Growing interest in three Chinese cities is being reflected heavily in Pacific World's Destination Index since it was launched earlier this year.
The index tracks the popularity of destinations used by meetings, incentives and conference planners in Asia, the Europe, Middle East and Africa regions and the United States in order to spot trends that will help planners.
Pacific World, a global DMC and event management company, launched the index in May 2014, and says it has seen growing interest from corporate, association and agency planners across a range of sectors.
Beijing, Shanghai and Xian are rated in the index as the most popular cities in China for pharmaceutical conferences and meetings. Pacific World says China appeared in five of the six Destination Indices – a reflection of the growing interest “due to the presence of international companies and the continuous evolution and changes in the country”.
South Korea, China and Singapore are rated in the index as Asia’s most popular meetings and events destinations.
Planners credit the index with providing them with additional information that helps them in their decisions and the advice they give to clients.
Linda Jacobsson Asting, manager global accounts, HelmsBriscoe Middle East, said, “We are very pleased by the initiative of Pacific World launching their Destination Index six month ago. The index provides us on a monthly basis with a great overview in terms of popularity of destinations. It is a helpful indicator which bolsters the information we gain internally from HelmsBriscoe and also gives us an idea about future trends."
Reasons given for the popularity of destinations vary and include new flight routes, events such as the Singapore F1 Grand Prix, new conference centres and hotel openings. Effective marketing campaigns by convention bureaus such as those in Monaco and Singapore were also cited.
Hervé Joseph-Antoine, global managing director of Pacific World, said, “The objective of our Destination Index is to both highlight short-term and long-term trends. Destination choices are very volatile and really change month by month or every couple of months. The index includes reasons for the popularity of a destination, including when challenges that a destination has encountered have been overcome, such as the end of a period of political instability.”
“These trends help us understand how we need to evolve our products to fit with our clients’ requirements,” he said.
The Destination Index is included in Pacific World’s monthly newsletter ‘Perspectives’. Interested parties can register here.
