ICPB – ICCA Workshop on ‘Bidding for International Conferences’ was recently held at Hotel Pullman New Delhi. The workshop was held to update the India Convention Promotion Bureau’ (ICPB) members and other industry stakeholders on how to make a winning bid for bagging international conferences for India.
The faculty comprised of experts from International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) and from the Indian industry – Noor Ahmad Hamid, regional director, Asia Pacific, ICCA; Jason Yeh, board of directors, ICCA GIS Group, Taipei; Arjun Narne, director, KW Conferences India; Priti Khanna, chairperson, MCI Management India; and Devendra K Gupta, professor and head, department of paediatric surgery, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).
Chander Mansharamani, vice chairman, ICPB, elaborated on the objectives of the workshop and expectations from the participants. He remarked, “Bidding for an international conference is an exciting and challenging task. Bringing an international congress to your country can be a crowning achievement of a professional career. It not only raises the profile of a national industry, but can also make a long-term impact on elevating benchmarks of performance in that industry, help build and maintain relationships with customers and ultimately provides economic boost to the sector.”
The programme was inaugurated by Suman Billa, joint secretary (tourism) and chairman of ICPB, who emphasised on the importance of the MICE sector for the economy and how such workshops provide the momentum to accelerate the process of bringing India firmly on the global MICE map.
The workshop was attended by 40 participants from the different segments of the industry. The programme entailed informative sessions such as understanding the association market, selling to the association market, role of a PCO in bidding, ‘Lessons learnt – An India Association Perspective by Professor Gupta’, case study of real bids and panel discussion on do’s and don’ts about bidding.
Khanna pointed out the areas that need improvement for making successful bid presentations to bring international conferences to India. The workshop concluded with distribution of certificates to the attendees for their participation. ICPB proposed to organise more such training programmes during the year.