Few Kenyans could have imagined that the conference industry would one day be categorised with travel and tourism and become a symbiotic phenomenon.
That for the most part unimagined, and therefore unforeseen, future is finally here — in a big way. The phenomenon of the Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Events/or Exhibitions (MICE), or, simply put, business tourism, kicks off on January 23 at the KICC, for the first time outside South Africa.
Kenya is safari country and tourism has always been one of our economic mainstays, both in good and bad times (including 2014). Kenya is well placed and ready to offer a unique MICE package, combining business with pleasure, meetings and events and venues, all rolled up into one business tourism offering like none other, anywhere else.
Business tourism will never match the sheer numbers of the larger travel and tourism sectors, but it can punch way above its weight for years to come. Most interesting data support this viewpoint. Tourism Ireland not long ago reported that a leisure visitor generates €450 per visit and a MICE visitor generates €1,450 to €1,650.
And Singapore hosted 3.5 million business visitors, an increase of three per cent over 2012, and earned S$5.5 billion in revenue (excluding sightseeing, entertainment and gaming expenditure).
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Meetings Africa of South Africa, IMEX of Germany and Confex of London all consistently report not dis-similarly impressive figures.
These few examples demonstrate how MICE destinations are reaping heavily from this niche market and making substantial economic contribution to national economies. The Kenya MICE Expo is expected to inject billions of shillings into Kenya’s economy through the multiplier effect of the monies that will accrue to the National GDP.
We expect that MICE will yield even more money from next year, when it begins to attract international participants.
That is why we have taken the first step towards making Kenya the MICE tourism destination of choice in our region, the Singapore of East and eastern Africa.
The region has not exploited this opportunity to have a major world MICE expo, and yet Kenya is strategically located within Africa and between the Middle East, Asia and Europe, and well served by international airlines.
Kenya is an exotic tourist destination with great weather all-year-round and an expansive choice of accommodation, besides its position as an economic and transit hub for eastern and Central Africa. Not to forget that we are the only country, worldwide, with a national park in the capital city, next to an international airport.
Our over-dependence on traditional tourism based on sand and wild animals must be changed if Kenya has to increase its share of attraction worldwide.
Kenya must diversify and become the regional hub of international Trade fairs and exhibitions and in the process generate substantial revenue into the economy.
The Kenya MICE EXPO 2015 will serve as a medium that will promote Destination Kenya for business tourism by opening up avenues of foreign investment in different sectors of business within the region through MICE tourism.
The nexus between the business meetings industry, travel and tourism has in fact been there for decades.
Ever since 1976, when the KICC hosted its first truly global conference, the meetings sector has always intersected with the travel and tourism sectors. The meeting was the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Fourth Session, held in Nairobi between May 6 and 31, 1976.
Kenya’s founding President, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, officially opened UNCTAD IV and invited its delegates to take time off from their busy schedule, or immediately afterwards, and make a point of enjoying Kenya’s rich heritage of splendor of truly scenic flora and fauna and the hospitality of her people.
Holding international meetings in backdrops such as Kenya’s tourism sector was an early attempt to combine business with pleasure, work with leisure, even in the midst of deliberations on some of the world’s weightiest, most complex and vexed matters and issues.
