MyCEB confident Malaysia will be among top 5 in region

KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysia Convention and Exhibition Bureau (MyCEB) is confident Malaysia could be among the region's top five destinations for international business events by 2020.

"Malaysia has enormous potential to grow. Plus, we are just at the tip of the iceberg.

"This is a big marketplace, every year there're so many international business events such as world congress and conferences being organised in the region, we just need to make sure we are part of the rotation," said MyCEB senior consultant Mike Williams.

Based on statistics by the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA), in 2010, Malaysia was ranked 7th in Asia Pacific, behind countries like Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia and South Korea.

Last year, MyCEB supported 28 convention bids representing 38,500 delegates and an economic value of RM438 million.

It also assisted 124 meetings and conventions, 16 exhibitions and 49 corporate incentive groups, which contributed an estimated economic impact of RM775 million to the country.

For the first half of this year, the country has only managed to organise international events that helped contribute an estimated economic impact of RM109 million. This is far below the estimated economic impact of RM775 million in 2010.

"Overall, we expect that the numbers of international events will be better than last year's, because it is common that the second half is usually busier than the first half," said general manager of sales and marketing Ho Ping.

MyCEB is confident that the country is on track to achieve these goals. It believes the country has room for improvement in order to attract more major events. Among the areas that can be improved are innovation in product offering, infrastructure as well as creating more awareness.