GLOBAL exhibition organisers’ association UFI has honoured Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau with a top award recognising TCEB for creating the best marketing strategy that meets the needs of an industry emerging from the Covid crisis.
TCEB’s “MICE Winnovation” campaign was presented with the UFI Marketing Award 2022 at the association’s European Conference in Pozna, Poland.
The awards are held to share best practices and present the most outstanding initiatives in six categories among UFI’s 812 members from 84 countries and regions.
Team Thailand topped finalists from Spain and China in the marketing category.
“TCEB launched the ‘MICE Winnovation’ programme in 2021 to propel the development of innovation and inspire our exhibition industry to ‘win with innovation’, said Chiruit Isarangkun Na Ayuthaya, president of TCEB.
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Chiruit said the award reflected how much TCEB wanted to help organisers adopt technology and innovation to be competitive in a post-pandemic era.
MICE Winnovation is a platform that matches tech entrepreneurs with organisers to generate market-ready solutions that address specific problems and deliver productivity gains.
The initiative has enabled TCEB to build an online Innovation Catalogue that is available to all “MICE entrepreneurs”.
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Holger Feist, chair of the UFI Marketing Working Group, said: “The winner has taken a broad perspective, looking at a country’s entire MICE industry. It has applied a novel approach, designing a multi-faceted programme to foster innovation and technology adoption in the MICE sector – including matchmaking with start-ups, innovation vouchers and expert workshops.
“While delivering a state-of-the-art, data-driven campaign, the winner has shown that in the end, it is not all about technology: It is the shift in mindset that matters. Congratulations from the entire jury to the ‘MICE Winnovation – Defeating the pandemic. Winning with innovation’ project,” Feist said.
Over the past two years, ‘MICE Winnovation’ has proven to be a marketing booster for the industry. In 2021, TCEB received applications from organisers seeking innovation and technology for 26 events. TCEB then tracked the economic impacts of the technology introduced in 10 of these events.
Results showed that the adopted technology created 63.54 million euro (about US$64.6m) in value from a budget of 190,000 euro. The top two areas implementing new technologies were the organisation of hybrid events and crowd management for health and safety purposes.
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In 2022, TCEB will continue to promote hybrid technology for events and help organisers explore the use of robotics, automation, and facial recognition to boost productivity and enhance visitor experience.
MICE Winnovation is a collaboration between TCEB and six partners: National Science and Technology Development Agency; National Innovation Agency; Digital Economy Promotion Agency; Thai Exhibition Association; Thailand Incentive and Convention Association, and Thailand International Events & Festivals Trade Association.
