![\"Andrew](\"http:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-content\/uploads\/060710-ichotelcd-guo.gif\" "\\"Andrew")
Planning a conference or meeting in China? Tired of Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou? If you are like a growing number of meetings and conference organizers, you might choose Chengdu as your next convention or incentive travel destination.<\/p>\nPlanning a conference or meeting in China? Tired of Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou? If you are like a growing number of meetings and conference organizers, you might choose Chengdu as your next convention or incentive travel destination.<\/p>\n
The meetings and conferencing sector in Chengdu is getting hot, and nobody knows this better than Andrew Guo, Area Director of Sales and Marketing of InterContinental Hotels Group Century City Chengdu and Jiuzhai Paradise Hotels. Originally from China, Guo spent three years in the InterContinental Hotels Group corporate office as China Marketing Manager and other eleven years at the property level for IHG in Beijing, Urumqi, Harbin, Chengdu, Shenzhen and Xiamen.<\/p>\n
How big is the potential for MICE businesses in Chengdu?<\/strong> What sort of focus does IHG have on the MICE opportunities in the Chengdu area?<\/strong> In Chengdu, there is the new RMB5 billion (US$620 million) New Century City International Convention and Exhibition Centre, which is incorporating shopping, entertainment, offices, and residences. The project is much more than just a world class exhibition and convention area, it is actually a complete destination offering great number of leisure options, over 300 shops with some of the world's leading brands, a wonderful range of restaurants, a traditional Sichuan water village, an art gallery and an opera house. It truly makes for a great venue for business or pleasure.<\/p>\n With two Holiday Inn hotels and the InterContinental Century City Chengdu, it allows us to cater effectively for all market segments, which again for us was a key part of the project.<\/p>\n The Jiuzhaigou Scenic Area, a 45-minute flight from Chengdu, is known for its pristine beauty, with emerald lakes, layered waterfalls, colorful forests, snow peaks and Tibetan folk villages.<\/p>\n The three hotels (InterContinental Resort Juizhai Paradise, Holiday Inn jiuzhai Jarpo and Express by Holiday Inn Jiuzhai Jarpo) are all designed to perfectly blend into the environment whilst offering international levels of service.<\/p>\n The other key benefit for us is the strong link the two destinations have with Chengdu being the key gateway to the Jiuzhaigou Scenic area, it allows us to offer guests convenient connections whilst being able to offer our conference clients great options to use both destinations as part of their event.<\/p>\n We know that our brands will add real value to both of the projects and that having great hotels in these locations will also add value to our brands and our customers, so great benefits for us and our partners.<\/p>\n How will the area grow as a destination for meetings and exhibitions in the future?<\/strong> What are some challenges to operating in the MICE sector in Chengdu?<\/strong> What types of pressure do places like Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou, and Nanjing place on your ability to bring conferences to the Chengdu area?<\/strong> Why is Chengdu developing into a hot area in China for conferences and meetings?<\/strong> This project is the biggest one for IHG Asia Pacific, so how do you operate such a big project smoothly? <\/strong> As part of the project we will also be running a central support office located within the Century City project, and from here we will be providing our teams with support in the key areas of sales and marketing, finance and training and development. This will allow us to make sure that our teams have everything they need and to focus on providing the promise of our brands.<\/p>\n Our level of commitment reflects the importance of this project and we are focused on adding real value to the overall vision. The sheer scope of the total number of rooms–4500–means it adds significantly to our presence in China and will play a major role in our overall growth targets within the region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Planning a conference or meeting in China? Tired of Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou? If you are like a growing number of meetings and conference organizers, you might choose Chengdu as your next convention or incentive travel destination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12723],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33827\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nChengdu is ranked fourth in mainland China in terms of MICE business, right behind Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.<\/p>\n
\nMICE segment is one of the key market segments that IHG is driving for our hotels in this area.<\/p>\n
\nWe know Chengdu is both an emerging powerhouse and already a very popular tourism destination. It is a fast-developing city that has been named as one of the most livable cities in China and is one of the top-ranked cities for tourism and economic potential. It already has the excellent resources to become a destination for meetings and exhibitions. The Chengdu government also puts lots of effort to promote Chengdu as \"The City for Meetings and Exhibitions\"<\/p>\n
\nDestination awareness in Europe and the U.S. market.<\/p>\n
\nActually, Chengdu should have no pressure from other meeting destinations. Chengdu is called \"Land of Abundance\". It has its unique points of more than 3000 years of history and breathtaking locations such as Jiuzhaigou, Ermei Mountain and others<\/p>\n
\nChengdu, the hub to China's Southwest, is full of economic potential, and more and more multinational companies set up their office here. Its 10 million people; rich cultural and tourism resources; and government support all are good reasons for Chengdu to develop into a hot area in China for conferences and meetings.<\/p>\n
\nWe have the benefit of being a large international company and a great ability to pull together a talented team of people to help us drive the project forward , this plus a very strong focus on training will allow us to deliver the level of service expected from our brands. In terms of handling of MICE business, we have a specially trained and experienced event team providing one-stop-service to meeting organizers.<\/p>\n