SUMMARY OF COST ESTIMATE & MULTIPLIER BENEFIT EFFECT TO NIGERIA
Revenue / Benefit to Federal / State Economy Revenue to the Convention Centre
No .
Event Name
Source : Calabar ICC , Nigeria
In Nigeria for instance , the overall impact is captured per event using this less sophisticated table above :
The level of sophistication of the methodologies may differ but this certainly confirms that the multiplier effect of a conference goes beyond the conference venue hiring fees that is paid to the convention centre .
As impressive as these statistics and figures may be , the MICE industry is moving beyond this level of measuring benefits of MICE to an economy . I recently had a chat with my industry colleague , Mrs . Amanda Kotze-Nhlapo , the CEO of South Africa Convention Bureau in Johannesburg and she was very convinced that MICE industry plays a much bigger role than has been traditionally reported . According to her she would rather look at MICE as an economic development unit for a country .
DELEGATES
Estimated Estimate air line d Air line
Airport seats seats Taxes
Internatio Domestic nal ( unit ) ( Unit )
Hotel Bed Night
Federal and State Taxes
This view is certainly in line with the views of other industry experts as captured in the recent discussion on ‘ Beyond Tourism ’ at a panel in the margins of ‘ Meetings Africa 2017 ’. In a nutshell , the benefits of a destination hosting a conference goes beyond even the economic impact as captured above and I ’ ll demonstrate this with a few examples .
Recently , when Nigeria was hosting an international public relations conference at Calabar ICC , the APRA Africa chapter planned for a two day pre-conference workshop for high school students . This was conducted , as a CSR for free , by leading practitioners in the public relations who were scheduled speakers for the main conference . Certainly , the impact of such an initiative goes beyond the economic benefits discussed above and would be felt long after the conference as the students graduate to become
‘‘ How would you capture the impact KICC has on the economy when the management successfully placed the bid to host such a medical conference where local doctors gained knowledge on a new pediatric medical procedures to ultimately avail the development locally , saving the Treasury millions of dollars spent by citizens who have been seeking the same treatment abroad ? ’’
Others Date Space F & B
Gen . Services
Expo . Services
Africa ’ s next big shots in PR .
Estimated Revenue Projetions
Often times , destination marketers like KTB rightly spend huge amounts of resources on a variety of media to get destination message across . Probably this cannot compare with the impact of free press coverage when , say , world leaders convene at KICC for a conference or the exposure value of a single tweet by the owner of Virgin airlines while attending an event in KICC . Finally , the ‘ Obama effect ’ on Kenya ’ s economy even at a time Kenya was facing adverse travel advisory cannot certainly be underestimated if the subsequent impact is anything to go by .
Closely related to this is the legacy that comes with hosting a conference . Most of us knew about a Japanese city called Kyoto because of a single conference it hosted way back in 1997 leading to the ‘ Kyoto protocol ’ which has since been a news item whenever climate change is discussed . No amount of marketing budget by the city of Kyoto or the Tourist Board , would attain the impact of being ‘ just a host city ’ for such an international conference . The post Kyoto protocol conference economic benefits can therefore not be over emphasized
When KICC , Nairobi , hosted the World Pediatric Conference recently , most of us were looking at the inconveniences caused by resultant CBD traffic jam and other associated short term ‘ negative ’ effects . In the next level , some of us were looking at the economic benefit that hosting the
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