BACK WITH A BANG

With new ideas, innovative thoughts and fresh perspectives, HICSA 2022 will be centred on resilience

At the end of every HICSA, Hotelivate's team takes feedback from attending delegates. A consistent feedback was that most conferences tend to bring back the same speakers as the industry is small and all the leaders want to be heard.

Since the last edition of HICSA was held this past September, Manav Thadani, Founder and Chairman of Hotelivate, explains why the team chose to go all out and bring in new speakers. He also reveals what HICSA 2022 has in store for the industry.

HICSA is back in Mumbai, and you have taken the bold step of being a completely in-person event. Are you a little apprehensive?

Well, we firmly believe it was the right thing to do. Even when we cancelled in 2020 and postponed it to September in 2021, we were of the opinion that an event as important as HICSA should be in-person. Things are also getting back to normal gradually; offices are getting back to physical attendance, flights are running fully again. I see hope!

Also, we are doing everything to ensure that it's safe for our delegates. The venue can typically accommodate 900 people, and we have capped our numbers at 400.

The meeting, incentive, conference, and exhibition (MICE) segment has been completely dormant for the past two years. Do you believe 2022 it will all come back?

MICE as a segment was not completely dormant, at least in India. See, this segment is divided into corporate and social events. So while business conferences such as HICSA were not able to happen, social events like weddings were suddenly the saviors for countless hotels across India.

People felt safer in hotels instead of banquet halls as bubbles could have been created. Smaller, more curated weddings happened.