Ellen Michaels Presents, Inc.
Chinese Market is Opportunity for Enterprising Event Companies
With the rapid growth of the Chinese economy, multinational companies from all over the world are scrambling to establish themselves in the market. Back in the United States, China is one of the leading destinations in terms of customer inquiries for World Marketing Group Ltd., which specializes in business development of North American incentive, meeting and conference groups for international DMCs and hotels.
China may now have surpassed Italy to become the world’s fourth largest economy, experts say, and meeting planning companies are taking notice.
In addition to planning meetings and events for Western companies doing business in China, planners are finding opportunities in arranging incentive trips from America, as well as serving the rapidly expanding Chinese companies themselves. Add the 2008 Olympics taking place in Beijing, and China is becoming an attractive opportunity for meeting and incentive companies looking to increase their bottom line.
“China is definitely the hot new market for experienced U.S.- based meeting and event planning business and I do see it expanding considerably in the next few years,” says Patti Fortunati, CMP, a program manager with San Jose, Calif.-based Ellen Michaels Presents. The company has done full-scale incentive, CEO and user group events in China for the past 15 years.
Knowing that the market exists and finding a way to break into it are two different matters, however. The pros are mixed on how the two marketplaces compare.
“Honestly, the challenges are not any greater than planning a program in the U.S. if you have extensive experience working in international locations,” says Fortunati.
But the challenges are not necessarily the same. “It is important that we remember that the Chinese MICE market is still very different than those within Europe and the U.S.,” says Kevin Ruffles, president, Asia Pacific, of international corporate services company Hogg Robinson PLC. Having both local knowledge and global expertise are important to the company’s strategic market positioning, he says.
Although the event industry is young in China, the country is increasingly receptive to this kind of business. When companies first started doing business there 25 years ago, it would have been unheard of to have held an event on the Great Wall, which you can do now. Yes, you still have to pull permits, but it’s a formality, not a hurdle.
Pricing is attractive as well. Fortunati estimates that an event equivalent to one she recently produced in China would have cost at least 30 percent more had it been held in the U.S., even including airfare and travel to Beijing.
The challenge now is one of human capital. William Sellmer of Tampa, Fla.-based SMI Travel Inc. says he’s been taking special interest and incentive groups to China since 1989. Although it’s an extremely popular destination, he cautions that just as Westerners are discovering China, China is discovering the West. “It’s growing toward Western culture daily. If people want to see China as we think of China, they need to go soon, because it’s changing,” he says. But this doesn’t dampen his appreciation for the country as a destination and a country.
“People just go and just are astounded by it,” he says. “They realize China no longer is an emerging world power, it is a world power today.”
