B2B Meetings at Travel Business Show
Exhibitors and buyers of the Travel Business Show say the event gave them an opportunity for serious B2B meetings and the know-how to cater to MICE clients.
This is one of the best travel shows that I have attended as I was able to have a number of serious B2B meetings here. SKICC is an international convention centre where one can organise national and international events, conferences, exhibitions. We have multiple halls, which has the capacity of 1,000 people in a classroom style. The plenary hall that can accommodate 750 people at a time. We are trying to promote J&K as a MICE and golf destination. Our USP is the pleasant weather that allows us to host open-air conferences in summers."
The Travel Business Show is a great platform to meet real time clients and get first hand information about MICE movements. It's an exceptional way to explore interaction opportunities with them and to showcase the unique experiences of our destination. I see this as a networking platform and we are going to generate more leads out of this. I will surely be leveraging a lot of contacts from this. Our destination is doing really well and in New Year 2017, we are only expecting to grow more. ”
It has always been exciting to participate in travel shows, and we are very happy to be here. We are one of the top operators when it comes to outbound MICE from India. A new trend that I can see is a lot of religious MICE movements happening out of India. 2017 will be a very exciting year in terms of corporate MICE. Numbers are going to go up and corporates will play a very key role in terms of developing new destinations. New destinations will be the nearby destinations other than Europe and the Americas."
The show is fantastic. Preset appointments make a sales person's job much easier and we hope to turn around some business from here. We are opening a new luxury wellness resort – The Oberoi Sukhvilas Resort & Spa. It's the sixth in line after our four legendry properties in Jaipur, Agra, Ranthambore and Udaipur. We have come here to present and get as much visibility as possible, with the trade with MICE organisers. It's already opened partially on December 1; facilities like the spa and other F&B options will open by January."
The show has been very fruitful; we got to meet a lot of buyers, especially from the corporate segment. Most of them are from Mumbai, which was very helpful as we are based out here in Delhi. In 2017, we are targeting MICE on a large scale, because we have had increased flight connectivity, especially from Delhi now, so flight-fares have come down. Experiential sector is also one segment that every person from the trade is asking for something new. The MICE clients are asking for newer destinations and even with the repeat destinations they want more experiences to make that trip worthwhile.”
It has been a wonderful experience to participate in the show. We have been connecting and making friends from this event. We are majorly into MICE and weddings and we have also opened up FIT business. Our aim is to provide a luxury holiday both for Aamby Valley City and hotel Sahara Star. 2017 looks good, people are still willing to spend. Domestic travel is going to increase. Since there are many long weekends this year, people are looking to two or three day get away. "
We do a lot of movie shoots outside Mumbai, that is why we need to connect with hotels, transport companies, and tourism bodies. Overall it's been a wonderful experience meeting so many people, learning what's happening in the world and in India. I have been able to connect with new people and destinations that I was not aware of. Typically this year we are looking at a couple of films that have to be shot abroad. That is why I am trying to meet people, engage any new destination that is trying to push Bollywood to come and shoot in their country. Recently we shot Befikre in Paris, it's a record for any film, Indian or international, in terms of the number of weeks the film was shot in France. Australia also offers an array of exceptional food and wine experiences, adventure and team.”
This is the first time I am attending this kind of a show and I found it to be quite good. I was able to meet quite a lot of people. Maybe next year we will be able to get better participation, more tourism boards, if you can get consulates and visa facilitators, then these sessions will be really very helpful. MICE industry today is doing quite well. A lot of companies are doing MICE movements for their channel partners apart from the internal meetings and incentives that they hold."
The MICE industry in the last year was on the path of growth. As a corporate, the changes in monetary policies did not affect us too much. However, politics, security do impact MICE. In the Indian scenario, traffic has only been growing, be it the domestic or international MICE. We expect the same growth to continue in the next year as well. I enjoyed the Travel Show and got a chance to meet up with a lot of new sellers, who were out there to sell the destinations. Let's see how things pan out and how the conversions happen, between us and the others. We got a lot of insights from them."
The MICE industry is more of an experience now. It's not just about taking a group to a destination, but it's also the value addition that is going to the distributors or the channel partners. We are looking at more of the people travelling to Europe and the Far East. 2016 was good for us we had taken 200 pax to Singapore. Far East has been very positive, when you look at a MICE destination it's a value-for-money destination. Now most of the crowd is moving from the Far East to the European countries and over the gulf. That remains the trend. The show is exceptionally phenomenal. This is a good platform to reach out to the tourism boards and the end-suppliers. I met two three tourism boards; I want to explore opportunities with them when I get back to Mumbai."
This is my first time at the Travel Show. It's very beautifully arranged, companies and the travel boards are fantastic. They have come here from different parts of the world. Earlier the scope was very limited, it was only SE Asia and Gulf, and here there are Scandinavian countries, Holland, and Canada. A wide range has been offered which was missing earlier. We are in the retail category, where a lot of incentives are being run for the retail front end staff as well as the backend support staff. Incentives largely are for the retail staff and going out of the country matters a lot to them, as it makes the incentive more attractive. Recent destinations being used include Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok and Gulf markets are being used, this is mainly because they are short-haul markets."
The MICE industry was pretty good for our group last year. We are looking at quite a good potential in terms of MICE movements abroad. My expectation from the show is to understand more from a different perspective, especially in terms of MICE locations which we have not explored. We have already explored most parts of India and more of Asian countries. We are looking for a different and unique experience. We have been going to Singapore, Dubai, and Australia a couple of times. So we are looking out for other options. We are expecting an increase of about 22 per cent in the travel and MICE segment."