Nowadays, meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions (MICE) businesses are becoming massively advantageous for the hotel and travel industry. MICE businesses have a big role in the development of global business travel as every industry needs to carry out some kind of event at a regular interval. The main motive of MICE businesses is to bring top professionals together from every sector, promote new ideas, make better connections, and enhance the growth of the organizations.

From the past few years, the meetings industry and events industry has been gaining huge popularity. These industries are basically used as an alternative for meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions (MICE) industry. This industry plays a major role in the intellectual development, regional harmony, and economic growth of many nations worldwide. MICE businesses are the central segment in the hospitality industry which are extremely beneficial for the hotels by generating a prominent portion of the total hotel’s revenue. The aim of MICE businesses is to gather top industry professionals from every sector, develop better connections, generate new ideas, and effectively boost the growth of the organizations.

Traditionally, MICE encloses mostly business events. However, now the event organizers are adding leisure elements to bigger events to let their attendees and delegates enjoy their business travel and create a memorable experience. Before, the Covid-19 pandemic, these events were used to be very different. However, with the adaptation of modern technologies and changing times, hoteliers are expanding their facilities to ensure event planners and organizers feel comfortable hosting events in their hotel space.

What are the Different Trends Shaping the Future of MICE Business Post Covid-19 Pandemic?

Before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the MICE businesses were used to be different. The planners were expected to see an increase in the budgets of organizing events, there were high demands from millennials to include mixing, such as influencing talks about healthy lifestyle, event planners were expected to add 20 or more meetings per year. However, the pandemic has spoiled all the predictions and growth of the businesses. Therefore, now the MICE businesses focus on adapting new businesses behaviors for sustainable growth. Out of many, some of the major trends are discussed below which are going to form the future of MICE businesses:

• Incorporating Hybrid Events: As during the pandemic, social distancing is the prime factor to avoid public gatherings, so now the MICE businesses are preferring the modern event format, called hybrid events. In these events, companies can have both in-person audiences and virtual ones. Throughout the events, the virtual ones can interact with fellow attendees and participate in the question-answer sessions. Many events, such as Apple Special Events, TwitchCon, and many more are experiencing huge success in this area.
   
• Giving Emphasis on Less and Local Travel: As there exist severe impacts of getting infected from the novel coronavirus, business professionals are avoiding making international travel. Therefore, MICE businesses should organize events within the country with optimum precautions, such as thermal scanning of all attendees, emphasizing compulsory isolation periods, and proper sanitization in a regular interval.
   
• Booking MICE Venues via Online Travel Agencies: Just like consumers, event delegates also compare prices before purchasing the venue. Nowadays, many business event planners prefer online travel agencies and home-sharing sites to search for better accommodation options at a lower price instead of making deals physically. With this MICE businesses can provide an online facility for event registration and reservation to allure more event delegates.
   
• Organizing Safe Events: In the coming future, it will become a big challenge for hoteliers to provide a safe environment for event planners, as they will be looking for venues prioritizing health and safety measures. The safe meetings concept will allure event planners to carry out various MICE events by following Covid-19 protocols, such as social distancing, sanitization, etc.
   
• Changing the Way of Serving Food and Beverages: Before the pandemic, events used to provide buffet options for attendees. However, in the future, the event planners should change the food and beverage strategy to carry out the events more successfully. For example, food should not be served with openly displayed cutleries and the meals and beverage systems should be packed with optimal hygiene. Furthermore, to limit social contact the room service should be restricted to a minimum number of times.
   
• Making Use of Robots in the Workforce: Using robots equipped with modern technologies, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and many more, can help hoteliers to enhance the disinfecting process of the property. Automating services such as providing information at receptions, guiding millennials to find the way to the venue, and delivering food at the food counters will make attendees stay safe during the meeting, conferences, or events.
   
• Enabling Cancellation Facility: In this upcoming period, it will be difficult for the event planners to provide cancellation options. Event planners should mention their cancellation policy transparently. In addition, free cancellation will fascinate planners to postpone their event to a later date.

The Bottom Line

With the growing importance of making larger business events more enjoyable by adding leisure activities, the MICE industry is expected to observe progressive growth in the near future. Furthermore, rapid globalization and implementation of modern technologies in the MICE industry will definitely make a big difference in carrying out the events more successfully by keeping attendees health at the first priority.