[Economics] Quito bets on convention tourism to reactivate the economy

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The conference, attracting hundreds of people from the mining and oil sector, has become the springboard for tourism recovery. 

Quito maintains its commitment to convention tourism with the celebration starting this Wednesday of a new face-to-face event, the Expominas and Expo Oil and Power, in an attempt to recover one of its main tourist vectors.

The international conference, which is held at the Metropolitan Convention Center and attracts hundreds of people from the mining and oil sector, has become the springboard for tourism recovery, after a pandemic that hit this industry in an unusual way.

"Unfortunately in 2020 everything was canceled or postponed, or it was done in a hybrid way (face-to-face and virtual)", described to Efe Lourdes Robalino, commercial manager of the Hilton Colón hotel in Quito, who nevertheless sees this year signs of a recovery that he believes that will be consolidated around 2022 and 2023.

A recovery that takes time to come because these are events that require "two to three years, even more" of organization "to later reap very good fruits," he said.

 

ONE OF THE MOST PROFITABLE SECTORS

The Expominas and Expo Oil and Power, which focuses on one of the most developed sectors in the Andean country in recent years, is the first private event with this scope of national and international participation, since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

Last week the "Open for Business Ecuador" was also held with a thousand people, but in this case called by the national government.

Until the pandemic, Meeting, Incentive, Conference and Event Tourism (MICE) was the fastest growing tourism in the last decade worldwide, and experts considered it one of the most profitable .

For everything that surrounds it, from hotels to "souvenirs", passing through food, transport or excursions, "it carries a very strong economic issue", Robalino described, remembering that the proportion of spending between a normal tourist and one of conventions is of "1 to 3".

"We have bet on this segment, and the city of Quito is going that way," he said.

Quito hosted 42 events of this type in 2019, with approximately 12,100 participants and a patent income of approximately 7.3 million dollars, year in which it also began a process of targeting this industry that it left at FITUR 2020.

 

"It has spectacular means: very good connectivity, an excellent hotel and gastronomic offer, not to mention it. It's ideal, it has everything!", Sandra Rodríguez, executive director of the event organizer Saro Meeting Design / Discovering, highlighted. Americas.

In his opinion, the reopening of the Metropolitan Convention Center will contribute to this recovery, where until October a temporary hospital for patients with covid-19 operated, as well as the new policy of the municipality to give a strong boost to the sector.

90.00 SQUARE METERS FOR CONVENTIONS

With more than 90,000 square meters of spaces for events, the city seeks to imitate other capitals of the world that have built their tourism strategies on the basis of MICE tourism, such as New York, Barcelona or Buenos Aires.

"Currently it is difficult to talk about projections. However, the economic reactivation is becoming stronger and the events begin to develop in a face-to-face and hybrid format, hoping that the segment will have an upswing in mid-2022 or by 2023", ratified Irene Guijarro, director of MICE in the public company Quito Turismo.

During 2021, the city captured fourteen international and seven national conventions for the next few years, already in person since restrictions have been lifted from many countries and the covid-19 has remitted in the country.

This is shown by the last two events, "Open for Business" and "Expominas and Expo Oil and Power", in which public and private efforts converge to awaken the sector and "apply for international congresses for the next few years".

 

Also the preparatory efforts that were made between 2019 and 2020 with the MICE Alliance of South America, which seeks "a joint alliance between countries in the region to apply for larger events," according to Guijarro.

Another strategy has been the recent entry into the Hybrid City Alliance (HCA), a new group that will promote Quito to carry out hybrid events at the international level, and the participation of the Municipality in specialized events of the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA )) and at FIEXPO, one of the main fairs in this industry. EFE

 

Link: https://www.ecuavisa.com/noticias/ecuador/quito-apuesta-al-turismo-de-convenciones-para-reactivar-la-economia-AE1071763