REED TRAVEL EXHIBITIONS PARTNER WITH SITE/ICCA AND KTB TO LAUNCH MICE SEMINAR
(Posted 17th October 2013)
Muriithi Ndegwa, CEO of the Kenya Tourism Board, aka Magical Kenya, this morning officially launched the first ever dedicated MICE Seminar in Nairobi, which aims to equip the over 50 participants from Kenya and the wider region to understand better the concept of this ever more important market segment.
According to Muriithi Kenya already gets about 20 percent of their arrivals connected with MICE events, bringing visitors in for meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions or events. KTB is supporting the Reed Travel Exhibitions, Houston Marketing and SITE / ICCA organized event, which today takes place at the Sarova Stanley Hotel, itself a sponsor of the meeting.
Muriithi confirmed KTB’s renewed focus on MICE traffic, beyond the more traditional beach vacations and safari experience. This is in line with their new strategy to widen their scope and present Kenya as a destination with many different faces, with many different attractions and offering many different locations across the entire country, as he cited that Naivasha which he said was the latest entrant in profiling MICE business through state of the art meeting facilities introduced in the recent past.
Derek Houston in his response thanked the Kenyan hosts for their prompt and forthcoming responses when the idea was first floated to hold this seminar alongside the Magical Kenya Travel Expo, so that exhibitors as well as hosted buyers can benefit from the valuable lessons taught and learned today, of how to capture, organize, execute and then retain corporate business in this lucrative market segment. Derek went on to humour the room when he narrated an episode of earlier in the day in the Stanley’s elevator, when another guest, with clearly no clue whatsoever about MICE business, asked him if he was in Nairobi for a seminar on rodents – and in social media terms this had all the participants ROFLing.
Tasneem Adamjee, a SITE member based in both Kenya and Tanzania, confirmed that this entry level workshop and seminar was probably only the start of more regular interaction between SITE, ICCA and the Kenyan if not East African market and that the present seminar was in fact organized at subsidized rates aimed to attract greater interest in the segment and equip tour and safari operators with some foundation knowledge of how to handle such business enquiries.
(Derek Houston with Tasneem Adamjee, the participants observing a minute of silence to pay their respects to the late G.S. ‘Channi’ Vohra, Chairman of Sarova Hotels and Muriithi Ndegwa officially opening the workshop earlier today)
