PLENARY China Incentive, Business Travel & Meetings Exhibition
CONVENE ON SITE
CIBTM Grows Along With China “T
EACH YOUR CHILDREN MANDA- RIN.” Q That was the response from Craig Moyes, Reed Travel
Exhibitions’ (RTE) group exhibitions manager, when I asked him what planners needed to do to prepare for the coming shifts in the global meetings market. I spoke to Moyes in Beijing, China’s booming economic center and the site of RTE’s annual China Incentive, Business Travel & Meetings Exhibition (CIBTM), held at the China National Convention Center on Aug. 27–Sept. 1.
Although acknowledging that his reply was
a bit “sensational,” Moyes said that it accu- rately reflects the new status of the People’s Republic of China. Its economy, now the second-largest in the world after the United States, is projected to grow by 10 percent in 2011 — and its meetings industry will expand by twice that amount.
Meet China The six-year-old CIBTM, which brings together international and Chinese hosted buyers and
DRAGON RISING: The 234-room Pangu 7
Star Hotel Beijing, part of the Pangu Plaza de- velopment, was built to resemble a dragon’s head, and towers over Olympic Park, site of the 2008 Beijing Olym- pic Games. At right, the National Aquatics Cen- ter, known locally as the “Water Cube.”
suppliers and other visitors, also swelled in 2011. The number of hosted buyers at this year’s show — 303 — represented a 20-per- cent increase over last year.
Despite the explosive growth of the coun-
try’s infrastructure, China’s meetings industry is still in the early stages, local meeting profes- sionals said. Adapting global industry practices within the political and cultural context of modern China will require education on all sides, said Dai Bin, president of the Chinese Tourism Academy, speaking at one of CIBTM’s packed education sessions, which were trans- lated into English and Mandarin. The country’s unique history, he said, means that “we are different in values, culture, and, frankly, in terms of institutions.”
East and West, Old and New A feeling of shifting between worlds char- acterized my visit to Beijing, where I stayed, along with other international journalists, as a guest of Pangu 7 Star Hotel, across from the convention center and Olympic Park, which