A welcome sight: Seoul welcomed an Indonesian incentive group in February 2020 comprising 4,600 pax. Credit: SCB
SEOUL - The Seoul MICE Alliance (SMA) which is run by the city of Seoul and the Seoul Tourism Organization, has garnered 17 new members. It has 10 categories of industry partners which include convention centres, hotels, unique venues and PEOs.
Members receive multi-layered support for taking part in overseas MICE industry exhibitions, road shows, conferences, and meetings of international organisations, while working closely with the city of Seoul to carry out overseas marketing activities.
The 17 MICE businesses bring the membership number to 322. PCO members include On-Comm, COMEXPlanS, and People & Value. Event and entertainment service providers include Golden Blue Marina, OME Cooking lab, WeRide, and Kiwi Media Group. PEOs include Global MICE Experts Group, SeoulMESSE International, and aGroup.
The new members are strong mid-tier or small MICE companies that have already entered or plan to enter the global MICE market by leveraging latest technologies, including AI.
The candidates were selected based on their MICE performance and future plans. This was aimed at preventing a situation where new members may not participate actively in MICE business and networking after acquiring a membership. The alliance also hopes to see qualitative growth of SMA in the longer-term.
Among the new members are MICE start-ups such as Eventers, Modern Han and Oh Me. These start-ups were involved in the Seoul Tourism Startup Cooperation Project held in 2018 and 2019.
Eventers obtained a favourable rating for its strong reputation in the development and operation of MICE IT solutions.
Modern Han scored high marks by showcasing a traditional art platform on which cultural content is developed and distributed around the theme of the 'five senses' of Korean traditions.
Oh Me grabbed the attention of inbound MICE visitors with its traditional Hansik (Korean food) culture programmes.
Ms Kim Ji Hyun, head of the MICE Planning Team at Seoul Tourism Organization said, "We will participate in local and global MICE exhibitions and presentations along with the newly selected members and invite to Seoul foreigners who organise international conferences, corporate incentive tours and other corporate events."
She added, "We will work with our members including the new ones to carry out various activities to attract more MICE events in Seoul, which includes organising FAM tours for foreign media representatives, running joint advertisements on media outlets, and performing joint online PR and marketing activities."
Seoul currently ranks in third place worldwide for the number of meetings hosted in 2019, according to the latest UIA International Meetings Statistics Report - a position it has now held four years running.