OLALO
Two upcoming international events to be held in the Philippines next year has boosted the optimism of tourism stakeholders, including the management of an international hotel chain in Cebu on the future of the local meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions (MICE) scene.
Ann Olalo, director for sales and marketing of Radisson Blu, said they remain optimistic about the MICE market here given that expanding it was among the priorities of Tourism Secretary Wanda Corazon Teo.
“Our hotel is a MICE hotel, and we are very much interested to support that in any way we can,” Olalo said in a roundtable discussion with reporters last Wednesday.
During the opening of the 3rd International Travel Festival last month, Teo announced that she would be taking a second look at MICE opportunities to ensure that the country gets a bigger share of the market.
Teo recently revealed that the Philippines would be hosting the Miss Universe pageant next year.
She also said that the Philippines would be at the center of the celebration of the 50th year of Asean in 2017 and that she was hoping that Cebu as well as the rest of the Visayas would take advantage of this opportunity.
Olalo said they were hoping to get a spillover from these events and that there would be offsite meetings in Cebu where hotels could benefit.
“They might come here to Cebu post-event, but we would still love to have them here,” she said.
Coming from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit meetings last year, Olalo said they were still able to sustain their MICE events in the last three months.
She said that they still had been getting Asia-Pacific events this year, although not as big as APEC, and they were expecting to finish at least 10 MICE events by the end of 2016.
Laurent Bolsdron, Radisson Blu General Manager, meanwhile, said that the transient segment has also been very good ever since direct flights from Cebu to destinations like Taipei and Dubai were launched.