SPICE Travel Creating A MICE Niche

Charmaine Fernz - Mumbai

With a booming outbound season and an ever increasing interest from international markets in India, SPICE travels, a newly established MICE company has new plans for this budding sector. Says Suresh Puri, CEO, SPICE Travel & Shipping Agency P Ltd, " Having spent 10 years in the travel business, especially in MICE divisions, I personally feel that there is a good background to start off. It is mostly seen that a lot of companies are event-based companies and not covering all aspects of the MICE segment. It is seen that Meetings and Conferences are an equally big market like the incentive business. At the moment, we are in the process of establishing ourselves in this segment and hence would concentrate on the overall perspective of the MICE market. We are looking at both the inbound and outbound while also extending our reach to the domestic trade show market, thereby covering all aspects of this segment be it press relations, audio-video essentials, manpower assistance etc. We also offer special services like satellite transmission, teleconferencing etc."

Having elaborated on his business plan, Puri explained what lies ahead, "We are looking at more business out of Mumbai, in terms of strategic alliances with like-minded companies, who do not have a presence in the Mumbai and wherein we can handle their MICE business out of here. Our primary targets would be the medical and pharma industries as they are big in MICE apart from many others. We also want to establish ourselves as a dedicated one-stop MICE provider for corporates. Another area of focus is to become in-house MICE specialist. Of the many events we have handled, the big one is the World Congress on Interventral Cardiology, which was held in Mumbai at the Taj hotel with a participation of 1,000 delegates. The highlight was that the President via teleconferencing inaugurated the event. We are also fortunate to procure assignments from prominent associations like FICCI, who entrusted us with some work during the Pravasi Bharathi Divas, Frames events in Mumbai, which also had an international exposure."

"On a futuristic note, we are handling two important trade shows in Mumbai from the architectural and technological industries and from eminent and experienced organizations. A medical conference in India and South East Asia is also on the cards. Another area of interest is that we are aggressively promoting cruise conferencing aboard the Star Cruises that commences operations from October," concluded Puri.