When ICCA comes to town

Everyone loves to be noticed and many cities around the world have wonderful packages for enhancing the visitor experience when coming to town for an international meeting – not least our supplier colleagues in the association congress world who have a hard enough time explaining to friends and family what they are doing attending a conference about conferences, to quote ICCA’s CEO Martin Sirk “It is a crowd who are very intense about what they do and look for a specific type of location where deep discussion can happen.” Jenny Salsbury reports

The atmosphere of the 55th ICCA Congress and General Assembly in Sarawak was of a welcome from the whole community, arriving in Kuching from international flights delegates noticed the friendliness and were impressed by the branding for the event around town and also at Kuala Lumpur’s KLIA airport.

Having won the right to host event back in 2013 the folks in Sarawak, led by the indomitable duo of Mike Cannon at the Sarawak Convention Bureau (SCB) and Eric van Piggelen CEO at the Borneo Convention Centre, Kuching (BCCK) swung into action to bring an image of the destination to the worldwide industry – such was the passion to tell the Sarawak story that we regularly heard from Mike and Eric that they were “driven by their teams”. It was clear from the start that special efforts had to be made to create awareness for the opportunities that awaited in this hitherto little known corner of Borneo and the plan really got into gear with the creation of the mascot “Brooke” the organg-utan and an all embracing campaign at tradeshows and industry events over the preceding year – thus the call to “Gather the Tribes” began.

Punching above their weight
Right from the start Sarawak was keen that the hosting should be an “All Malaysia” effort and the whole country got behind the activities for the bid – the team prepared well and, as Martin Sirk commented “What Sarawak did that nobody else did was they rehearsed the Q&A section. When the ICCA Board asked their usual nasty questions Sarawak had a person step forward, give a precise, smooth answer and step back. Every question was like that.” This well planned confidence shone against the usual confusion as to who should answer and deference to the bid leader or need to check back. Interestingly part of the pledge the Sarawak hosts have given is that they will happily brief any smaller “second tier” city in detail about their campaign and how they won the event against some very well established international conference locations.

This sharing was the topic of one of the sessions “The mouse that roared – destinations that punch above their weight” and a new approach to running sessions in the congress programme was evident. Eric de Groot of Netherlands based MindMeetings conducted the discussion in a very snappy style giving four “underdog” destinations – Tasmania, Xiamen, Sarawak and Leipzig – 45 seconds each to make their essential point followed by in depth briefings where attendees selected one corner to join to hear the full story as to how they succeeded against the odds, followed by regrouping and sharing what they’d hear back at the original round tables and a second opportunity to hear another story. ICCA has been carefully introducing a different approach to the panel discussion so with moderated feedback, lists of topics on white boards and input from the “panelists” the basis for a knowledge document or white paper was created to encourage others to take the first steps in punching above their weight.

Creating a legacy
The presence of participative association executives was also something that has been increasing in recent years at the annual event and there were several lively sessions run where the viewpoint was from the client. Clearly creating a legacy was something many associations seek to do. Iain Bitran, Executive Director of the International Society for Professional Innovation Management focused on how innovative destinations could be in facilitating their particular event, as he put it “innovators chase money and money chases innovators”. Chris Trimmer, Executive Director of the World Obesity Federation outlined their Healthy Venues Accreditation programme whereby the organisation creatively works with venues to look holistically at the attendee experience at congresses – not only healthy meals and snacks but also creating options for physical activity after sitting in meeting sessions.

Summing up a session “Associations on Fire” where the goal was to ask all the hard questions and nothing was off the table, veteran moderator Gary Grimmer made the point that “it used to be the question was asked ‘where’s a nice place to meet’ now the question is ‘where can we share knowledge’ and key to this element is looking at how we connect within communities.” The suggestion was that destinations should look at who their local innovators are and form networks to introduce association clients to the specific opportunities related to their industries.“We need open cities” said Iain Bitran and all definitely wanted the supplier trade as partners in the success of their events.

New challenges came up – the rise of bogus meetings was one and in a world of meeting choice who is to decide the difference between a bogus event designed to mislead and take money from speakers and simply a poor quality event. The feeling of the rooms was that ICCA has a definite role to play in this arena.

Apart from the imaginative session content the well established keynotes and awards brought new ideas and best practice examples together. Photographer Jimmy Nelson documented unique meetings with insights into remote tribes “Before they pass away” for the Copenhagen Lecture and London won the Best Marketing Award for their prompt and punchy action PR campaign countering Brexit negatives.

As always, the social programme created opportunities to have fun and experience the local culture. Recognising Asian contribution to the industry the prioneering spirit Anthony Wong, General Manager of Asian Overland Services (AOS) received ICCA’s highest honour, the Moises Shuster Award, during the Farewell Dinner. ICCA President, Nina Freysen-Pretorius said: “Anthony embraced sustainability long before it became commonplace; he has championed quality standards not just in ICCA but in many other meeitngs and tourism organisations he has been involved in, including PATA. In fact, he was one of the drivers behind ICCA’s first move to set up a Regional Office... It is wonderfully appropriate that he is receiving this award in his home country, Malaysia.”

Closing the Congress the next destination introduced the Bridge to Prague where the 56th ICCA Congress and General Assembly is to be held on 12-15 November, 2017.

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