PHILIPPINE associations hold events and related activities (collectively referred to as MICE, or meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) throughout the entire archipelago. In some cases, they host international events for their affiliated overseas associations or federations. Traditionally, these business events are recorded within the context of tourism, e.g., tourist arrivals, hotel rooms, shopping and restaurant receipts, etc. Current discussions in the association community elsewhere cover “beyond tourism” aspects, among others, knowledge and technology transfer and sustainable development-related topics.
Such shift in thinking on the long-term contribution of association events to the local venue destination is a good thing. For one, this increases the significance and benefits of association events to both the event destination and to the organizing association. Second, this also elevates the discussion and builds up the support system for the country’s policy-makers to include, aside from the tourism portfolio, the education, investment and economic portfolios. By expanding the support ecosystem for MICE, these key stakeholders can reap the benefits that association events have long been contributing to the country’s development (please refer to the column, “Associations and Tourism: Redux” that appeared here on March 7, 2018).
Here’s an excerpt on what I read recently in the Association Meetings International’s June 2018 magazine issue entitled Beaches to Brains by James Lancaster.
Industry bodies released economic impact studies to prove to governments that meetings were a major revenue earner. An attention-grabbing PricewaterhouseCoopers report for the Convention Industry Council found that the US meetings industry in 2009 was worth $263 billion in direct spending, supported 1.7 million jobs, and contributed $106 billion to GDP. That was hard to ignore.
However, the messaging in these studies was still very much focused on direct expenditure, taking in things like retail, food and drink, accommodation and car rental. In other words it was still reinforcing the idea that international meetings were primarily about boosting tourism spending.
The first study to break away from this was “Business Events Sydney’s groundbreaking Beyond Tourism” study in 2010, to prove that business events had longer-term economic and societal benefits based on knowledge transfer. The study, which may have been the first in the meetings industry to use the word “legacy,” explored what delegates learnt at conference, the dissemination of knowledge, the development of business relations and research collaborations, and how the destination’s reputation was enhanced.
Meetings industry associations took up the mantle, stressing the role of destinations as knowledge hubs rather than tourist traps, and the role of meetings in providing deeper social benefits beyond tourism. The messaging worked, with more destinations now focusing on their areas of expertise in their promotional and PR material.
The new collective view of the industry—and certainly those who actually develop and carry out these events—is that such outcomes are their real purpose and value, however attractive the related spending impacts may be. But they are also the most challenging to quantify or monetize because they are often long term and based on things like the benefits of knowledge transfer and relationship-building that are hard to attribute to a single factor. I hope our policymakers would have this same view—that association events are more than tourism-related activities that contribute to a broader sustainable development of the country.
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The column contributor, Octavio “Bobby” Peralta, is concurrently the secretary-general of the Association of Development Financing Institutions in Asia and the Pacific (Adfiap) and CEO and Founder of the Philippine Council of Associations and Association Executives (PCAAE). PCAAE is holding its Sixth Associations Summit on November 23 and 24, at the Subic Bay Exhibition and Convention Center (SBECC). The event is hosted by the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) and supported by the Tourism Promotions Board (TPB). PCAAE enjoys the support of Adfiap, TPB, and the Philippine International Convention Center.
E-mail: obp@adfiap.org