July 2nd, 2020. MICE Forum has held a new meeting. The first face-to-face event of the Forum in the last few months in which its president, Matilde Almandoz, sets her sights on the future: "Now it is our turn to take action".
In this way, Almandoz opened the meeting by welcoming the participants and pointing out: "today we want to put the focus on MICE. We have put it on paper, on virtual and today we put it on what we are and on everything we are growing".
During this meeting, great importance was given to the creation of an Advisory Board, "very important to have a 360 degree vision of MICE", as commented by Almandoz. In addition, he pointed out that "our business is strategic communication for entities, associations and corporations", indicating that "we are looking at how to communicate better by relying on all the resources of tourism".
Presentations and working groups
The first table dealt with 'Neuroevents: the brain is the key' with Raimond Torrents, CEO of the Event Management Institute, who stressed during his speech that "everything we do at events aims to influence and dissuade our audience, the brain of our attendees is our key". According to Torrents "in the case of events, we transmit the complicated message through stimuli that make people react. We design emotions through events and we design emotional stimuli to deter and change attitudes, since emotions force the brain to react".
Alessia Comis, outgoing president of MPI, has participated in the presentation 'The best virtual & hybrid experiences' to present the events carried out during the state of alarm. She summarizes her speech as follows: "in these last three months virtual events have been our Trojan horse, to reach our clients and our clients' clients". In addition, he pointed out some of the main themes that have been discussed: creativity, innovation and knowledge transfer.
The MICE Forum is growing and Germán Inostroza, President of SITE Spain has pointed out that "The MICE Forum has had an important presence within the MICE world". He also announced that in order to maintain the structure and make it grow efficiently, an Advisory Board has been created and three chapters have been established: Advisory Board of Prescribers, Strategic Board and Partners Board.
Within the chapter of prescribers, María Gómez, President of EMA, has pointed out that "events are a communication and marketing tool that change behaviour. If there are no returns, there are no events". Maria pointed out that "we work for a more unified sector and we provide a series of tools in order to continue generating value". Sonia Serracarbassa, Strategic Alliance of National Convention Bureaux of Europe, as part of the strategic chapter, has indicated that "maintaining and developing Europe's position as a leader in the MICE industry is our priority". She also commented that "together we are trying to bring together all the efforts necessary to maintain this positioning".
The partners that form part of the value chain are ADEPE, with Barbara Gómez, Secretary General, who has pointed out that "we have 62 associates to give a voice to all the Venezuelans in this country. We work with the objective that all the associates are a common support community and we have to focus on being a support community, so that all the value chains formed by suppliers, agents and stakeholders have the confidence to come to us and help the MICE sector".
Carmen Centol, president of ADEAZA: "our main objective is to provide confidence and security. Therefore, we have developed a guide for support staff and have created a seal to identify our companies". Jesús Baranda, President of AEC, highlighted that "for us, being part of the MICE Forum Board means being at the forefront of the MICE industry. We intend to contribute to the board, professionalism and good practices". Ramon Laguna, APROAV's Secretary General, said that "we try to offer valuable elements such as audiovisual technology, which make the event progress and work, as well as adapting to the changes that the MICE sector needs at that time".
And finally, for Inmaculada Blázquez, ASPEC's communications manager, "this is an opportunity for us all to work together. The most important thing is to unite one voice, diversifying is never good".
The next presentation by Fay Taylor, president of Spain DMCs, was on 'Spain, a reliable destination, a destination of excellence'. She pointed out that "Spain has all the requirements you need for your event: accommodation, gastronomy, climate and lifestyle. And it is the first country in Europe with the largest number of airports and the fifth most affordable country to arrive and with a great railway network".
Luis Gandiaga, technical secretary of the PCO Federation Spain, has moderated the table 'Action! The challenges of each of the MICE segments', and explained that "we are an industry and behind all this there is an important industrial fabric with companies that allow us to contribute and generate economic impact and induced benefit".
Andrés Virto, vice-president of AEVEA, spoke at this table, reminding that "from AEVEA we are making a campaign so that some points are not forgotten, through the slogan -efficient to be sustainable-". He also pointed out the importance of the strategic plan, processes, resource optimization, talent preservation and CSR.
Germán Inostroza, president of SITE Spain, has emphasized that "the fact of being able to work with the digital allows us a monitoring, we have to transform it into a benefit. Everything is evolving and is much more measurable". Fay Taylor, president of Spain DMCs, has stated that "the responsibility of the event planner will depend on the fear, and therefore it is important to face it. This situation has been a sledgehammer for everyone, not only on a health level but also on a contractual level". He concluded by stating that "our business model will depend on our way of communicating and, above all, on how we deal with these fears". Teresa Broccoli, president of MPI, pointed out that "we are focused on training. We have created events aimed at today's audience". Carina Montagut, member of the Board of the Iberian Chapter of ICCA, who indicated that "we have converted our international congress into a hybrid event, having a presence from 90 countries. In addition, we have chosen 3 cities where to hold a satellite congress and this satellite congress will have both streaming and face-to-face sessions". Finally, Onofre Vicente, Vice President of OPC Spain, who has summarized that "among our objectives is how we are able to unite and cooperate, competition and collaboration between all, the transformation and how we have been able to adapt to digital events to reach more people.
One of the last speeches was that of Reyes Maroto, Minister of Industry, Tourism and Trade, "What now? The minister pointed out that "in recent years the MICE sector has contributed greatly to the dynamism of the tourism sector. Thanks to your work, in 2019 Spain remained the third country with the most congresses organised with 595 according to the IMICA ranking, with Madrid being the third city with the most events and Barcelona the fourth". In addition, he pointed out that "from the ministry we have worked on the relaunch of tourism, always with health protection as a priority". In his presentation he has remembered that the government maintains its firm commitment to accompany the sector in its stage of economic reconstruction and fruit of this commitment is the approval of a plan of tourism endowed with 4.262 million euros that is structured in 5 axes and 28 measures. He concluded by explaining that "the objective is to protect, but also to allow the recovery of the tourism sector and to continue with the transformation of Spanish tourism towards a model of sustainability in the socio-economic, environmental and territorial fields".
The president of the MICE Forum closed the meeting thanking Roberto Chenel, CEO of Bmotion AV and collaborator of this Forum, for having made this live broadcast possible, who pointed out that "we continue to bet on technology and therefore, we have implemented something new, such as real-time planning, something that until now was merely complicated"; and to Espacio Harley for the 'safe' space in which this Forum has been held.
