MICE records exhibition-led growth

The Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Exhibitions (MICE) industry recorded a strong growth rate in the third quarter of 2015, according to information from the Statistics and Census Service. This comes ahead of the government’s intention to step up the development of the industry next year.
The third quarter saw a total of 213 MICE events, up by 32 year-
on-year, while the total number of participants and attendees rose by 40.8 percent to 1,009,794 due to an increase in large-scale exhibitions.
Large-scale exhibitions led the growth for the quarter seeing attendees increase by 42.9 percent year-on-year to 993,848. There were a total of 29 exhibitions, up by 3 year-on-year, but only 17 exhibitions reached 20,000 participants or more, accounting for 76.1 percent of the total number of attendees.
The Statistics and Census Service reports that the information collected from the organizers of 28 exhibitions indicates that a total of 1,842 exhibitors were attracted, mostly from Macau (42.5 percent) and Hong Kong (24.4 percent).
Meanwhile meetings and conferences continued to account for the majority of MICE events in the SAR (184) and saw the fastest growth in the quantity of events; up by 29 year-on-year at the end of the third quarter. However the number of participants decreased from the previous year’s figures by 27.1 percent to 15,946.
Large meetings and conferences (200 attendees or more) increased by seven percent year-on-year but the total number of participants declined by 43.5 percent.
For the first three quarters of 2015, a total of 637 MICE events were held, up by 77 year-on-year. The total number of participants and attendees increased by 8.7 percent to a total of 1,663,956, of which meetings and conferences accounted for only 56,313.
Finally exhibitions were down for the first three quarters by two percent year-on-year to 55, but the number of attendees increased by 10.1 percent to 1,607,643, representing more than 90 percent of the total.