The Emerging Industry Tourism

MICE stands for Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Exhibitions or Events where large groups of people meet together for specific purposes planned extensively in advance. Also referred to as ‘meetings industry’ or ‘events industry’, it is an emerging trend in tourism which realises the immense scope of the upcoming meetings and events industry. Apart from being an innovation in the tourism sector, MICE tourism is also known for its extensive planning and demanding clientele. It usually entails a pre-planned agenda which generally revolves around a particular theme or purpose such as a profession, an educational significance, or even a hobby. Talking about the components of MICE tourism, meetings form an essential part of any organization as well for this kind of tourism per say. Meetings are held at different levels either with board members, shareholders or clients, customers, also with dealers, agents and retailers. These days meeting have become important even for in-house employees, outsourcing business partners or their employees and inter departmental or zonal level resources. Meeting not only aid in business growth and development but they also assist in imparting information, exchanging ideas, decision-making, making contacts, building inter-department team relationships and the like. The next component of MICE tourism is incentives. A new era of incentive tourism is surfacing which is usually a type of employee motivation or reward bestowed by a company or institution for targets met or exceeded, or a job well done. It is unique from other types of MICE tourism as it is conducted purely for entertainment and rejuvenation purposes rather than for business /professional or educational purposes. The third component of MICE tourism is conferences which also incorporates conventions or congresses under its banner. Companies/businesses are investing a lot of resources in large-scale conferences and conventions nowadays. Though conferences are generally limited to the topic/theme of the conference, however pre, post, and during-conference elements are to be taken care of in great detail for the successful execution of a conference. Since they require extensive planning, organizing and co-ordinating, they bring out the maximum potential of a company and help in reaching its clients, customers and shareholders in a big way.