he following is an interview with Exec. Director Kang Sung-ghil of the Korea MICE Bureau of the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO). In it he discusses various plans that the KTO and Seoul City, the co-hosts of the 2012 Korea MICE Expo, have to boost the MICE Industry in Korea as a professional global MICE industry by holding various sideline events including incentive tours and Korea MICE Week for MICE experts from overseas so that they can check out MICE facilities around Korea. 

Korea Convention Year, which was declared for this year, is also aimed at boosting the number of foreign tourist arrivals in Korea with this year being the last year of the Visit Korea Year. All of the MICE events to take place in Korea are aimed at further boosting the number of international events to be held in Korea from the 469 in 2011 to move Korea further up the rankings, which are led by Singapore with 919 MICE events in 2011.

Question: What is the image of the MICE industry in Korea?

Answer: MICE, which stands for “Meetings, Incentives, Conventions, and Exhibitions” (or Events), emerged as a major industry for the generation of economic growth in many countries around the world. The government chose the industry as one of the future growth engines for Korea and attracted national attention last year with many Chinese groups such as Baojien visiting Jeju Island on incentive tours.

Q:  What has been Korea’ s position in the convention area?

A: The KTO announced the 2011 statistics on international conventions, recently release by the Union of International Association. According to the numbers, a total of 10,743 conventions took place internationally in 2011 compared to 11,519 in the previous year. Of those, 469 conventions took place in Korea, which was the sixth most in the world, a record for Korea. While the number of worldwide conventions was shrinking, Korea expanded its numbers and climbed the ranks from eighth to sixth, showing to the world its important position in the world convention industry.

Q: What is the present status of international conventions and major MICE countries?

A:  In 2011, the number of conventions fell 6.8 percent from the preceding year due to the European debt crisis. Europe itself is a major region for conventions, which also impacted the number of conventions in such convention strong nations as the United States, Japan, France, and Belgium amid the slump sweeping the international convention market. But the number of conventions held in such Asian countries as Singapore and Korea increased, while Japan saw a decline of 20 percent due to the earthquake and other causes.

Singapore became the top country for the number of conventions held with 919 cases up from third place in 2010. The United States came second with 744 events and Japan came in third with 598, down a notch from the preceding year. France came in fourth with 557 and Belgium ranked fifth with 533, while Korea rose to sixth with 469, up two spots.

Q: What is the significance of declaring Korea Convention Year and the KTO’ s expectations?

A: The KTO agreed with the government to designate this year as Korea Convention Year and unfurled a varied campaign to foster the growth of the MICE industry in Korea, which is a high value-added industry. With this year being the last year of the Visit Korea Year campaign, we expect to further attract foreign conventioneers through synergy created with the VKY campaign to promote both programs and the balanced growth of the MICE industry in Korea.

The KTO has been undertaking various campaigns to further develop the MICE industry through the 2012 Korea Convention Year. The KTO has been doing public relations projects through overseas media to promote Korea as a convention destination country that has hosted such huge international gatherings as the G-20 Summit and the UNWTO.

At the same time, the central and local administrations have been providing incentive support to participants in international meetings and groups to attract large events this year and, at the same time, boost the satisfaction levels for MICE participants visiting Korea as much as we can.

Q: What are the details of the Korea Convention Year campaign?

A: The government and the KTO along with MICE-related companies in the country have all been part of the campaign, a very significant move led by the Korea MICE Alliance with its members seven regions around Korea, including Seoul, Jeju Island, Busan, and Incheon.

The campaign has been helped by various incentive packages including discounts in hotel room charges, convention venue lease charges, and tourism fee discounts, among others, to make the campaign a successful event.

The MICE Industry Hope Forum has been touring from city to city to shed light on regional strategies to develop the MICE industry and create jobs for youths through the MICE Job Fair and job mentoring sessions.

On June 12-13, the Busan Exhibition Convention was held at BEXCO and another exhibition convention is scheduled for Daejeon at the Daejeon Convention Center.

Q:  Can you please explain the Korea MICE Expo?

A:  As this year is Korea Convention Year, Korea MICE Week (July 3-8) will be held in a plush manner focusing on MICE events in Korea as if it is a festival for MICE organizations.

First of all, the 13th Korea MICE Expo 2012 is scheduled to take place from July 3-5 at COEX in Seoul, which is a festival for MICE related companies and organizations in Korea. Seoul City has been co-hosting the MICE event since 2010 and it has been attracting a growing number of buyers, up 63 percent, participating firms, up 37 percent, and business talks at the event, up 82 percent since the city started to co-host the expo.

In the past two years, the expo has become a global professional MICE event, truly an astonishing development by all accounts.

Both Seoul City and the KTO plan to hold various sideline events during the expo such as a MICE exhibition, business talks, the Seoul MICE Forum, the Korea MICE Alliance Workshop, the UIA Training Session, the International MICE Attraction Contest, and a familiarization tour for invited MICE professionals, among others.

To attract better qualified MICE professionals to the Seoul expo, the Korea MICE Expo homepage has been inviting foreign buyers to register for the event and the KTO plans to invite 120 confirmed MICE experts from overseas through its MICE network both at home and abroad. 

A KTO official in charge of the Incentive Exhibition Team said the foreign buyers will be taken on a number of familiarization tours while in Korea to show them the attractive points of the Korean cities. They will be able to check out the MICE facilities in those cities with the support of MICE marketing to aid in tourist attraction by local cities during the expo period and to boost Korea’ s position in the world as a MICE destination. The MICE expo will be strengthened enough so that is will be widely known as a professional MICE exhibition event representing Korea that can create opportunities for business deals with the aid of over 200 booths for buyers and 200 booths for MICE professional organizations. #