By Perla Lena/Philippine News Agency
ILOILO CITY — Accommodation and food sectors will be meeting with the City Tourism and Development Office (CTDO) on Thursday to determine packages to be included in the kit to be distributed to organizers of meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibits (MICE).
“Hotels will meet to agree on a certain percentage while our food sector will also come up with what they can offer when you come to Iloilo to have your conventions, meetings or conferences,” said Junel Ann Divinagracia, City Tourism Officer, in an interview Tuesday.
Divinagracia said that they have done researches on packages of other MICE destinations such as Davao and Manila at the national level and Singapore and Malaysia as part of benchmarking.
However, Iloilo City will come up with a unique package that could not be found in other MICE destinations. Among others, there will be attractive discounts, which normally could not be found in ordinary transactions.
“We hope to complete our kit by July because we set our tentative launching at the local level in October,” she added.
They have yet to finalize national and international launching.
Prior to the May 30 meeting, Divinagracia said they also met with the transportation, security and the academe. She said they will meet again after the meeting on Thursday.
She added that once the packages for these various groups are ready, they will submit these to the Department of Tourism (DOT) for consolidation and come up with a very nice and attractive kit.
In a previous interview, Divinagracia said 50 to 70 percent of the 1.2 million tourist arrivals last year were due to MICE.
She added that arrivals in this highly urbanized city are already MICE-driven because most of the tourists are delegates of conventions.
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