The new challenges for Convention Bureaus
Peter Cramer
B2B Tourism Strategist | Specializing in MICE Industry Solutions | Building Global Business Connections
Dear Reader,
Welcome to issue 6 of #SupplierPost(s) 📯 - the biweekly newsletter with information and thoughts for MICE marketing and sales in a changed market. Yours Peter
Why do some cities have a Convention Bureau and others do not? It always depends on the infrastructure situation. What is needed is proximity to an international airport, a good range of hotels and meeting facilities, locations for events, restaurants, caterers and a whole range of special services and service providers (suppliers) needed for the implementation of congresses, conferences, trade fairs, meetings, incentives, conferences and events. Only when these are available does a convention bureau have a basis for existence. That's why the city of Frankfurt has a Convention Bureau, but the city of Lüdenscheid doesn't.
But that doesn't answer the whole question of why?
Why have a Convention Bureau at all? There are many reasons, but the most important reason is that the events brought to the destination by a Convention Bureau generate indirect profits.
To put it simply: the Convention Bureau's task is to arouse the interest of organizers all over the world so that they bring participants (or visitors) to the destination with trade fairs, congresses, conferences, incentives or events of all kinds. Because these participants in turn spend a lot of money locally (much more than a normal tourist in the same period!) and this in turn generates additional and important tax revenue for the destination.
In order to fulfill this task, two aspects are most important:
And that in turn is only possible if point 1. is fully met. If one or both aspects were to break down, every Convention Bureau would loose its raison d'être 🤗
That sounds simple and self-evident. But if you take a closer look, some Convention Bureaus seem to have completely forgotten what their task is 🤔
Therefore, it is fundamentally important for a Convention Bureau to do everything to ensure that the local infrastructure - i.e. the local MICE industry - is maintained and that events take place locally. Real events, because if they take place online, they generate no revenue (and tax revenue!) locally. That's a fact and you would think that the Convention Bureaus would realize that. It is, but definitely not all of them.
It is very interesting to observe how different the views of some Convention Bureaus are. Some are very active in bringing this necessary infrastructure through the pandemic crisis, while others do very little or nothing to support their regional MICE business chain. This is worrying.
In all the necessary discussions about the future tasks and challenges for Convention Bureaus, the pivotal point is to ensure an infrastructure for MICE and on site. This is the only reason why the city of Frankfurt has a Convention Bureau, but the city of Lüdenscheid does not. For no other reason.
But due to the pandemic, this infrastructure is in ruins in many destinations, it is battered and in parts no longer exists. This has been recognized in many places and various support and funding programs have been launched. A Convention Bureau is well advised to actively support those affected in the domestic MICE economic chain to the best of its ability, because it does not help to bring group business to the destination if at the same time there is a lack of hotel beds, locations, transport companies, restaurants, agencies and other suppliers to successfully conduct business locally.
Due to the pandemic, many shops in the city centres are closing, including restaurants, bars, hotels... which is becoming more and more of a problem because the cities are losing their attractiveness. This will also have an impact on the MICE industry in the medium term. Who wants to take their participants to a city that has become less attractive? Everything that reduces the attractiveness of real events has consequences. That is why a convention bureau cannot look the other way here, because such developments affect them directly sooner or later.
The appeal must therefore be: that Convention Bureaus should support their domestic MICE market players to the best of their ability - financially and especially through political lobbying. The interrelationships - especially the economic aspects - are not always so clear to all politicians.
But what are the future challenges for a Convention Bureau?
There will certainly no longer be an industry like before the pandemic. All marketing and sales methods, measures and channels are being put to the test. For example, until 2019 it was the regular advertisements and PR of Convention Bureaus in the usual MICE trade magazines, but today the question is: which magazines still exist?
And the magazines that still exist are mostly minimized, reduced and appear at irregular intervals. And to whom are they actually still sent? Is the recipient still active in the MICE industry at all? Does the office of the event agency still exist? And if so, how is it staffed? Are the employees in the home office or in the office? The scattering of MICE magazines has become very large. The market has to find itself again and address databases have to be completely revised.
And the trade media that are (now increasingly) published online? Here the question arises: do they have a reader community online at all, and if so, which people does it consist of in detail? Who actually reads the online magazines of the MICE media? What percentage of readers are relevant for international suppliers, for example, because these readers organize events abroad?
Especially online, users search for and consume specific content in a much more targeted way. This is different from lying on the couch with the current issue of a news magazine (journal) and flicking through all kinds of news from page to page. This has a big influence on the future communication measures of a Convention Bureau if it wants to remain successful.
So what to do?
First of all, a Convention Bureau should clearly work out its individual fields of competence (reasons why) that justify a real event in their destination. Many things are interchangeable when choosing a destination, but not the actual competence fields of each destination.
The next step is to significantly improve target group profiling. Simply dividing and communicating by associations, corporates and agencies is no longer sufficient. It is advisable to additionally subdivide according to destinations (target markets), sectors, gender, age groups, languages, cultures and professional groups. And this for all important target markets.
The next step is to determine the communication channels. How can different target groups be reached efficiently? E.g. female German event planner, young, German-speaking, newcomer (trainee and/or a junior project manager), in a start-up company.
With which relevant content do I reach this specific target group and through which channels? Printed magazine? Newsletter? Mailing? Online advertising? Social media? Which mix of communication channels is best for this specific target group? Welcome to deep marketing.
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In summary: MICE suppliers need to go much deeper and create a much more accurate target group profiling - based on their individual "reasons why".
The next step is to have a good toolbox that enables event planners to simply make (even) better events in the destination. Up to now, people have largely stayed out of events - except for the procurement of suppliers - but that will no longer work in the future. Event organizers must be taken by the hand and accompanied. Only if the event was a complete success for them and their participants will there be a chance of repeating it. But more importantly, this is the only way to generate serious and credible recommendations from satisfied customers for new customers. And that is important and necessary.
The new competition is not Covid, or another pandemic, but it is Zoom, MS Teams & Co.
Everything that can be handled as an online event instead of a real event will also be handled as an online event in the future. Hybrid events are not a real solution for destinations. They always recruit a reduced number of real participants to the destination and in most cases are just a trial for the organizers to see if the event will be completely online or real in the future. In this case, previously real events will definitely be lost for a destination because they will become 100% online events!
Destinations will lose business because companies and associations will no longer hold the event in real terms as before, but online in the future. In the past, such a decision was usually not an option, but in the future it will be. Every event will be scrutinized and for the Convention Bureaus this means even better arguments to recruit MICE business to their destination.
It should be clear, but it's not. Many suppliers in the MICE industry would like to go back to the way things were in 2019 and before. But it won't and that will be a rude awakening for some.
With the MICEboard Community, we have deliberately focused on a very small but economically very important target market: German-speaking event planners from companies, agencies and associations who are mostly from Germany 🇩🇪 , Austria 🇦🇹 and Switzerland 🇨🇭 and who regularly organize events of all kinds abroad 🌍
We have been cultivating this target group continuously since 2012 and it has grown steadily. No other MICE media has a comparably precise target group profiling. If you want to reach this target group as a supplier and communicate with them without much wastage, MICEboard is the first choice. The facts and statistics confirm this very clearly. Accordingly, the MICEboard community only addresses international MICE suppliers who are interested in this target group. And this target group is certainly one of the most valuable in Europe.
With the MICEboard offers and products, we help Convention Bureaus to successfully generate new business with the German-speaking buyer target markets. The most powerful economic MICE markets in Europe.
In this newsletter we have already pointed out several times that the industry will never be the same as it was before 2019. It is now 2022 and it is high time for numerous suppliers in the MICE industry to significantly improve their performance in marketing and sales.
If you let the first quarter of 2022 - until the end of March - pass by without doing nearly anything, you will not generate any successful , incentive and congress business in Q2 and Q3. It's as simple as that, because events need a certain lead time.
The fact is that the majority of MICE suppliers have still not completed their activity planning for 2022. This is bad, because it creates information gaps for the event planners who are inquiring. Those who are quick enough and willing to go the extra mile now will be successful faster in 2022.
Panem et Circenses - Agency for Tourism Marketing
As a communications agency for tourism B2B, MICE and B2C, we advise international suppliers and develop campaigns for the German-speaking target markets. With MICEboard, we launched a brand and community in 2012 that is now one of the most important media channels for international MICE suppliers who want to successfully conclude new business with the target markets of Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
The facts about the MICEboard community
Around 8,000 users per month on the community website. We reach around 10 times that number of users in the various MICEboard groups and communities in the social media and in other relevant MICE groups, pages and communities. The weekly newsletter #StillePost(s) 📯 goes to around 2,900 users and has an average open rate of 25% every week.
We are specialize in online content marketing and social media marketing, as well as classic campaigns and event marketing. The MICEboard brand offers international MICE suppliers since 2013 various sales events: the MICE BOAT - a sales event on board a cruise ship during a cruise; the MICE PEAK - a sales event in changing international destinations; the GREEN MILE - an event in changing international destinations and on the topic of sustainability in the MICE industry; and with MICE by melody, the only roadshow in Germany and for exclusively international MICE suppliers only.
The MICEboard Podcast was the first podcast in the MICE industry and the episodes have been listened to over 10,000 times to date. With MICEboard Stream TV, we offers an online event solution based on streaming in the most important social media. MICEboard Stream TV's online webinars reach several thousand viewers and generate strong awareness and business enquiries for the supplier. You can find numerous stream TV webinars on the MICEboard YouTube channel.
MICEboard is an established and successful online and offline communication media network that specialists in content marketing for exclusively international MICE suppliers and has been building up the relevant community of buyers since 10 years. This is unique online media network in the German-speaking buyer target markets ☝️
#SupplierPost(s) 📯
This newsletter is aimed at suppliers from the MICE industry. It aims to stimulate, criticize and confront. It does not want to embarrass anyone, but to encourage out-of-the-box thinking. To have the courage to critically question the existing and to question methods of MICE marketing and sales.
It is not about right or wrong. It's about securing the future of an industry. If you are a MICE supplier, we would be very happy to hear your opinion on the topics.
The newsletter is published every 14 days and aims to stimulate thought with an article. Thank you for your time, we wish you a successful week!