When we think of MICE, the C in the term stands for conventions or conferences. This is a gathering of professionals who come together to discuss a specific topic. The United Nations General Assembly is a good example.

Conventions come in a variety of types and sizes. A corporate convention is the first type. Companies such as Apple and Microsoft, and any other corporation you can think of organize these. They want to gather their employees, shareholders, or investors to discuss a new product they’re introducing, for example.

However, there is a second aspect of conventions: associations, which are slightly different. Associations are groups of people who come together for a specific interest. Perhaps you have a family member who works in the medical industry, such as a dentist. A dentist will be a member of a dental association, and these organizations provide continuing education for individuals in the field.

Consider this: if a dentist has been out of school for a few years, you want them to be up to date on the newest research and treatments for dental issues.

These types of associations also hold annual conferences, and they can be enormous. The International Contact Lens Association, for example, has a yearly meeting that attracts over 10,000 participants.

Different destinations across the world will compete for the right to host that convention over all others. That’s 10,000 people who will need a hotel room, food to eat every night, shopping, and transportation. It’s a lot of spending for destinations to attract that kind of convention.

Conventions play a major role in the hospitality industry. As professionals plan their travels, there’s a lot of specifics event planners need to keep in mind.

Corporate conventions usually take place in the same location every year. For example, if you’re a tech company that is located in Silicon Valley, a lot of your corporate conventions will probably take place in Silicon Valley. It’s very different from association conferences.

Think of my dentist. We have dentists that are located all over the United States. The association that hosts the annual meeting for these dentists will probably want to rotate where the location of the convention will be.

For example, one year it will be in the Northeast and, the next year, it might be in California. It is very important to choose a location that is appealing to people. Because if you, as a dentist, decide where you might get your annual education or training, you might prefer to go to a place like Hawaii over a cold place in the winter, like Detroit.

So, a lot of associations think very carefully about which locations they select and, the destinations work closely with the organizers to attract them. There is also seasonality in terms of days of the week. If we think of conventions, the most popular days for conventions to be hosted are usually Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Those are peak times. A lot of the venues, such as hotels and convention centers, will be very busy during those times.

The reason is that if you are attending a convention as part of your profession, you want it to take place during working hours, during the working day. You might have to travel to that convention.

If I’m based here in New York and I need to go to a convention in Florida, I might want to leave the day before. So by starting your convention on a Tuesday, it means you give people travel time on Monday. By ending on a Thursday, it means, again, they can travel home on Friday, and they still have their weekend.

Many conventions will also take place anytime between March to May and then again between September to November. Staying away from the main holiday periods. You want to make sure you host a convention at a time when a lot of people are around, not when they’re all traveling or when they’re on vacation.

Trade shows are a way for people to come and see the latest offerings from their favorite companies. Managing trade shows and business events effectively results in revenues for both the hospitality venue and the exhibitors.
Know your attendees
When designing a trade show or business event, you must think about your attendees. There are the consumers who come to visit the venue, and there are the exhibitors that come to present and/or sell their products to a captive audience eager to buy.
Determine how long the trade show will run
You also need to determine how many days that the show will run, and which visitors will be eligible to attend for those days. Some trade shows are open to the public for all days. Other trade shows, like the New York Times Travel Shows, only allow travel trade partners (e.g., travel agents, tour operators, etc.) to attend on the first day, and then opens it up to everyone for the remaining days.
Booth rentals and revenues
The hospitality venue generates revenues via ticket sales from the visitors and booth rentals from the exhibitors. The venue space is parceled out into different areas and rented to the exhibitors, which then bring their magic to fill and transform the space to create an experience for the visitors.
The booth space is especially important. A visitor will generally spend more money at booths located in the center of the exhibition hall rather than a booth tucked away into a corner somewhere.
Each exhibitor and their staff need to think about how they can entice visitors to choose their booth over the others. One idea is to provide giveaways. There are also companies that cater to special lighting or special carpeting for trade shows specifically with the purpose of enticing visitors.

The wheels of travel are constantly going through waves of innovations. When we think about innovation, we think about design thinking. Design thinking is a methodology that helps us develop innovative solutions to pain points.

The reason we talk about hospitality, travel, and tourism from the perspective of the traveler is that we want to empathize with the traveler. Empathy is one of the first steps in the design thinking methodology. It enables you to think about the travel journey from the traveler’s point of view. You can then identify the things that just don’t work, the pain points.

Think about the wheel of travel as if you were the traveler, and go through it from that perspective. For example, identify yourself as a young independent traveler that is traveling alone. Think about that and think about the dream phase. Think about the planning phase, the comparison phase, the booking phase, the travel phase, the experience and stay phase, and the post-trip review phase. Empathize with that young independent traveler throughout the travel wheel. Then identify all the pain points you can think of. Identify the things that don’t work, things that require too much effort with very little payoff, and things you’d like to change.

Once you’ve identified the pain points, think of a solution to fix them. That’s how innovation works. Think of the customer pain points using the design thinking methodology.

(following two paragraphs in blue are optional and may be better to remove)

At the XXX (please insert inaudible name here) Center, all of our programs are rooted in that innovative framework. We’ve designed them with one goal – making people job-ready but also innovative and entrepreneurial.

We have an innovation lab at the XXX (please insert inaudible name here) Center. We would be very happy to take you through our lab that is designed to have our students become the innovators of tomorrow. We also host entrepreneurs that start in a garage with an idea and then scale up to become a larger disruptor in the travel and hospitality wheel. One example is Askblue.

Askblue is an artificial intelligence that takes a deep dive into all of the data available on the cloud. It’s mines that data and enables a completely automated concierge service that is free from any human inputs. It offers concierge services in hotels but also in restaurants.

Imagine you’re in your hotel room and you’re wondering, “Oh, when is checkout time?”

Traditionally, you might call the front desk or find an information sheet somewhere in your room. With Askblue AI, you can simply say “When do I need to check out?” Askblue would then tell you that checkout time is 12:00 tomorrow. Askblue goes into the cloud and takes that information from the hotel website. You don’t have to do the searching, you just have to Askblue.

That’s one of the examples of the innovation that we see every day in hospitality, travel, and tourism.

The wheel of travel is changing and it’s providing a host of wonderful job opportunities. This ranges from existing jobs such as hotel general manager, front of house receptionist, or an investor or a consultant in real estate development..It also includes newer jobs, such as working for social media or the new artificial intelligence companies, ensuring that the customer service takes full advantage of what the data can give them.

Even from the Second World War palace hotels in the ’50s and ’60s, the model of traditional hotels has changed over time. From the internationalization of hotel chains, the proliferation of brands, the emergence of online travel agents, and to the cloud artificial intelligence and machine learning – the wheel of travel is changing constantly.

Hospitality, travel, and tourism is not just fun for the customer. It also can be really fun to experience as part of the business. Whether you want to take on a traditional career or whether you want to be an entrepreneur, there are ample opportunities in the space.

​​