Convention bureau proposed to spur city’s tourism

A project team from Georgetown University in the United States has suggested HCMC set up a convention and visitors bureau (CVB) to drive the city's tourism development, particularly for the MICE segment.
The CVB team underlined a strong business need for such an organization in place at a seminar organized here last Friday by the HCMC chapter of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), the HCMC Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in HCMC.
The team said in their presentation at the "Best Practices of San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau" seminar that the organization's sole responsibility was to promote and market HCMC as a destination for leisure and business travelers, conventions, conferences, tradeshows and events for the benefit of the stakeholders and the city.
The stakeholders will comprise of travel agencies, airlines, airports, hotels and resorts, convention and business centers, golf courses, restaurants and shops. The funding for the organization will come from both private and public sectors.
As the beneficiaries of international arrivals, the stakeholders should work together to design a website to serve different visitors, build a strategic sales force, identify target markets, and develop partnership with relevant agencies at home and overseas markets to make their strategies a reality.
The team said one of the keys to success was the organization's job to identify what was unique in the city as well as the domestic and foreign markets they would target. On top of that, the organization should have a tourism manager with a global mindset and experiences in order to bring conventions and events to the city.
According to the team, Singapore has excelled in attracting international conventions and events. The evidence is that the country topped the list of international meeting cities in 2008 when it hosted 637 meetings, or 5.75% of the world's meetings.
Following Singapore in that year were Paris, Brussels, Vienna, Barcelona, Tokyo, Seoul, Budapest, Copenhagen and London as shown in the team's "Best Practices for Convention and Visitors Bureau" presentation at the seminar.
Some East Asian countries have performed well in attracting international conventions and opportunities opened to new entrants, including Vietnam, where experts said bad so many to offer to MICE guests. Resorts and beaches along the coast of central Vietnam are among good destinations for them.
Ngo Minh Duc, chairman of the AmCham Tourism Committee in HCMC, told the Daily after the seminar that Vietnam held huge potential for the convention segment as part of MICE, which stands for Meetings, Incentives, Conventions and Exhibitions.
Duc said MICE guests often traveled in large groups and spent much for high-quality services and products so the countries like Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia classified them as very important visitors. "Of course, MICE guests will be a great contribution to Vietnam's tourism industry," he noted.
Duc's view was echoed by Le Trung Tho, deputy general manager of Palm Garden Resort on the central coast of Vietnam. Tho told the Daily on the phone that MICE guests accounted for only 12% of the resort's total guests but made a great contribution to the revenue.
Tho said MICE guests were businesspersons, government officials and the best employees of companies who were paid for their travel, so their spending on accommodation, food and beverage, entertainment services was higher than normal travelers.
The Georgetown team gave an example that a Korean convention attendee's average expenditure was around US$1,970 with US$645 of which for hotel, US$355 for retail store, US$226 for restaurant, US$182 for entertainment and the rest for other services.
Therefore, conventions bring many benefits to a local economy and help improve the buying power of local residents, not just to hotels, retail stores, F&B outlets and travel-related stakeholders.