Pattaya-area hotel general managers brainstormed how to revive Pattaya’s business-meeting sector at a summit at the Royal Cliff Hotels Group’s PEACH convention center.
Puripan Bunnag, the Thailand Convention & Exhibition Bureau’s director of domestic meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions, outlined the bureau’s new “D-MICE” initiative to spur growth in business meetings without looking overseas.
Puripan Bunnag, Thailand Convention & Exhibition Bureau’s director of domestic MICE.
He said the TCEB supports many organizations and companies involved in event planning, venue management, transportation, tourist attractions and service providers and will bring all of them together under D-MICE.
Puripan said the 2013 International Congress & Conversion Association ranked Thailand’s MICE capabilities and readiness sixth in Asia behind Japan, China, South Korea, Australia and Singapore.
But he noted that Thailand has the capability of not only seeking international MICE customers, but domestic business-meeting planners as well. That’s where the real opportunity lies, Puripan said.
International MICE market-share gains depend largely on the international economy while success domestically depends on the industry’s image and its services and goods on offer, he said.
The objectives and expectations of D-MICE are strategies to boost the economy for long-term contributions to the country in economic revival and encouraging trade, Puripan concluded.
