Hangzhou Tourism Appears at the 56th ICCA Congress Successfully

PRAGUE, Nov. 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The 56th ICCA Congress was held in Prague on 12^th November, which lasted for four days. More than 1200 delegates from all over the world, including the convention bureau, conference organizers, practitioners and professional medias gathered at the Prague Congress Center. The number of participants nearly doubled compared with 2016.

ICCA Congress is an excellent platform to showcase the MICE advantages and resources of Hangzhou to global conference organizers, to enhance the impact of brand "Hangzhou, Inspiring New Connections", and build up the network with overseas channels. Hangzhou Tourism Commission participates in the ICCA Congress for the third time.

Hangzhou, as the partnership involved in and set up the exclusive interactive area at the ICCA Congress this year. A great number of conference organizers and professionals said, Hangzhou's awareness has been greatly improved since the G20 Summit held, as a fresh MICE destination in the field of meetings, Hangzhou should put the focus on the topic of how to bid an international conference professionally from the beginning to the every link of implementation.

The year of 2017 is the China-Denmark tourism year, in order to strengthen the communication and ties between China and Denmark, onNovember 11th, ZhuoXinning, the deputy director of Hangzhou Tourism Commission, led a promotional delegate composing of Hangzhou Commerce and Tourism Group, China Travel Service Zhejiang Group Co., Ltd, Hangzhou New China Travel Service Co., Ltd and The Dragon Hotel. They visited Copenhagen to hold a road show, interacting with more than 40 local travel agencies, promoting Hangzhou Tourism. Chinese Embassy counselor to Demark, Liu Dong, the Copenhagen Tourism Bureau in China business director, Philip Kyhl attended the event and delivered a speech.

After the G20 Summit was successful held in Hangzhou, the reception capacity of Hangzhou has been immeasurably promoted, the conference services and the whole MICE industry has been getting better. The infrastructure has been greatly improved, becoming more efficient and professional.

Hangzhou continues to build up an "international MICE destination" image, enhancing the worldwide influence of its brand tagline "Hangzhou, Inspiring New Connections".

First of all, Hangzhou Tourism Commission commissioned the World Tourism Organization inviting domestic and foreign experts conducting a special survey on Hangzhou, drawing up a strategy of development. Hangzhou Municipal Communist Party committee carried out research for putting forward proposals to create an international MICE destination which was first included in the document of "opinions of the CPC Hangzhou Municipal Committee on enhancing the internationalization level of Hangzhou". The document proposes to build the international MICE destination and to drive the development of urban internationalization.

Secondly, taking advantage of the G20 summit at the end of last year, Hangzhou Tourism Commission strongly launched the first conference destination brand -  "Summit in Hangzhou" Inspiring New Connections in China. With the rapid development of Hangzhou's MICE sector, executives and employees across the sector have accumulated a wealth of experience and significantly improved the quality of services. In order to further exhibit Hangzhou's advantages as a MICE destination and showcase the city's unique characteristics, the Hangzhou Tourism Commission has launched a round of promotions for 2017, enabling domestic and foreign meeting organizers to discover the city's charm and see more possibilities for their events in the city.                                              

On the occasion of the first anniversary of the Hangzhou G20 Summit, The global promotion campaign for "Hangzhou, Inspiring New Connections" was held in Hangzhou on September 20th global Conference purchasers and leading China conference organizers in attendance, and giving them an opportunity to experience the full array of Hangzhou's rich MICE resources. This was achieved through a combination of interactive experiences and visits to sites that would bring event attendees in contact with Hangzhou's unique local features, among them, the China National Silk Museum, cruises on West Lake, tea-picking in Longjing Village and yacht racing.

Meanwhile, Hangzhou Tourism Commission, for the first time, ran an "overseas" event in parallel in Paris, France, at which they set up at various high-traffic locations within the city, the Hangzhou Reception Room and the Hangzhou Mobile Conference Room. At these places, European-based conference organizers were able to know more about Chinese culture and lifestyle.

Paris was chosen for this simultaneous event as the city and consistently holds the ranking as the number one MICE destination according to the International Congress & Convention Association (ICCA). Several events were conducted that allowed attendees in Hangzhou to communicate and interact with their counterparts in Paris. At the end of the campaign, a banquet and sharing session was held at Hangzhou International Expo Center, the main venue of the G20 summit. At the meeting, conference organizers from several countries had in-depth exchanges with executives from local companies in Hangzhou. Many of the organizers expressed their intent to choose Hangzhou as the destination for one of their future events.

Cycling in Hangzhou has become a relaxed, convenient and green way to travel. Before sharing bicycles became popular in China, Hangzhou public bicyclesdubbed as the "little red one" is an attractive site. In June 11th this year, Hangzhou public bicycle service project won the award of "2017 Ashton transportation sustainable development project". The conference organizers specially experience the bicycle tour of Hangzhou this time, is to take the opportunity to convey to the world advocate the concept of environmental protection.

The event of "Meeting Poetry In Hangzhou" meaningfully contributes to the city becoming a top international MICE destination. Hangzhou's MICE sector is expected to continue attracting wide attention globally and become the destination of choice for more international meeting organizers.

In addition, in the year of 2017, Hangzhou held the three session of Conference and Incentive Travel Industry Fair, Hangzhou (China), set up the quality platform of resources exhibition and MICE destination promotion, 918 conferences were introduced, achieved the 547 million Yuan of meeting consumption; more than 220 batches of enterprises and 28 times of domestic and foreign professional MICE exhibition were organized, and to build a broader platform for enterprise marketing; invited more than 20 batches of over 700 meeting professional buyers to visit Hangzhou for familiarization tour, and experience featured MICE resources; Hangzhou has achieved very impressive performance this year.

Hangzhou has ranked third on the list of global conference destinations, released by ICCA for 5 consecutive years (2011-2015), only second to Beijing and Shanghai, and ranked among the global top 100 in 2015. At the same time, Hangzhou has already been awarded the "top 10 glamorous conference destinations", "Annual best MICE city of mainland China", "Annual best MICE destination", and "China most creative international MICE destination".

The "Hangzhou incentive tourism brochure" and "Hangzhou MICE Handbook" and Hangzhou MICE promotional video; established a domestic and overseas media promotion platform on Weibo, WeChat, website and LinkedIn.

Thirdly, theMICE sector in Hangzhou has also taken a leading position among China's second tier cities over recent years.

As part of this initiative, the city government set up the Hangzhou International Meeting Bidding Service Center in June this year. The organization will, in collaboration with local companies, organizations and convention ambassadors, provide bidding services for international association conferences and other meetings. The establishment of the center is expected to strongly boost Hangzhou's MICE sector in its ability to win more conference bids, especially bids for international events.

While developing and promoting the internationalization of the conference industry, the cooperation with the trade associations or institutions has also become an opportunity for Hangzhou to further develop the urban economy, improve the urban environment, and generate more cross-border exchanges.

The Qiandao Lake project was launched in 2016. Qiandao Lake is the largest artificial freshwater lake in China. As a strategic reserve water source for the Yangtze River Delta, Qiandao Lake provides drinking water for nearly 10 million people. The national development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance and the introduction of World Bank loans in Zhejiang aims to build Qiandao Lake into a national success.

The Nature Conservancy Association (TNC) combines a number of enterprise partners, such as Alibaba, Wanxiang Trust to establish a Qiandao Lake project fund for promoting the ecological industry while protecting the river basin, and continuously searching for a long-term innovation model for agricultural pollution control in the river basin.  

Until now, Hangzhou has promoted the MICE brand well, and hopes to further develop the brand for a broader global perspective to explore new product values, improve new service content, and let the world discover Hangzhou.

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SOURCE Hangzhou Tourism Commission