Event launched: the first IMG Show rated top-rank
The first International MICE Geography Show was held in the Metropol on September 17-18. Participants of the two-day event were 66 Russian and foreign exhibitors and about 200 MICE service buyers, including agency representatives, corporate buyers and 50 hosted buyers from Saint Petersburg, Tyumen, Irkutsk, Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg, Perm, Rostov-on-Don, Voronezh and Nizhny Novgorod. During the exhibition a total of more than 1,5 thousand pre-planned meetings of buyers and providers were held. At the same time many exhibitors noted: apart from scheduled meetings, there were spontaneous ones, when they had free time. The participants established useful contacts, shared opinions, received new knowledge, held discussions, became familiar with the culture of different countries and got presents.
The event could not go without the traditional ABT-ACTE Russia educational component. On the first day, September 17th, a conference for exhibitors was held. General director of ZCTS Vadim Zelenski and general director of HRG Russia Philip Lookianenko spoke about trends and figures of the Russian MICE industry. And operational and administrative director of Visa Irina Zernova tried to answer the question «How to understand the Russian MICE service buyer?»
The second day of IMG Show started with the educational session for corporate buyers. Inna Rukhadze, procurement manager of Accenture spoke about the basic aspects of tenders for MICE services. Companies that plan a lot of events were recommended to choose several agencies, because only one may not cope with a large amount of work. And to divide events between tender winners during the year or to hold mini-tenders for them for every event. «In my experience, it makes no sense inviting 20 companies to participate in a tender, there should be the golden mean — not more than 10. And before you start the analysis and make the short list, you should definitely meet all the agencies», the speaker added.
As Ms Rukhadze stressed, you should choose providers according to price and non-price criteria. Thus, price criteria will include agent commission that will be later stipulated in the agreement. Moreover, the speaker advised to set the commission scale depending on the event budget. Say, for events that cost less than 10 thousand roubles the agent fee will be 12%, for events with the budget of up to 100 thousand — 7%, etc. «If you set a single small agent commission, events with a small budget will not be interesting for the MICE service provider, and it may affect the quality of its work», Ms Rukhadze noted.
As for the non-price criteria, you should determine key criteria, the participant not meeting them drops out. For example, the company considers it important for the agency to have an office in Ekaterinburg. If it does not, the provider drops out. The criteria are assigned a certain «weight» (the sum of all the criteria makes 100%). And the participants get points for each criterion — from 1 to 10. Say, if the agency deals with domestic events and destinations, it gets 3 points, if it deals with both domestic and international — 5 points, etc. «Even non-price criteria should be assessed in numbers as well, so that when you take the final decision you do not rely on your subjective judgement only», the speaker said.
Inna Rukhadze also did not recommend from her experience declaring event budget at the stage of RFP: «If you say that your budget is 100 thousand, you may be sure that you will get the RFP for 99900».
The next speaker and the representative of the other party — the agency, did not agree with Ms Rukhadze. Olga Semaphorova from UTS Group thinks that tender participants have to know the amount of budget planned to arrange the event. «The agency can arrange an event for any budget, but the events will be different. It seems to me that it is more important for companies to understand what we can offer them for this money, what amount of services.
Professional agencies have no intention of playing the „guess the budget“ game, this is why they often refuse to participate in tenders in such conditions», the expert explained her point of view. «And how can you assess in figures the emotions you will either get or not get during the event? The main thing is them, and not the cost!» Ms Semaphorova has no doubt that it is unacceptable to save on professionals who have enough experience to arrange a high quality event.
«It is not enough to just arrange an impressing event that will make participants cry with joy. Their behaviour should change, and this is what makes the difference. Business events are not entertainment, it is pursuing a goal. This is why it is much more difficult to make an event according to the ROI concept, than just to arrange a great event, but it is much more efficient», Dmitry Saveliev, an independent expert in business travel and administrative business support cited Dr Elling Hamso`s words during the next session, as if he continued the discussion.
Mr Saveliev explained how to calculate return on investment. Say, the company launched a new product, held its presentation and then assessed the profit it made selling this product after the event. «It is a simple formula. ROI (%) = (gross profit — event costs)/ event costs», the speaker continued. However, in Dmitry’s opinion, it will be hard to calculate gross profit; as a rule, analysts deal with it.
The result you get lets you assess the success of the event according to ROI efficiency system, Mr Saveliev assured. And here three variants are possible. If the figure is more than zero, it is success. When it is zero — something went wrong, although event budget was covered. The result below zero means the company lost its investment. The reason may be the fact that either the product itself was of low quality and not in demand, or too much money was invested into its sales.
Given the fact that «technologies will always be the main force of business travel industry growth», chief editor of BBT Russia Svetlana Denikina suggested participants of the educational session took a look into the future and made a small imagined tour — a business trip, where you could use all the possible types of gadgets and technological novelties. Some of them have already become part of our daily life, but others are only to appear in order to change our idea of a trip forever.
So, even if we do not use the Google glass to plan the trip, we definitely use power apps that are already available in the market. «It is a powerful mobile application you can use not only to look for flight options, but also to get all the necessary information during the whole trip — for example, information on flight changes and your opportunities under your travel policy. And when you come back from the trip, it will provide all the necessary financial reports», the speaker explains.
We cannot exclude the fact that we will get to the airport by driverless car by Google. And we are likely to book it through the sharing economy service, one of the examples of which is Uber. At the airport we will probably show the mobile boarding pass that is already provided by 53% of airlines. And this number is expected to reach 91% within two years. Baggage check will be made by robots, and not by customs officers. And what will the plane of the future look like? Maybe, we will travel by a flying transformer, such projects are under way already.
Mobile check-in at the hotel and the keyless room entry system with a smartphone are not fiction already. In future standard practice will probably be robots bringing food and drinks to your room and cleaning it. «In Starwood hotel chain, for example, there are smart mirrors already, that use the touch screen technology: by touching the mirror you can see weather forecast or a sport channel, as well as display twitter news feed on it», Ms Denikina notes. Besides, according to the speaker, we will use new ways of payment during the business trip. For example, in Marriott hotel chain contactless payment solutions are already available — you can use Apple Pay.
Nevertheless, Russian corporate market lags behind the whole world in terms of using the latest payment solutions. Despite the fact that almost everyone has personal bank cards, few have corporate ones. «According to the Central Bank data, the number of cards of legal bodies amounts to about 700 thousand. In comparison to the number of individual cards, it is a drop in the bucket», Visa product manager Vartush Grigoryan notes.
As the expert stressed, as for the operations that corporate cards are used for, the first three positions are payments for airline tickets, hotel accommodation and restaurant bills. It means that the leaders are travel costs and entertainment expenses. But many companies do not provide their employees with corporate cards because of the fears of their misuse. These fears are groundless, because there are a lot of ways to control card payments, Ms Grigoryan assured the participants. Besides, if there is a centralized account (for example, for airline tickets and accommodation payments), companies that suspect their employees may afford too much, may reduce their individual card limits.
In order to prompt companies to open corporate cards for their employees, and the employees to use these cards for non-cash payment (that can be easily controlled), Raiffeizen, Visa and ZCTS business travel agency have launched the first co-branded debit corporate card Raiffeisenbank Visa Corporate & Zelenski Loyalty Pass. Its presentation was also held during the business part of IMG Show.
The customer gets 1 bonus point for every 100 roubles of payment made with the card (only for non-cash payment). The bonus points can be exchanged for travel services provided by ZCTS and other participants of Zelenski Loyalty Pass program. «Companies have always looked for ways to save their budget. Costs of a small legal body, even a company of 100-150 persons may amount to several million roubles per month. One percent of a million is 10 thousand roubles. And it is as much as a ticket to Saint-Petersburg and back», general director of ZCTS Vadim Zelenski stressed. «The customer decides how to distribute the points. They go to two digital wallets: to the account of the legal body (for example, 80% of points) and to the account of the card holder — employee (20%), who can use them to buy airline tickets, for example, for his personal trip on the website of the online agency Na bortu, a weekend tour with Weekends.Travel and so on. We have a wide range of partners who are ready to accept points as payment. And their list will grow».
«This product is the one and only in Russia», is the opinion of Evgeny Bogachev, head of regional corporate business and product department of Raiffeisen bank. «To start with, you need to open an account for our company. Then you should register all the participants on the website www.zelenskiloyalty.ru. The number of cards that can be issued for the company`s account is not limited. At the same time, you can set the limits depending on the employees rank in the company».
On the second day of IMG Show presentation of MICE facilities of Abu-Dhabi and Macau was held. Apart from conferences, presentations and the workshop itself that included pre-planned meetings of corporate buyers and agency representatives and MICE service providers, the exhibition program was full of other activities. For example, the guests could participate in an interactive tour of the Metropol, take part in Georgian wine tasting, learn about Russian tea traditions, watch Dominican cigar manufacturing and break into a dance with the groovy dancing group from the Dominican Republic, take a photo together with their colleagues and partners in a photo booth during the final cocktail.
The most active social network users placed their photos of the event in Instagram with the hashtag #imgshow. During the contest held with the support of the field photo studio FotoManit the authors of three photos that got the largest number of likes from 10.00 till 13.00 on September 18 got prizes — a bottle of Argentine wine that was handed in by head of PAM Travel (Argentina) Maria Gurova. Victoria Nikolaeva from Reynaers Aluminium Rus was the third — her photo got 73 likes. The second was Natalia Borisenko from Quehenberger Logistics Rus — 89 persons liked her photo. And the winner was Dmitry Shapilov from Air France KLM — 149 users liked his photo.
«I would give IMG Show the top mark. Here we can find good prospective customers — people with clear questions and orders, and not just visitors bumming around, which is common for many professional events, unfortunately», coordinator of Macau Government Tourist Office Dmitry Smirnov shared his opinion. «We had about 10 pre-planned meetings, but we held more, because some of them were spontaneous. Many participants said, that when they appointed their scheduled meetings, they did not realize that Macau was really interesting for them. And after our presentation there were a lot of questions and extra contacts».
«There are very few venues in Moscow at the moment where we could meet corporate buyers — exchange opinions, learn what they are interested in, discuss urgent issues. And we are grateful to the organizers for launching such a venue in Moscow!» Konstantin Patrin, business development manager of JTB Russia stressed.
«I am very glad we were at the origins of IMG Show. What we planned and what we got as the result has exceeded our expectations», Edward Grigoriev, head of Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority in Russia and CIS notes. «My colleagues and I who were present at the gala dinner yesterday experienced a positive cultural shock. Everything was splendid, beautiful, solid. And all this is the result of very serious preparation. Today work begins — the hall hums like a beehive. These are the first signs of our mutual success!»
IMG Show 2015 ended with a fascinating lottery with valuable prizes provided by partners and exhibitors. Let us remind you that general partners of the event were Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority, Visa and the Metropol. Partners were also the Ministry for Tourism of the Dominican Republic, Macau Government Tourist Office, Travel Department of the Embassy of Spain, Mikenopa and Jetto Travel, Roid translation bureau, FotoManit field photo studio, Accord transport company, European Cities Marketing, Citysightseeing Russia, Convene, Renaissance Moscow Monarch Centre, Swissotel Krasnye Holmy and Azimut Moscow Olympic.
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«We are happy International MICE Geography Show 2015 was a success. We thank all the participants — corporate buyers, agency and provider representatives who were with us for these two days. See you again!» executive director of ABT-ACTE Russia Ekaterina Aleksandrova said.
Natalia Travova
Source: buyingbusinesstravel.com.ru