By Ivonne Palma, Director of the Regional Development Area of ​​Eurochile.

MICE tourism (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions), or business tourism, was the first segment to be affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, and will probably be one of the last to recover.

Many meetings and events have been canceled or postponed, so the segment has seen its development diminish, taking into account that one of the main characteristics of this type of tourism is precisely the displacement and assistance of large groups of people for their realization.

This new scenario should not be considered as a factor that implies the disappearance or the slowdown of MICE tourism; on the contrary, and as it has been observed throughout 2020, the resilience capacity of the tourism market has shown that the industry can rise from this enormous crisis, and that it is the path that MICE tourism should also take in this complex period of changes and adaptations.

This necessary “adaptation” of which we speak, is precisely the central theme of the workshop “Sales techniques of MICE Tourism adapted to tourist services”, carried out in November by the Spanish expert Carlota Herrera, who during 2020 worked with the companies participating in the MICE Antofagasta Tourism Internationalization Node project carried out by Eurochile.

In order to improve the sales and marketing of tourism services for the MICE segment, it is necessary to start by knowing the client, defining what type of client I have to attract and knowing their needs. Then, the strengths and weaknesses must be identified, look for the elements that make me different from the rest of the competition and then apply specific sales techniques for that target.

In this context, it is necessary to know how to search and capture MICE events for the type of tourism service I offer; I have to begin with the identification of the sectors  to which my services can be directed (technology, mining, medicine, scientist, etc.), and later identify what types of events can be held in the territory in which I work (seminars, incentive trips, fairs and exhibitions, among others). Finally, it is necessary to identify what is needed to attract these types of events and, of course, to know the tools that can be accessed to identify business opportunities.

Instances of work like these allow the transfer of skills to the business community so they can prepare for this new tourism reality, which should not to be viewed with pessimism but rather to face it with solid planning and management tools. This will allow companies, which work in the segment, be prepared and readjust the ways of doing this type of tourism, more in line with these new times.