“MICE geography: Russia”: smaller budget, greater drive!
On the last Friday of winter, February 26, representatives of Russian and international companies that mainly deal with business trip planning, business and corporate event arrangement and management gathered at ABT-ACTE Russia evening educational cocktail in Swisshotel Krasnye Holmy. The meeting was devoted to MICE facilities of Russia.
During the first part of the program corporate buyers shared their experience in holding events. Thus, deputy head of document control department of Mosenergo Elena Medvedeva spoke about an incentive trip to Saint Petersburg for top managers. The aim of the tour was discussion of complicated projects and prospective ideas, as well as team building and improvement of the team spirit of company managers. So the conference program was enhanced by the cultural and entertainment parts – corporate dinners in the restaurants, a tour of Strelna, a visit to the Mariinsky theatre.
Business travel and corporate event manager of Megafon Julia Zhoglo spoke about special aspects of holding business events in the Moscow region. According to the speaker, the company arranges about 60 domestic conferences per year, the number of participants varies from 35 to 170 employees of the Moscow office and regional branches. At the same time about 80% of out-of-office events are held on the territory of Moscow region. The advantage is the opportunity to avoid additional travel expenses (travel costs, daily allowance). Length of stay is approximately 2-3 days depending on the program. Due to the fact that the venues are located not more than 100 kilometres from Moscow, you can check in on the day of the event and check out on the day the event is over.
The expert noted that the advantage of holding events in Moscow region is a large secured territory with parks and lakes. You can arrange teambuilding, trainings, dinners outdoors. Another advantage is a more advantageous price of accommodation and conference packages compared to that offered in the capital: economy per person reaches 5-10% on average. Besides, most hotels are ready to offer a customized approach and flexible prices.
Nevertheless, Ms Zhoglo would like hotels of Moscow region to treat the condition of rooms and conference halls with greater responsibility, and service quality should not be behind that of four star Moscow chain hotels. Besides, Moscow region does not offer a good enough choice of international hotel chains, five star hotels and club hotels for VIP guests.
Event specialist of Oldi Group Olesya Alevskaya offered the participants her presentation named “Road show – from million budgets to vivid conceptions”. “As experience has shown, holding regional meetings with partners has a positive effect on business relations and growth of business in general”, the speaker said. “The form of road show provides direct contact with dealers and local retail sellers, an opportunity to present new technologies, solutions, products and partnership programs, exchange experience, contact partners face-to-face and settle business questions in an informal setting”.
But the unstable situation has resulted in the emergence of new tasks like budget optimization, motivation of frequent customers and attraction of new ones. The ways to cope with then, according to the expert, are the change in formats, adoption of unique concepts and individual bonuses for customers.
“First of all, we addressed local agencies to arrange a road show. As a rule, we hired an expensive venue, held a conference in the hotel, and gathered in the evening at a banquet with an entertainment program in the hall of the hotel”, Ms Alevskaya said. “But the crisis has made some changes in our budget – we have refused from intermediary services and expensive venues and have started arranging road show events ourselves – we have focused on the concept”.
The company has managed not only to optimize its costs in such a way, but also to make road shows more vivid due to their concept. “Say, instead of luxury restaurants we take the participants to a shooting area. We also hold a conference there, a shooting tournament and have barbeque. The budget is smaller, but the drive is greater! And the main thing – we encourage our distributors to attend these events and to win. Because as the result of the road show and participation in the tournament the winners go on a final incentive tour to Australia, for example”.
In the second part of the program service providers offered their view of MICE in Russia. Anna Kolebaeva gave detailed information on the facilities of resorts and hotels managed by Starwood Hotels & Resorts in Russia. Aleksey Shikin spoke about bright projects of the creative group Sshikom.
Director of Mice&Event project department of UTS Olga Gulibina presented a review of the situation in the Russian MICE market and gave her recommendations on the choice of Russian destinations depending on the type and tasks of the event. Together with the speaker cocktail participants flashed through Russia – Ms Gulibina named the main features of Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Sochi, Kazan, Kaliningrad, Crimea, Golden Ring, Karelia, Altay and Kamchatka as MICE destinations.
The speaker stressed that “meeting and event arrangement on domestic destinations means independence of currency rates, budget saving due to logistics and ruble prices”. At the same time, Olga noted that there are difficulties in arranging events in Russia at present – underdeveloped infrastructure, service level that is not high enough, lack of flexible customer approach, unpredictability factor and high demand. This is why “reasonable expectations”, refusal from raw decisions, timely planning and additional analysis of the reputation of the venue are necessary. A thorough choice of the destination, delegation of the process of communication with the provider to the agency may help avoid many difficulties, the expert supposes.
“We always request all the destinations we have discussed at the educational cocktail for our conferences”, administrative and business travel manager of L`Oreal Elena Turchina shared her impression of the meeting. “And this June we are planning a tour to Saint Petersburg for our top managers. It was important to me to hear firsthand what problems my colleagues had when they arranged their trips, what venues they chose for their events”.
Ms Turchina also noted that the form of an evening cocktail was very convenient, because you do not always have an opportunity to attend events that are held before noon. It would be interesting for her to learn even more about venues in Russia (Moscow, Moscow region, Kazan, Saint Petersburg) suitable for holding conferences with the number of participants of 400 persons and more during the next educational programs of the “MICE geography” cycle. As well as to learn more about Sicilia as a MICE destination.
“Political and economic conditions of business growth have changed greatly lately, and companies have started looking for ways out of the current unstable situation. If corporate buyers often preferred foreign cities and resorts when they chose venues for events and meetings before, now the shift of the Russian MICE market to domestic destinations is obvious”, executive director of ABT-ACTE Russia Ekaterina Aleksandrova noted. “The aim of this educational cocktail was to prove that there are lots of cities, resorts, regions in our country that provide all the necessary facilities for accommodation of guests of various levels and events of different formats. And sometimes the disproportion of the price/quality ratio is compensated by the impressions you get. Because you will never get such an emotional outburst like in Kamchatka or Baikal anywhere else! Even we, ABT-ACTE Russia experts discover a lot of new things when we go to the regions of Russia with our educational conferences”.
After the educational program was over the guests could make cloth decorations and participate in wine tasting by Gai-Kodzor winery from Krasnodar region. Dmitry Klepikov, wine blogger of Wine Leaks, representative of Eurowine, member of Russian Sommelier Association spoke about the ways to feel the bouquet of every drink. And the painter Arsen Levoni, whose works of art have won more than 25 awards and diplomas presented several paintings of the outstanding Russian cultural figures – ballet dancer Maya Plisetskaya, composer Aleksander Skryabin, piano player Vladimir Gorovits.
Natalia Travova