Record $5b earnings for Mice - Singapore
Singapore also ranked top city for business meetings, conventions
By Jessica Cheam
Mr Anthony Chong’s Kingsmen Exhibits wins the service excellence award for the second year.
THEY are the mice that roared.
Business travel and events earned over $5 billion for Singapore last year - a new record for the so-called Mice sector.
The industry - meetings, incentive travel, conventions and exhibitions (Mice) - grew by $1 billion in just a year, topping the $4 billion it reaped in 2006.
Unveiling fresh figures for 2007, Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry S. Iswaran said yesterday that business travel and Mice visitors accounted for almost three million visitor arrivals and 40 per cent of total tourism receipts.
For the first time, Singapore was ranked as the top international meeting city in the world, over old favourites such as Paris and Vienna, by the Union of International Associations.
This was the ‘icing on the cake that capped an outstanding year’, said Mr Iswaran at the Singapore Business Events awards last night at Shangri-La Hotel.
Even as he congratulated industry players for this achievement, Mr Iswaran acknowledged the current heightened uncertainty in the global economy and financial markets.
He cited recent figures by the International Monetary Fund, which projected the moderation of global growth from 5 per cent in 2007, to 4.1 per cent this year and 3.9 per cent next year.
Against this backdrop, the international travel industry is expected to slow down, and the industry will face challenges in the coming months, he said.
But the Singapore Tourism Board and industry partners ’still see good potential’ in future business events beyond 2010, he added.
By 2010, Singapore will be hosting the world’s first summer Youth Olympic Games, and the Republic’s two integrated resorts would have opened, along with the new Marina Bay Financial Centre.
The president of the Singapore Association of Convention and Exhibition Organisers and Suppliers, Mr Edward Liu, told The Straits Times that Singapore has been ‘pro-active in bringing in world-class events’ such as Formula One and the Youth Olympics.
‘These events will generate a lot more tourism arrivals and receipts to compensate for any slowdown of visitor numbers,’ he said.
He added that the latest figures show that the Mice industry is on track to achieve its target of contributing $10.5 billion to the economy by 2015 as outlined in the Tourism 2015 blueprint.
The greatest challenge for the industry now is ‘going out there to bring back past trade shows and woo more mega events’, said Mr Liu.
Plans to upgrade Singapore Expo’s facilities were also announced by Mr Iswaran last night. A suite of meeting rooms over two floors will be added to the Expo, and improvements will be made to the venue’s technical and audio-visual capabilities. Its facade, landscaping and lighting will also be enhanced.
Last night’s awards, in their second year, honoured industry players from venues to event organisers. The winners were selected by a panel of 21 judges and assessed on their ability to deliver world-
class events and how they helped raise Singapore’s profile as a Mice destination.
Design and production firm Kingsmen Exhibits won the Service Partner Excellence Award for the second year running. Its executive director, Mr Anthony Chong, said the award ’serves as a reaffirmation that we are on the right track’.
One individual honour - Business Event Ambassador - was given to Professor Feng Pao Hsii, adjunct professor of medicine at the National University of Singapore’s Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. He was elected chairman of the National Arthritis Foundation in 1997 and has been organising medical conferences in Singapore for the last 30 years.
‘As a Mice hub, Singapore still has some way to go but if we work together, we are confident of reaching our goal,’ said Prof Feng yesterday.
Despite short-term challenges, significant opportunities lie ahead, added Mr Iswaran. He said: ‘We are committed to a productive public-private engagement
…to maintain Singapore’s pre-eminent global position in this industry.’
Source : Straits Times - 03 Sept 2008
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