxy Macau resort, describing it as world-class and magnificent. Many of the delegates had not visited Macau in the past few years, and remarked at the development of MICE facilities.
Shawn Li, vice president of growth at Dragon Trail China, a marketing firm, expressed his confidence in Macau in terms of his company’s global development. He also sees Macau’s advantages and competitiveness as a mid- to long-range destination.
Holding similar views was James Beacher, director at Venue Hub and Martin Donovan, director at Greater Bay Strategies. The former is a MICE information platform and the latter a MICE intelligence collector. Both are based in Hong Kong.
They saw opportunities in Macau amid Hong Kong’s experience and Guangdong’s size. Nonetheless, their view is that it can only be achieved by regional collaborations, such as breaking down a major event into smaller sections for each location to host those events at which they are proficient.
In addition, Beacher suggested that facility operators in Macau should start seeing the entire picture to allow better experience and transportation during MICE peak periods.
