Many people forget that sometimes holidays aren’t just for recreational purposes. Sometimes, they are also required for certain types of business requirements. But it may seem strange that a business meeting takes place in another country away from its headquarters or main office.
After all, this will carry with it a large sum of money and a lot more time required from those who will have to travel there. All in all, it seems strange to travel all the way to another country to host a meeting that could be held in the office building that most employees are already familiar with and situated in anyway!
But this is not always the case. In large businesses especially, many workers and stakeholders don’t always live and work in the same country. This is especially true during an era of globalisation, where many multinational companies have several offices located across different countries.
Due to this, it may not always be the most proactive decision to host meetings in the same country over and over again. Those who live further out, especially if they are major figures within the business, may get tired and frustrated with always having to be the ones to travel. To compensate for this, businesses such as this will host their events further away from some of their offices, but in a destination that is central for some important visitors.
A specific area of tourism caters just for this sort of need. Meetings, incentive travel, conferences and exhibitions (or MICE for short) is a different form of tourism that differs in its purpose to traditional forms of holiday tourism. As you can probably tell, it’s meant for business purposes.
As well as being more convenient for certain members of a business, a business getting together in such a way is also a nice way to celebrate all of the hard work and success from the company as well. It’s nice to treat employees and other important people and figures to a break away from the general 9-5 era that cannot be shaken when having a meeting within the office.
A MICE Malta for example, is a popular place to go for these different purposes. A prominent reason for this is that Malta is in such a convenient location for business travellers as it’s located in between Europe and Africa and therefore has super quick flights from all major cities in these regions. Additionally, many cities fly directly to Malta meaning that the flights will have less hassle due to there being no changeovers. But what are the different MICE services like in this country?
Important meetings
Although they may not be your most favourite time of the day, meetings are super important to ensure that everyone is on the same page and to get things moving forward more quickly. Because everyone is sitting in front of each other and discussing things in real time, they are far more efficient and productive at getting things done than emails would normally allow. In this way, having meetings abroad is definitely a step up from having them over Zoom or in a meeting board room. But it will definitely pay off as people will be far more receptive.
Incentive travel
A form of a rewards programme, this incentive is a way to motivate stakeholders and other similar individuals to improve different segments of customer behaviour such as seeing them spend more money, or be happier with the service or product they receive. If this is achieved then one option would be to bring the team together for a trip abroad such as this.
Large-scale conferences
A larger-scale meeting, a conference is a large scale event that typically is accompanied by a presentation by several important members. The presentation usually revolves around a new announcement that aims to improve the businesses. Due to the large number of people there and the large scale of the company or companies involved, they can actually take days or even over a week to finish.
Exhibitions
A more interactive version of a conference, these are great at showing off a product or service in a more direct way than just talking about it, as you would during a conference.