TCEB to push the convention and exhibition markets of “Asia Road Shows” in a bid to increase market opportunities by offering privileges for business travelers.
 Despite the TCEB’s previous attempt at drawing convention and exhibition events into Thailand to promote foreign business travelers into attending meetings and holding exhibitions in Thailand, making bringing an income of over 330,000 million Baht into Thailand, these initial improvements still cannot be considered a big success at being a convention and exhibition giant or leader, especially in a period of economic downturn and fierce competition from exhibition competitors. This caused the TCEB to come up with various strategies to push forward the convention and exhibition markets, in an attempt to attract more events and business travelers into the country. For instance, the TCEB does its marketing through its own website. Also, TCEB’s online marketing sells their services through the media in the MICE industry, covering online business groups as well as sending information updates in the form of an “E-newsletter” or Social Networking Media to penetrate the target groups in this industry particularly. The latest marketing plan for this year is the “Road Shows Holdings in Asian Markets” in a bid to attract exhibition events from exhibition organiser groups in Asia, to organise here in Thailand and to increase the number of times that former organisers and new organizers choose and retain Thailand as a place to hold exhibitions.
Mrs. Supawan Teerarat, International Exhibitions Director and Acting Director of the TCEB, stated that in this road show plan the TCEB uses the strategy of concentrating on marketing with countries in the Asian region which have a high purchasing power and countries developing industries and IT or innovations such as Singapore, China, Vietnam, India, and new countries like the Philippines, Myanmar, and Indonesia which are countries that have business travelers that come to watch exhibitions in Thailand in the first list. In regards to China, the TCEB is to further penetrate new markets in Guangzhou which is a city of various industries, capable of drawing a great deal of organizers and visitors. Therefore, the TCEB is to hold a road show there, including Shanghai and Beijing. For a new country like Myanmar, the TCEB would like to market there because it is deemed as a country of high purchasing power. It would be a joint road show between two government agencies, which looks a good start.
Regarding the marketing activities in the road shows, Mrs. Supawan revealed that the TCEB will hold activities in the form of Business Matching and Networking by bringing organisers and exhibition venues from Thailand together to join the discussion and networking with entrepreneurs, trade associations of business sectors, foreign chamber of commerce, and government sectors of the countries to hold the road shows. In addition, the TCEB will hold publicity events to invite media in the field of the business and exhibitions to participate and write news. This is another channel the publications of the exhibition events can use to reach to the target group more extensively. Furthermore, the TCEB has also signed a cooperation agreement with the Department of Export Promotion, to jointly promote and push the MICE industry into being a factor that stimulates and increases the export value of the country. To illustrate, recently, the TCEB joined with the Department of Export Promotion in marketing and public relations for organising an international export event in China.
“The upcoming road show will be held in Singapore in joint cooperation with the Board of Investment of Thailand (BOI). Singapore is another market which has high advancement in the MICE industry in Asia, also an important commercial trading point, as well as having a variety of industries which can tempt business men to join the events, satisfying the target goal. Another outstanding benefit for Singapore is that it only takes a short time to travel to Singapore—capable of round trips within one day and many flights to Singapore. The objective of market penetration into Singapore market is to increase the number of business travelers both in organiser groups and in visitor groups to come to Thailand more.
Previously, most Asian organisers paid more attention to countries in the European zones due to their high purchasing power. Later, the global economic crisis made the countries in the Asian region change their minds and come to visit, invest, or do more businesses with the countries in Asia instead. Thailand is ranked in the top ten of exhibition holding. Therefore, we are quite positive in this road show. In this road show, apart from our target groups consisting of organisers and participants, there is also media in the field of business and exhibitions to participate and write news, this serves as a channel of public relations to stimulate and gain more interest from the exhibition organisers and participants.
What’s more, we have released our new marketing campaign to attract more interest make the decision of traveling into Thailand easier, this is called “Extra Night, Extra Smile”, it’s a special privilege package to foreign business travelers that offers an accommodation privilege of free stay on the fourth night for those who reserve at least 3 nights as well as other special privileges from shops, hotels, travelling in many items, including the use of MICE LANE or a special lane for business travelers at the Immigration checkpoint in Suvarnabhumi airport. Both marketing plans and road show activities guidelines presented in Singapore, or other Asian countries as ways to open new markets, are all targeted to reach the planned goal of increasing the number of business travelers in an effort to create mutual trades and investments, in order to boost the country’s economy. Another objective is to obtain a vast amount of money from the travelling expenses of these groups of travelers which are currently crucial target customers for Thailand”, added International Exhibitions Director and Acting Director of TCEB.
|
