News
HUNGARY – MCE Central & Eastern Europe 2013 closes with great success in Budapest
With way over 200 participants, the MCE CEE 2013, the annual MICE show for Central & Eastern Europe, ended last week at the Corinthia Budapest with an excited crowd and fantastic outcome.
70 destinations and Solution Providers from the entire region met with 100+ carefully selected and screened meeting planners mainly from Europe, but also from Asia and the America’s.
The corporate, association, and agency meeting planners once again saw the benefit of moving their attention to the CEE region due to the renewed high quality, incentive renewability and the price competitiveness of the region. The intellectually stimulating content of the event assured the main priority, that one-to-one business meetings were performed with high effectiveness. These meetings were mixed with social and networking session as well as educational key notes by industry experts.
The event, which opened on Sunday 10 February, saw short welcome speeches during the welcome cocktail reception by the host venue Corinthia Budapest General Manager Mr. Thomas Fischer, and Europe Congress Managing Director, Mr. Alain Pallas. The evening proceeded with a short Budapest by night tour before arriving at the evening’s gala dinner venue, the amazing Boscolo Budapest. The dinner started with a warm welcome speech by Ms. Kinga Engelbrecht, after which exquisite dishes and beverages were offered. All accompanied by one of Hungary’s best piano players and singers to create a perfect gala dinner atmosphere.
Monday, 11 February brought the opening of the key notes as well as the match made one-to-one meetings. Ilan Geva, destination branding expert and MCE CEE Chairman, opened before inviting Jackie Mulligan, MPI (UK) on stage to elaborate on the future of meetings in the region. Afterwards, destinations were allowed very short presentations focusing on USP’s only as well as a short Q&A session. One-to-one meetings were afterwards going at full force. It became clear that the quality destinations and providers were quickly approached for more meetings as the business offer they displayed surely opened the eyes of many of the meeting planners.
The second day also brought an update of the results of Meetology, the science of meetings, by the entertaining Jonathan Bradshaw. The Hungarian Convention Bureau offered a typical Hungarian evening at the Lazar Equestrian Centre with horse show, hot wine and many Hungarian specialities before ending the evening at the enchanting Orfeum Music Club and Cabaret, an excellent event venue in itself as well.
The Tuesday program was mostly focused on making sure all participants had gathered all the contacts needed to assure their future meetings to be successful. Jackie Mulligan and William Thomsen offered two sets each of presentations increasing the knowledge of all event planners and providers before closing the MCE with great satisfaction in the late afternoon.
Europe Congress, the organizer of the event, has proven once again that the region offers a lot of undiscovered potential and is an ideal meeting location in many ways. The event was labelled “very useful’’, “excellent’’ as well as “The best event I have ever attended’’.
Alain Pallas, Managing Director of Europe Congress: “I am very satisfied with the organization and imminent outcome of the event. Having satisfied participants means that the offered content was up to expectations or even beyond! MICE business in the region is coming up and we’re happy to be able to assist that by gathering the strengths of the region for them to team up with meeting planners seeking solutions. We will definitely continue this quest, benefitting all in the meeting industry.’’