The Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau (TCEB) led a delegation of 16 sellers to meet with 45 of Australian meeting and incentive buyers at Pier One Sydney Harbour and Sheraton Melbourne Hotel.
Key Trends
The TCEB office in Australia presented some key meeting and incentive trends on the Australia outbound market from their own research:
Nooch Homrossukhon, Director of the Meeting and Incentive Department at TCEB said: “We are introducing a series of roadshows across Asia Pacific as a strategy to have stronger in-market engagement with buyers. We hope that buyers will find this form of engagement more meaningful because the content is centred around Thailand as a business events destination. We also fulfilled part of our return of objective knowing that buyers who came to our event at Pier One Sydney Harbour have genuine business interest for Thailand’s MICE destinations”.
According to Homrossukhon, Australians have a strong affinity with Thailand. The bureau hopes to shift buyers’ mindset – to see Thailand as an ideal business events destination, not just for leisure.
During the 4-hour event, buyers got the latest product information and sellers the opportunity to respond face-to face to buyers’ queries. Billie Cox from Belle Laide Events said that she enjoyed the networking format and was delighted that she got relevant information from the participating sellers.
Other Australian buyers who preferred not to be named said that they still like doing business face-to-face because they can assess the confidence levels of sellers delivering to expectations and manage any cross-cultural concerns.
Ravi Ganglani, Area Director of Sales – MICE for Minor Hotels said that tradeshows still have their advantages especially for brand awareness objectives. However, he is very pleased with the TCEB roadshow strategy because the audience is more targeted and both buyers and sellers are not restricted to limited appointment time. With this current economy, meeting and incentive discussions cannot be restricted to a few minutes. The fact that TCEB has pre-qualified this list of buyers make it more efficient for sellers who take care of multiple markets like himself to fly in and ready to meet buyers who have business leads for Thailand.
One of the key intelligence gained from this roadshow was the perception of competition. Ganglani was surprised to find out from buyers that not only is Thailand competing with neighbours like Singapore, Vietnam and Hong Kong, it is also competing with Hawaii and Los Angeles which share similar flight duration to Thailand.
Events Travel Asia Group appoints Commercial Director
Making his debut as one of the sellers at TCEB Roadshow Australia 2018 is El Kwang, founder and CEO of business consultancy agency. Untangled has been appointed by Events Travel Asia Group (ETA Group) to run its commercial division. Max Boontawee Jantasuwan, founding CEO of ETA Group in Thailand said: “El’s talent in change management is second to none. I know that working with his company will allow ETA Group to operate on a different level. We can already see outcomes from some of the strategies El engineered. We cannot wait to roll out new initiatives periodically in 2018.”
Kwang is humbled by this opportunity that supports his decision in creating Untangled, the new owning company of B2B media brand, Biz Events Asia. He said: “The market has graciously welcomed Untangled with a number of key project appointments. It is a dream to work with one of Asia’ leading young entrepreneurs like Max whose clear vision inspired many of the strategies we created for ETA Group. His fast work pace and natural ability to adapt to change certainly assisted in how quickly these strategies saw fruition. I would say watch this space.”
With a record year under their belt, AccorHotels Australia focuses on customer journey in 2018.(read more)
New developments and resort buy-out offerings in Australia's Tropical North Queensland aimed to pull incentive travel groups(read more)
Biz Events Asia selects the most common changes industry professionals would make to better cope with possible economic uncertainties.(read more)
Singapore – Nu Skin Japan brought 250 of its regional sales leaders for a well-deserved travel incentive to Singapore(read more)
Singapore – A new Helsinki-based “hotel without bedrooms” event venue concept has made its way into Singapore. Here’s a sneak peek inside Huone Events Hotel before its February 23 opening and why it is bound to disrupt the local meetings industry.(read more)
You might be doing it wrongly if you have been offering product details that fail to go beyond venue spaces and capabilities. (read more)
Direct from IMEX America 2016 in Las Vegas –Timo Kiuru, CEO of The Unthinkable, started the knowledge session with a statement, “Welcome to the death of event experiential marketing.” Kiuru, recognised by Connect Corporate Magazine as...(read more)
Singapore – Set to open in the second quarter of 2017, the 222-room Sofitel Singapore City Centre has announced the appointment of Freddy See as Director of Sales & Marketing. (read more)
Singapore – HotelAsia, one of Food&HotelAsia’s pioneer specialised trade shows will feature an impressive host of brands, showcase new equipment and technology and unveil a Singapore Pavilion for the first time. (read more)
Singapore – October is set to be the busiest business events month as Marina Bay Sands welcomes the highest number of major events in a single month since its opening in 2010.(read more)
Isn’t it time to realise that the world will end if this industry does not support the media that works for them!(read more)
Join our mailing list
Share your thoughts