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With the meeting and event industry so intimately linked to a healthy business landscape, it should come as no surprise that when a country experiences a strong growth economy, external destinations naturally have more opportunities to attract MICE business from said country. So, for example, Mexico-based events are growing while destinations worldwide are increasingly vying for group meeting and event business from Mexican organizations.
“Mexico is Canada’s strongest market in Latin America,” says Chantal Sturk-Nadeau, executive director, Business Events Canada. “Following the replacement of the visa requirement with the eTA (Electronic Travel Authorization) for Mexican visitors to Canada in December 2016, arrivals from Mexico soared to 359,000 in 2017, up 47 percent over the previous year. That’s very exciting news for Canada and for Business Events Canada.”
The growth of the meeting, event and incentive industry throughout Latin America has been incredible—and is intricately detailed in the August 2017 study MICE Travel Report: Focus on Latin America, prepared for Reed Exhibitions by IPK International and based on data from World Travel Monitor.
“The MICE Travel Report delivers a deep vision about the status of the Latin American MICE market,” says David Hidalgo Ayala, show director, IBTM Americas. “Latin America has, for several years, been experiencing explosive growth. The Dominican Republic, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Mexico and Argentina are the main examples of that.”
The report reveals that 2016 saw 9.8 million business trips to Latin America—12 percent of all travel to the region. Of that, MICE travel accounted for 6.1 million trips, representing 7.6 percent of all travel to Latin America. Digging into these details, meetings/conferences accounted for 2.4 million trips, exhibitions/trade fairs were responsible for 1.4 million trips, incentives resulted in 1.2 million trips and congresses/conventions were connected to 1.1 million trips.
Clearly, meeting and event business in Latin America is significant, but it’s also notably on the rise. Between 2012 and 2016, MICE-related travel to the region grew an astounding 56 percent. In that time, the number of trips connected with meetings/conferences grew by an incredible 79 percent, followed by congresses/conventions (up 63 percent), incentives (up 54 percent) and exhibitions (up 23 percent).
So, which non-Latin American countries are responsible for all of this MICE travel? The U.S. remains, by far, the largest inbound market for the region, accounting for almost 3 million trips—that’s more than 48 percent of all MICE trips to Latin America. Great Britain is a distant second with 107,000 trips (1.8 percent of all MICE trips). Other top source nations outside of Latin America include Germany (103,000), France (87,000), China (84,000), Spain (83,000) and Canada (64,000).
Where in Latin America is all of this MICE business taking place? The MICE Travel Report found that more than two-thirds of all MICE travel to the region takes place in Mexico (44.3 percent), the Caribbean (11.9 percent) and Brazil (11.5 percent). A more localized report from CWT Meetings & Events booking data, also released in 2017, identified São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City as the region’s top three MICE destinations.
For a representative dive into the Latin American MICE market, let’s take a look at the exhibitions business in Mexico.
The Mexican exhibitions market was up 10.5 percent in 2016 to a value of US$430 million, according to AMR International’s Globex, the Global Exhibition Organising Market: Assessment and Forecast to 2021 Individual Country Analysis, released in September 2017. The majority of that growth, the report explains, was due to an increase in exhibition volume. And that uptick isn’t an anomaly—between 2012 and 2016, Mexico’s exhibition industry grew approximately 11 percent each year. The outlook through 2021 remains sunny with predictions for a compounded annual growth rate of approximately 9 percent.
For some context when examining Mexico’s MICE development: The nation’s GDP rose 2.3 percent in 2016 and 2.6 percent in 2015. Yes, in recent years, the exhibition industry in Mexico has been growing—and continues to grow—at a rate more than four times that of the country’s GDP.
As planners must increasingly contend with rising costs and budgets not keeping pace, Latin America remains an attractive option. CWT Meetings & Events booking data released in 2017 compared four global business regions—Asia-Pacific, Europe/Middle East/Africa, North America and Latin America—to identify the top cities as well as the trend relative to per-day cost for attendees. These costs were shown to be growing in all regions, however, Latin America was found to have the smallest cost-per-attendee-per-day increase at only 1 percent.
Hidalgo Ayala says Reed Exhibitions plans to update the MICE Travel Report: Focus on Latin America every two or three years in order to monitor the meeting and event industry in this important, growing region and provide useful data to industry professionals.
“Our vision is that Latin America will keep this rhythm but needs to increase its presence in the U.S. and Europe in order to exchange knowledge and develop more global leaders,” Hidalgo Ayala says. “Latin America is moving in the right direction and each day is more prepared to compete in the major leagues.”
In line with predictions for continued MICE growth in Latin America, Sturk-Nadeau says Business Events Canada has more plans to attract Latin American groups, with a focus on incentives.
“We will be developing Canada’s Signature Incentive Collection and will be promoting it in emerging markets in 2019,” Sturk-Nadeau says.
IBTM Refocused in the Americas
In August 2017, Reed Exhibitions announced plans to combine its IBTM Latin America and IBTM America events to form IBTM Americas, a massive endeavor embracing the North and South American markets. That much-anticipated event is almost here, landing in Mexico City, Sept. 5-6.
“The former IBTM Latin America had a great reception in Latin America, growing [quickly] in terms of business opportunities,” Hidalgo Ayala says.
IBTM Latin America featured a 40 percent increase in international exhibitors in 2017 following 100 percent growth in the same category in 2016. It was clear greater emphasis was needed to sate the MICE industry’s appetite for Latin America.
“It wasn’t strategic for our brand to run two shows in the same region,” Hidalgo Ayala says. “Combining the solid growth of the Latin American market with the strong North American market is an enormous opportunity. Exhibitors and buyers are demanding fewer and better trade shows in order to expend less time and budget attending events. For that reason, we had to be very strategic in order to focus our energy, creativity and efforts.
“The IBTM brand is living a wonderful refresh, and 2018 was the moment to change and take leadership in the [growing] Latin America marketplace. Today, global associations are trying to expand their presence in Latin America, the biggest hotel chains and airlines are making great investments in the region and planners are moving more business there every day. It’s the perfect moment to build the bridge and business platform in the region.”
One exhibitor new to IBTM in Latin America is Business Events Canada, the group responsible for coordinating the Canadian pavilion at IBTM Americas.
“It’s a great opportunity to expand overall awareness of what Canada can offer for meetings and incentives,” Business Events Canada’s Sturk-Nadeau says. “Latin America is an emerging market for us, so we are especially looking forward to reaching new customers in the one-on-one meetings our partners have scheduled. In 2018, we launched Business Events Canada’s Economic Sector Strategy to showcase the industries in which Canada leads on the world stage. IBTM Americas provides a great platform for our partners to showcase their destination’s economic sector strengths, whether it’s in the information and communications tech sector in Toronto, in clean energy in Calgary, life sciences in Vancouver and Montréal or artificial intelligence and deep learning in Montréal.”
Although this is Business Events Canada’s first involvement with IBTM in Latin America, they’re not jumping in blindly—they’ve participated at IBTM World for a number of years and are familiar with the value availed.
“We consider it one of our key trade shows where we not only coordinate the Canada pavilion on behalf of our partners, but we host educational sessions, special events and the like,” Sturk-Nadeau says. “We focus a lot of our presentations on our Economic Sector Strategy so that organizations can choose a meeting destination that is deeply connected to their industry. It’s an unconventional approach to attracting conventions, but it makes sense—when organizations choose to meet in destinations that offer industry leadership, they can grow their membership base, access local speakers, even get behind-the-scenes access to the businesses that are driving their industry locally.”
As with other IBTM events, IBTM Americas will include professional education and networking opportunities, leveraging the group’s network of industry experts and partners.
Hidalgo Ayala says IBTM Americas will deliver specialized education tracks at which attendees can earn CEUs, including content about DMOs, pharma, trends and innovation, event marketing, event production, sustainable events, weddings and sports events.
“We also made a wonderful partnership with MPI and will once again have the MPI Foundation’s Rendezvous event,” he says. “We are really excited to support the MPI Foundation and their main goal of developing meeting professionals. Strengthening our relationship with MPI is a great and proud development.”
