Officials for the Sarawak (Malaysia) Convention Bureau are working hard to maintain bid-win growth while branching out their marketing efforts to include North America and China through an integrated international marketing campaign.
“Sarawak is rapidly gaining in popularity as an international meetings destination,” said Mike Cannon, managing director, Sarawak Convention Bureau (SCB). “We have had a significant amount of returning clients who are continuously bidding for new events to Sarawak.”
Maintaining its 80 percent bid success rate in 2012, officials for the SCB have set their sights on securing 45 bid wins for 2013. Recently recording 22 international conferences to Sarawak, these events are expected to welcome 7,411 delegates from 2013 to 2019. Sarawak is a Malaysian city situated on the Island of Borneo and is home to the Borneo Convention Centre Kuching.
Among recent bid wins are the:
• Ninth ASEAN Hakka Convention 2013.
• East Plant Variety Protection Forum 2013.
• Second International Conference on Alfred Russel Wallace – His Predecessors and Successors Naturalists, Explorers and Field Scientists in South-East Asia and Australasia 2013.
• Pacific Rim Conference on Multimedia 2014.
• International Symposium on Biomedical Data Infrastructure (BDI 2014).
• 55th ICCA General Assembly 2016; and,
• 13th Asia-Pacific Orchid Conference and Show 2019 (APOC).
Since appearing in the International Congress and Convention Association’s (ICCA) Asia-Pacific & Middle East city rankings in 2010, Kuching now shares the 38th spot with Colombo, Chennai, Ho Chi Minh, Jakarta and Tel Aviv; bettering the performance of many established second-tier cities, such as Canberra, Nagoya, Chengdu and Osaka.
The ICCA Statistics Report is the Global benchmark for international association convention business and a sales and marketing resource for its members to target future international association meetings. To qualify for ICCA ranking, a meeting must attract more than 50 delegates with the event to be held over a minimum of three days’ duration and rotate between at least three countries.
Sarawak also will host the 55th ICCA General Assembly in 2016. The event will see more than 700 business-events industry professionals convening for five days of educational sessions, regional chapter meetings and business-exchange opportunities. The winning bid was clinched as a result of the team effort by Malaysian ICCA members, which are the Borneo Convention Centre Kuching, Malaysian Convention & Exhibition Bureau, Sarawak Convention Bureau, KL Convention Centre and UCSI Communications Sdn Bhd.
