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By Mike Kelly, CFE
As I resettled in a new venue (Queen Sirikit
National Convention Center) situated in a much larger city (Bangkok) in a
new country with different market characteristics and potential, one of the
first things I did was to check on current comparative industry performance
statistics according to the most recent ICCA data. For that purpose I chose
data from 2004, the most recent report material available from the ICCA
database.
The International Congress and Convention Association is a global operator
with a wealth of comparative convention or business tourism information that
it has been collecting since 1972. The primary commercial focus of the
association is “international association meetings.” International
associations are simply defined by three core criteria:
• be attended by at least 50 participants
• be organized on a regular basis (one-time events are not included)
• move at least between three different countries
While many international associations meet annually, a good number meet
every second, third or fourth year. Often, the national chapters,
associations in their own right, of the international associations meet on a
more frequent annual basis. Only the international meetings would be
included under ICCA statistics in these cases since national meetings do not
usually leave the host country and even when they do, such as joint
Australia – New Zealand meetings, the number of countries involved is fewer
than three. There are of course exceptions since regional meetings for the
European Economic Community (EEC), ASEAN and an increasing number of free
trade groupings are occurring.
In any case, the comparative statistics available from the ICCA database
only compare international meetings by continent, country and city. There
are other comparators available from ICCA, such as seasonality and length of
meetings, but for the moment I am interested only in comparative city
statistics.
My new marketing role with NCC Management and Development Co. Ltd. requires
that I conduct a situational analysis, a fancy phrase for getting to know
the current status of comparative venue, city and market performance before
I create a broader marketing game plan or undertake any marketing
initiatives. This is the first step in formulating and identifying the
answers to three pretty basic performance questions.
Where are we?
Where do we want to go?
How do we get there?
There is a compelling question not answered by the above three questions and
that is “how did we get here?” However, that requires a different approach
and is really part of the third question – part of the strengths and
weaknesses analysis that will be conducted simultaneously with the creation
of an information platform which will allow the launch of any future
initiatives.
So, let’s look at Bangkok. The cities I have chosen for comparative purposes
are self-evident regional competitors and worthy opponents. They are Hong
Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. Here is a sampling of the information
available from the basic ICCA database. First I will show the number of
meetings, international rankings and market share for this arbitrary
grouping of city competitors.
There are a number of observations arising from this comparison:
• The comparative competitiveness of the numbers suggests that the cities
are in fact worthy competitors with no city with a runaway lead or an
insurmountable position.
• There are two cities in the top 10 (Barcelona and Vienna are #1 and #2)
and all four cities are in the top 20. There were some 115 cities listed in
the comparative database, which together hosted 67% of all international
meetings listed in 2004.
• Despite their relatively high rankings, these four cities represented
hosted (327 meetings) only 7% of all listed international association
meetings in 2004. This suggests that the international meetings market is of
significant dimension – in fact, there were 4,424 international association
meetings listed in 2004.
• The region is clearly an attractive destination for whatever reasons. It
may be interesting to note that Kuala Lumpur achieved these numbers before
the completion of the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre in 2005.
Further, the focus of the venues that likely drive these numbers are mixed
use – convention and exhibition facilities – and it is important to note
that international meetings may not deliver the best return on investment
for the venue, economic impact for the city and therefore may not be the
primary commercial focus of the marketing of the cities and host venues.
Of the four cities, Bangkok had the least number of “international
association” meetings.
Now we get to the damnable lies part of statistics. Regardless of the number
of meetings, ROI and economic impact is really determined by the total
number of delegates and their respective length of stay. There are other
factors but these two multipliers best represent the economic impact of the
activity. A comparison of the estimated number of participants at the said
meetings shows a much different picture:
 I
guess the moral of the story is to look at statistics from all angles before
reaching any conclusions. I am very pleased to be working in a market that
is not only regionally very competitive but globally so successful in the
international associations market. There are other meeting types, never mind
the powerful exhibitions industry particularly in this part of the world, so
success can’t be measured by international association meetings alone.
However, they are an important part of the meetings mix and I look forward
with some confidence to our ability to grow our market share relative to the
three major competitors in our region.
Carl A. H. Martin is Director, European Services, for IAAM Europe. |
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