THE industrial powerhouse of Suzhou is keen to fortify its presence in the MICE market, with latest efforts zeroing in on Taihu, a scenic area that became one of China’s national wetland parks in 2011.
Suzhou Yuyang Exhibitions was recently launched to spearhead Taihu’s MICE development, according to the company’s marketing department head, Pan Zhuzhu.
Pan said: “In addition, we rolled out a new incentive last Friday, with the local government offering financial subsidies of up to 30 per cent for events with at least 100 pax and RMB100,000 (US$16,073) expenditure in Taihu.”
Pan also informed that international branded hotels like Marriott and InterContinental will debut in the city come 2015, adding to the area’s existing facilities like a yacht club, golf course and convention centre.
Lauding the government’s new-found interest in MICE business, Suzhou Taihu International Conference Center sales department manager, You Jian Xin, said: “For years, Suzhou has placed emphasis on industrial development and our MICE development generally lags behind Hangzhou, which has achieved critical success in this area.
“We have not launched any individual efforts to promote our facility to international markets yet, but are currently following promotion efforts led by Suzhou Yuyang Exhibitions,” he remarked, adding that the centre hosted several high-profile international events in the last few years, such as World Cultural Forum, China-Africa People’s Forum and China-Europe High-Level Political Parties Forum.
Also seeing potential in expanding Taihu’s MICE business, Jason Song, sales department assistant manager, Xiangshang International Hotel, commented: “The government’s austerity drive impacted greatly on hotels, resulting in a big loss of business and revenue, hence hotels are now looking at other ways to make up for the shortfall.”
Meanwhile, Song is looking forward to the competition that the debut of international branded hotels will bring to Taihu.
“Standards will be raised correspondingly and there will be a multiplier effect on all businesses. I’m confident that there will be enough cake for everyone,” he said.
Trade players have remarked that international awareness of Taihu is still on the low side, an observation acknowledged by Pan.
“We’re still in the start-up stage, so we’re now trying to put everything in place. We are building up our branding now by attending tradeshows such as IT&CM China,” she said.
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