A visitor asks for information on events at the Meeting & Exhibition Hong Kong (MEHK) booth of a recent international business and incentive travel expo in Beijing. Industry insiders say China's top-three earning organizers of meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions (MICE) had more than 700 million yuan ($106 million) each in revenue last year. Wu Changqing / for China Daily

High-tech solutions and creativity abound in meetings, conferences

BEIJING - When the US-based Citibank held a meeting to expand its business network in Shanxi province last year, it was no easy task to impress their worldly guests - all the directors of local banks from a region made prosperous mostly by its coal mine industry.

The meeting's organizer, HRH Communications Group, based the event on the theme of the ancient merchants in the northwestern province, an idea it followed even down to incorporating historical banknote patterns in the design of the invitations.

"These guests have seen everything. You have to give them something that is both personally relevant and impressive," said Anna Cao, general manager in charge of meeting projects with HRH Communications Group, a company that has provided event solutions for the world's leading companies' operations in the China.

Nowadays, organizing business meetings and events takes more than providing a few chairs, a whiteboard and tea. And organizers of such events have grown rapidly, thanks to the burgeoning economy. Industry insiders say the top-three earning organizers of meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions (MICE) had more than 700 million yuan ($106 million) each in revenue last year, and the total revenue in the top 10 was on average up from 3 to 4.5 billion yuan.

"Our revenue increased 90 percent last year," said Cao, whose company handled about 1,500 projects in 2010. "Our schedule has been full all the time. We are booked solid till February."

"We forecast growth of 30 to 50 percent this year," she said.

Comfort MICE Service, a leader in meeting organization in China, also sees its business expanding. "Our revenue grew more than 100 percent last year," said David Chen, general manager of the company, which was created in 2008 by its parent company, the Comfort Travel Group.

Traditional meetings, including training and promotional events, make up 99 percent of all meetings, the rest being annual conferences. But those conferences account for 10 to 30 percent of the company's revenue, Chen said.

The scale of the meetings is getting larger and more complicated. "Enterprises in China are growing so fast and the demand for meetings is growing along with them," said Chen, whose customers come mainly from the finance, automobile, IT, pharmaceutical and retail industries.

Last year, Chen's company organized a convention for 6,000 people and arranged another one that included 300 smaller meetings.

The growing scale of meetings has challenged organizers. "You cannot simply assign more people. It would only fuel the cost, lower the efficiency and increase the errors," Chen said.

Investing more in high technology and human resources is the solution to streamlining operations, managing information, and putting it all together, he said. For example, Chen's company has begun using Internet and computer programs to sort out massive amounts of data for invitations and meeting schedules.

The secret to survival in the meetings and events industry is being professional and creative.

Cao, of HRH Communications, said: "To provide services is merely the beginning. You have to understand your client's corporate culture to a degree so that you can generate the best ideas and make their eyes sparkle."

For a meeting to help IBM recruit graduates from the top universities in China, HRH Communications used a giant screen at a campus theater to show students a movie-like video with a high-tech stage presentation. "It won over the audience immediately. The event was so impressive, some of the students wanted to work for the employer forever," she said.

Despite the surge in meetings requests, budgets for events have not necessarily risen, creating challenges for meeting solution providers. In large-scale events, the meeting organizers who are most competitive with capital, technology and creativity will stand out, said Chen of Comfort MICE Service.