MANILA, Philippines — The government should classify the meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibition (MICE) sector as an industry in itself due to its potential of ramping up the volume of tourist arrivals, a travel executive said.
Network of Independent Travel Agencies (NITAS) vice president Angel Ramos Bognot told The STAR the MICE sector should be considered as an industry in itself due to the large arrival volumes it may attract.
“It (MICE) breeds multiple revenues and extends to touch the leisure market,” Bognot said.
“There should be cash incentives to be given to MICE organizers and players. Focus on business events and build state of the art MICE infrastructure that is competitive regionally and internationally,” Bognot added.
MICE is among the priority program of the Department of Tourism (DOT) under the National Tourism Development Plan (NTDP).
Bognot said that the MICE industry should be run by a separate agency under the Office of the President.
“The MICE government agency should be under the Office of the President to have a more independent character on the bureaucratic spirit of the DOT, to have more funds and to be more powerful and influential,” Bognot said.
Tourism Promotions Board (TPB) officer-in-charge Maricon Ebron earlier said the MICE market is an important component of the Philippine tourism sector, which is why they are eyeing to strengthen bidding efforts for these events.
“We will intensify bidding in for all those conferences, medical, sports conferences, political conferences,” Ebron said.
Ebron said that back in the 1980s the Philippines was in the top eight countries in the world in terms of convention facilities.
However, others overtook the Philippines over the years as they built bigger convention facilities that can cater to larger volumes of people.
In 2016, the Philippine MICE market ranked 48th out of 116 countries.
Earlier this year, the DOT launched the MICE Roadmap 2030, which plants a more definitive approach to the growing industry.
Under the roadmap, the industry is eyeing to grow revenues to P24.4 billion by 2030, an estimated 430 percent rise from the P4.6 billion registered in 2016.
In addition, the roadmap also targets the gross value added of MICE industry to increase to P1.4 billion by 2030, from P415.3 million in 2013 and an improvement of the average rate in delegate expenditure per meeting by 19 percent.
Moreover, the roadmap also aims to make the Philippines more competitive in the MICE market, targeting to make it the leading MICE destination in Asia Pacific and the Middle East.
“For the meetings sector, this means the rise in the country’s ICCA (International Congress and Conventions Association) rank from being 14th out of the 35 countries in the region in 2016 to being in the top 10 by 2030 in terms of having the most number of meetings,” the DOT said.