Conference tourism the way to go

Few of us ever imagined that the meetings industry would one day drive the country’s tourism and become a major revenue earner.

The phenomenon of Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions (MICE), or, simply put, business tourism, is taking on a wider scope. The AMEX Expo kicks off from March 22 to 24 this year.

Dubbed Africa MICE Expo (AMEX) 2016, this event is expected to bring together players in the meetings industry from across the continent to showcase, supply and buy their best AMEX facilities and services.

This event has attracted international participation including destinations like South Africa. Africa MICE Expo 2016 is expected to inject billions into Kenya’s economy through the multiplier effect of the monies that will accrue to the national GDP.

South Africa has been the only destination in Africa that brings together buyers and suppliers of the meetings industry with their annual event dubbed Meetings Africa that attracts global participation.

KICC has proudly claimed its position in the meetings arena by organising a mega event that will include an exhibition and a knowledge sharing programme with world-renowned authorities in the industry.

Last year alone, MICE tourism was a boom in the country with the hosting of prestigious global events like Global Entrepreneurship Summit and the World Trade Organisation Ministerial Conference.

This year is even better with the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD), The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and Global Partnership on Economic Development Conference (GPEDC), among others.

These conventions are proof that Kenya’s Conference Tourism has become a major niche that requires full exploitation to grow and make the destination attractive for more mega conferences.

I am confident that the centre is well placed and ready to offer a unique MICE package, combining business with pleasure, meetings, events and venues, all rolled up into one business tourism offering like none other, anywhere else.

Business tourism has managed to punch its way above its weight for a while now. For example, tourism in Ireland not long ago reported that a leisure visitor generates Sh49,800 per visit and a MICE visitor generates from Sh160,199 to Sh182,320.

Singapore hosted 3.5 million business visitors, an increase of 3 per cent over 2012, and earned $5.5 billion in revenue. Meetings Africa of South Africa, IMEX of Germany and Confex of London all consistently report not dissimilar figures.

These few examples demonstrate how MICE destinations are reaping heavily from this niche market and making substantial economic contribution to national economies.

That is why we have taken the first step towards making Kenya the MICE tourism destination of choice in our region, making us the Singapore of East and Central 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 change if Kenya has to increase its share of the tourism market worldwide.

The AMEX EXPO 2016 serves as the medium that will promote destination Kenya for business tourism by opening up avenues of foreign investment in different sectors of the economy within the region through MICE tourism. Ever since 1976, when KICC hosted its first truly global conference, the meetings sector has always intersected with the travel and tourism sectors.

This meeting was UNCTAD's 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 and make a point of enjoying Kenya’s rich heritage.

This would in turn be an invitation that Mzee Kenyatta’s successors, would find themselves extending at many other big, world-class conventions at the KICC and other venues.

In those days global meetings in developing countries were few and far between, but the 1970s, ‘80s and part of the ‘90s constituted the KICC’s golden age, with a series of high-impact international conventions in Nairobi.

Holding international meetings against the backdrop of 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.

President Uhuru Kenyatta has already influenced the World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting that we hosted in December last year, the TICAD, and UNCTAD among others that we shall host later in the year.