Macau’s meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions (MICE) business could become increasingly important to the territory’s bottom line in the next few years if the predicted recession in gambling revenues comes to pass.
The idea that Macau might be ‘stealing’ convention business from Hong Kong has been the subject of much hand wringing and many rictus smiles on the Hong Kong side of the Pearl River Delta.
The reality is it’s probably horses for courses. If for example a lot of your convention delegates are coming from overseas, it makes sense to hold your event in Hong Kong, which has one of the best and best-connected airports in the world. If your delegates are mainly from Mainland China, then Macau may be the preferred option.
Most reports of ‘conference nabbing’ by one city over the other tend to be self-serving attempts at marketing by the rival Special Administrative Regions rather than a true reflection of the state of the region’s MICE industry.
The Venetian Macao at Cotai, with 100,000 square meters of exhibition space, has certainly enabled Macau to draw some heavy conference hitters recently, including GSMA Asia Congress, a regional meeting for the mobile telephony and entertainment services industry; CMP Asia’s Jewellery and Watch Fair and Art Asia Week.
Pricing is likely to play an increasingly important role in the Macau-Hong Kong conference marketing battle as Las Vegas Sands Corp. steps up the pressure on its sales team to claw back some of the huge capital expenditure sunk into The Venetian Macao. As Macau is a less mature MICE market than Hong Kong it has the advantage of flexibility and the ability to host events at relatively short notice. Hong Kong’s two main MICE venues—The Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai and AsiaWorld-Expo near the airport, are often booked out a year or more in advance.
