KHAO Yai Convention Center (KYCC) wants to attract more Europeans to meet in Khao Yai, and is working together with the Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau to make that a reality by organising fam trips to the region.
Porn-Anun Khakhanmalee, front office manager of the Botanica Khao Yai who also manages KYCC, told TTGmice e-Weekly: “We’re trying to get more European guests, and currently have overseas sales offices in place. Right now, our MICE groups are 90 per cent Asians and 10 per cent Europeans. We’re aiming for a 60/40 split instead.”
Built in 2014, KYCC offers 3,800m2 of flexible meeting space spread across two buildings. The largest facility is its Grand Ballroom which can take up to 1,300 people theatre-style, and be further broken down into three separate spaces.
Other meeting areas include the Exhibition Hall which can hold up to 600 people theatre-style, and seven meeting rooms of varying sizes. There is also a 1,900m2 outdoor plaza.
Asia will remain an important source market for the venue, and according to Porn-Anun, KYCC’s largest corporate booking to-date was for a 1,500 pax group from China. The most recent Asian corporate booking was by Samsung in Thailand.
“From January until now, there have been about 100 (Asian) groups that have used KYCC and stayed in the hotels here,” he said.
The area that KYCC occupies is also home to two hotels – the 256-room Greenery Resort and 115-key Botanica Khao Yai – as well as a shopping area, an adventure park and a water park.
Olga Kovshanova, director of sales and marketing at Bangkok-based Asia World Enterprise, who was a participant in a post-IT&CMA fam trip to Khao Yai, opined that the destination could “be a very interesting alternative for MICE events in Thailand”.
She explained: “It is a little bit farther than Pattaya (from Bangkok), but it offers something different as many people have been to Pattaya already. Khao Yai offers different activities such as wine tasting and nature-based programmes.”
