Philippine Travel Exchange 2015 (MICECON and TRAVEX)

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Philippine Tourism has fully emerged in 2014. In fact, inbound foreign tourist has reached 4.83 million arrivals with Php274.6 million expenditures while  Domestic Travelers reached 54.6 million target or revenues of Php1.46 trillion with an average daily expense of $104.00 and an increase of  average length of stay at 10.6 nights in 2015. The tourism industry today contributes 4.2 million jobs of 11% of employment in the country according to Mr. Domingo C. Enerio III, Chief Operating Officer of the Tourism Promotions Board.
This is the very reason why I took the chance to participate in the 14th Philippine Travel Exchange highlighted by the two-day power pack convention program for the MICE industry practitioners- the MICECON (Meetings, Incentive Travel,  Conventions  and Exhibitions/Events) Conference at the Marriott Grand Ballroom at Newport City in Manila recently.
MICECON is a gathering  of all meetings, incentive travel, conventions, and exhibitions/events professionals , where you get to meet some tourism officers, regional directors and industry partners such as hoteliers, event organizers and  travel and tour operators.

It was a short notice this time, but we made it with Ian de Ramos, Ellen Jalandoni, Maricar Dabao and Jocelle Batapa-Sigue coming from  Bacolod, Negros Occidental. Since this is an incentive travel event, each day had a theme and everyone wore costumes to the conference, there was the day of peace and music theme, with the flower power party where we were in  bell bottom pants , fringe vets, tie dyes and floral printed blouse with the flower hair band, then putting on the 1920’s glam for the Gatsby themed welcome dinner with our feathered hats at the House Manila, Resorts World Complex just at the  basement of  Remington Hotel , this was our home for the next few days located  just right across the Ninoy Aquino International Airport terminal 3 where we got a good rate from no less than VMA tourism graduate Grace Delfin. The second day was fun with the theme ‘Once Upon A Time’ and all of us were in comicon attire, there were a  lot of marvel heroes superman, iron man, some in fairy tale costumes, I decided to be Velma of Scooby Doo , Ellen was the sexy cat woman, others were in anime wearing colorful wigs and the best part was the whole organizing team in their minion attire there was dave, stuart , bob and kevin all over calling out for the banana and Mr. Enerio of course was Felonius Gru of despicable me.
The opening ceremony was filled with computer enhanced technical lights and sounds, Tony Meloto of Gawad Kalinga was the keynote speaker who inspired us on Social Tourism. Chris Fair, President of Resonance Consultancy talked about “1 360 VIEW: Today’s Trends in Travel and Tourism followed by Mr. Peter Jordan , a senior tourism analyst, for  Toposophy who talked about  The Rise of Milleneal Travellers and mentioned that they are the wired and wireless travelers where the likes of  Trip Advisor is sought after and a basis for the travels of the young. Infact, Secretary Ramon R. Jimenez Jr. made mention about the Philippines now being  rated by Tripadvisor 2015 Travellers Choice as first place in the top 25  beaches in Asia.
We had breakout sessions with really good international speakers. MICECON ended with a party welcoming buyers and sellers for the Travel Exchange, Visit Philippines Year 2016 campaign was shown to us where Masskara Festival of Bacolod and the Ruins of Talisay was highlighted in the video presentation, we had  lots and lots of give away and  everyone was entertained by no less than Apl.de.Ap , Rhada and Jessica Reinoso with the La Salle Dance Company. Indeed MICECON will always be the best conference in the tourism industry where you get to indulge in good food, as you have fun with  good company, and learn more from very good speakers.

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