As the second day of IMEX Frankfurt 2022 was kicking off with a series of breakfast meetings, thousands of delegates poured through the doors primed to invest more time in re-engaging with the industry. With their coffee still warm, further news of signature investments across the global industry that would re-engage them was already filtering across the show’s airwaves.
Bangkok, Thailand
Following the highlights from Bahrain and London yesterday, Thailand stepped up to present its new Queen Sirikit National Convention Center (QSNCC, shown above), set in the commercial heart of Bangkok and replacing a facility that had been on the site for 30 years. Scheduled to open this September, it is a vast and beautifully designed facility that is LEED Silver Certified and showcases cutting-edge design and technology, all reflected in its US$500 million price tag. The new venue will quintuple the floorspace of its forerunner—offering a total of more than 300,000 square meters with almost 80,000 square meters of that for events, including four plenary halls, four ballrooms and 50 flexible meeting rooms—and has already garnered significant interest for events, including the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit 2022 that will be held in November, assembling leaders of Asian-Pacific nations. With well over 100 events already locked into the calendar, the facility is certain to become a leading venue in Asia and globally over the coming years.
Edinburgh, Scotland
Homing in on investment from a different perspective, reps from the Scottish capital of Edinburgh were in Frankfurt to announce that the Edinburgh International Convention Center (EICC) is taking guardianship of Convention Edinburgh, the city’s convention bureau that had been hibernating since spring 2020 as a result of the pandemic. The agreement with the city council is for an initial 18-month period, that can be further extended, to help drive new investment in Edinburgh’s business events sector. Complementing this news, Edinburgh also unveiled that a Hyatt affiliate has entered into a franchise agreement with the EICC for Hyatt Centric Edinburgh Haymarket, the first of the Hyatt brand to land in the country. Slated for a mid-2025 opening, alongside its 349 rooms and located on the doorstep of the convention center as well as central to the city’s main attractions, it will also include a hospitality training academy for students and trainees in leisure, hospitality and tourism, making it a real long-term boon to Edinburgh’s sector ambitions.
“The Haymarket Edinburgh development is central to the EICC’s future as Scotland’s leading conference venue and aligns with our mission to create an environment to inspire ideas that change the world,” said Marshall Dallas, chief executive of EICC. “We look forward to the meaningful opportunities this property will bring to the city of Edinburgh.”
Sarawak, Malaysia
Understanding not only what business event opportunities may broadly be, but how best to collect and analyze the data coming from them, has for some time been on the radar in the region of Sarawak, Malaysia. At IMEX Frankfurt today the cooperation of Business Events Sarawak with ICCA on their International Journal of Business Events and Legacies (IJBEL) was formalized, marking not only a Southeast Asian first to cover business events holistically, but also a world first in bringing events and legacy topics under the same umbrella. Originally hatched in Sarawak, it already counts 44 global advisors and expert editors from 15 countries across most continents, with major global organizations of the sector also adding credibility to the publication.
“The journal is beyond a learning tool, but a platform for every destination in the world to innovate, improve and inspire the sector,” said The Honorable Dato Sri Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah, Sarawak’s Minister of Tourism, Creative Industries and Performing Arts, at today’s launch. “The Ministry is serious about business events flourishing in Sarawak, hence the inclusion of this sector in the post COVID-19 Development Strategy 2030, a 10-year policy by the Sarawak Government.”
ICCA President James Rees added, “The world is beginning to embrace the fact that associations and destinations need each other and the most effective way for these two to connect is through legacy impact.”
Destinations International
The sense of a heightened need for each other and enhanced collaboration was a theme further picked up by Destinations International (DI), at IMEX to give an overview of their new global program that will target Europe after having already achieved significant growth in North America, a goal for which they have recently brought in Jane Cunningham as new director of European engagement.
“I’m really trying to look at what is the future for destinations in Europe and understand how an organization like DI can help with what they’re trying to achieve,” Cunningham said.
To get to grips with that, she has recently completed a European multi-city listening tour to identify thinking, vision, gaps and challenges. From this, DI will be able to empower European destinations by using their highly developed destination toolkit whilst simultaneously also building synergies and mutually beneficial dialogue with North American destinations on their core pillars of community, advocacy, research and education, particularly so on the eight significant issues impacting destination organizations for 2022 identified in their Future Study.
To really consolidate this work, DI announced a Pathfinders Program, which will be a group of passionate individuals including both experienced industry professionals as well as the broader community of a destination to help navigate the right programs and value propositions for European destinations.
“We have a couple of key goals for this group and we certainly want to develop a white paper,” Cunningham said. “It’s certainly going to be quite a project from now until IMEX next year and we want to bring together all the findings and learnings very collaboratively together with this group, which will then be able to advise DI around what areas we maybe need to invest, the three to five specific tools that are really going to add value to European organizations. We know that it’s changing times and organizations are looking at different business models, so we think that this is a really valuable opportunity for people who are future-focused to engage with us and come on board.”
After a busy day today, IMEX Frankfurt comes to a close tomorrow, but there is still a lot of news in store. Stay tuned.
