Harnessing The MICE Potential

MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions) has emerged as a significant segment to generate profitable growth for the Indian hospitality business.

- Sharmila Chand

Hospitality properties in India are offering value-added services apart from just banqueting space, to garner impressive MICE business. The quality of their MICE infrastructure can often give them a distinct advantage over competition.

Apart from generating volumes in terms of room revenues, this segment also contributes towards incremental business to other facets of hotel business such as catering, recreation, food and beverage among others.

Function or banquet spaces in hotels can account for up to 40 percent of a hotel’s overall revenues. These spaces have the potential to bring in good profits for a given hospitality property.

Regarding the potential of MICE business for the Indian hospitality industry, I had an interaction with Nikita Gonsalves, the Director of Sales and Marketing, JW Marriott Mumbai Sahar. The excerpts of the interview follow:

Offering value-added services can give hospitality properties an edge over competition. Can you throw some light on some of the value-adds your hotel offers these days apart from just banqueting space, to garner MICE business?

In addition to world class business facilities and a convenient location, the JW Marriott Mumbai Sahar, located less than a kilometer away from the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, offers a number of value added services to optimise its MICE business. They include ‘Meetings Imagined.’

With us, event planning experiences are led by a Marriott International initiative called ‘Meetings Imagined.’ The objective of ‘Meetings Imagined’ is to create experiences driven by purpose. Therefore, each meeting is identified with a purpose.