How India can Lift its Global MICE Presence

INDIA TODAY is at a nascent stage of development in the global MICE market. In the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) country rankings for 2018-19, India is at No. 28, having done 158 meetings out of 12,951 hosted that year.

A meeting is counted if it attracts at least 50 participants, is held on a periodic basis and is rotated in at least three nations. These are primarily 'association meetings', which constitute a mere 1.2 per cent of the global MICE pie. There's an absence of clear data on meetings organised in India, so it gets reported that we have a smaller share of the global business than what we normally get.

The hospitality industry can dramatically alter this scenario by rolling out different initiatives to improve the country's global MICE ranking. For starters, we need to report all the events that we host on our premises and that fulfil the criteria to be categorised as global meetings. If all the stakeholders do this, India’s global ranking will rise and our share of the meetings industry will get a boost. The bottomline is that if we host events, we must make sure each one counts --and is counted.

Request for Proposals (RFP) come in all the time from professional meeting planners for large-format events. When replying to an RFP document from a meeting planner, we as suppliers need to keep a few points in mind:

• Answer all the questions in the RFP.
• If a point is unclear – call the planner and seek clarifications.
• Do not provide generic information.
• Understand what is critical for the planner by looking at the company's past events and the legacy of each event.

This four-point strategy will ensure more bid wins for us and therefore more business.

When you bid for a multi-national event that is rotationally held at regular intervals in different cities, take the help of India's ambassador posted in the city where the event organiser's headquarters is located. Collaboration with relevant local institutions will increase our bid win chances and enhance the image of the destination.

Be smart when trying to bid for global events. Meeting planners do carry out risk assessments of destinations when making the short list for board approval. Profiles are developed of each

destination, including the political and religious environments, cultural issues and the stability of the currency.

• Pitch for events that take place regularly in developing nations – we stand a better chance at securing conversions.
• Understand the demographics of the event. If India is on the radar of the host association or event planner, we stand a better chance at securing the event.
• Work the informal network. The meeting planner with the big budget will listen to the meetings industry colleague she has just finished working with in her previous event. Reach out to that destination, to your peer and seek a recommendation.

Fortunately for the industry, the government is busy ramping up the infrastructure to make the country a dynamic MICE market. Convention centres, exhibition venues and hotels are coming up fast in Tier-II cities and regional meeting hubs are shaping up. The country today has purpose-built convention centres across at least 14 states (more are to follow) and over 60 noteworthy exhibition centres, of which 50 per cent are located in smaller cities and regional hubs.

The Smart Cities Mission, launched in June 2015, ties in well with this development thrust in the MICE vertical. Tier-II and -III cities such as Agra, Ahmedabad, Bhubaneswar, Coimbatore, Indore, Jaipur, Pune and Vishakhapatnam are all MICE destinations on the rise.

The Leela Group is focused on the MICE business in a two-fold manner. Luxury MICE is primarily driven out of our palace hotels and resorts. The Leela Udaipur, in fact, was rated the World’s Best Hotel in Travel + Leisure's USA Readers’ Survery 2019. The Leela Palace in Chennai or in Bangalore are equally popular with indulgent meeting planners.

For bigger meetings, we have The Leela Ambience Convention Hotel and The Leela Ambience Gurugram Hotel and Residences in Delhi-NCR, and the Mahatma Mandir Convention and Exhibition Centre in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, a world-class convention and exhibition centre comparable to the best in the country.

MICE contributes 26 per cent of our group's total business and we hope to grow the segment with systematic planning in line with global MICE initiatives. The breadth and the depth of our MICE capabilities are evident from some of the noteworthy events that we have hosted this year (listed below):

• Tech HR – 2500 delegates, three-day event at The Leela Ambience Gurugram Hotel & Residences in August.
• ACEM (Asian Conference on Emergency Medicine) – 800 delegates, four-day event at The Leela Ambience Convention Hotel, Delhi, in November.
• SNUG 2019 (Synopsys Users Group) – 3,000 delegates, two-day event at The Leela Palace, Bangalore, in July.
• Agri Asia 2019 – 1,00,000 delegates, three-day exhibition, at the Mahatma Mandir Convention and Exhibition Centre (MMCEC) managed by The Leela Gandhinagar in September 2019.

Some of the upcoming events include:

• Ad Tech – 2,000 delegates, two-day event at The Leela Ambience Gurugram Hotel & Residences in March 2020.
• Elecrama 2020 – 600 delegates, three-day event at The Leela Ambience Convention Hotel, Delhi, in January 2020.
• International Conference on VLSI Design and International Conference on Embedded Design – 2,500 delegates, five-day event, The Leela Palace, Bangalore, in January 2020.
• The 13th Conference of Parties of the UN Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species (13th COP on CMS) – 1,500 delegates, eight-day event, at the Mahatma Mandir Convention and Exhibition Centre managed by The Leela Gandhinagar, February 2020.