Taiwan has been a familiar label on a wide range of goods in shops in all corners of the world for many decades. The world’s tallest building was once ‘Made in Taiwan’ (Taipei 101 is soon to be an accredited green building).
Now the Government in Taipei is investing heavily in raising the proposition for international businesses to exhibit in Taiwan.
Taiwan’s Bureau of Foreign Trade has been charged by the Ministry of Economic Affairs with pushing the MICE agenda after the Government named exhibitions as one of a number of key sectors to support for growth, as the island state strives to diversify its economy.
The 2010 Asian MICE Forum and the second edition of the Exco exhibition and convention industry show ran concurrently in Taipei and were lynchpin events in the exhibition promotion strategy. This year’s Exco at the World Trade Centre drew 4,587 visitors, including 195 international buyers. Event organiser TAITRA (Taiwan External Trade Development Council) said this represented a year-on-year growth of 39 per cent.
A total of 105 domestic and international companies took 236 stands at the show. They included firms from China, Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan.
Meanwhile, 650 exhibition and meetings specialists, including international experts, attended the Forum at the nearby Taipei International Convention Centre.
The two events formed the nucleus of Meet Taiwan Week 2010, designed to show the south-east Asian state is more than a manufacturing hub. Indeed, Taiwan’s manufacturing exports have been hit hard in the past couple of years against the backdrop of global recession, so there is every urgency to harness the state’s manufacturing powerhouse sectors to support more trade exhibitions.
Chinese mainland exhibitors and organisers are now being targeted following last year’s signing of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) between Taipei and Beijing. The accord has led to a slight thaw in what have historically been difficult political relations, and business travel across the strait separating the two territories has been one winner thanks to the ECFA.
The statistics for major exhibitions and conventions for 2010 look promising: Taiwan has moved up three spots to No.32 in the ICCA country rankings and the capital Taipei is ranked seventh among Asia’s cities for the number of large qualifying association conventions held. The massive Computex Taipei and Taipei Cycle exhibitions and conventions continue to grow as global leaders in their fields.
Delegations from Shanghai’s World Expo and the organiser of the Taipei International Flora Expo shared insights into their business strategies at this year’s Asian MICE Forum, which took as its main theme: destination marketing through mega events.
Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs’ most recent full year statistics for 2008 put the country’s MICE market output at NT$25.74bn (US$830m), a sector now supporting nearly 10,000 jobs.
Key presentations at the Asian MICE Forum came from UBM’s senior vice-president Christopher Eve, the Asian Federation of Exhibition and Convention Associations (AFECA) president, Eduard Liu, and UFI’s regional manager for Asia/Pacific, Mark Cochrane, among others.
TAITRA’s executive director of its exhibition department, Jeremy Horng, told EW that his company had organised 30 shows over the past year.
"TAITRA's top six shows are actually growing,” he said, “as Taiwan is able to provide a complete products supply chain. Our USP is 40 years' experience combined with being able to answer the big question from potential exhibitors looking for return on investment.”
Using TAITRA’s Computex Taipei show as an example, Horng said part of the TAITRA organizing success was down to introducing one-on-one procurement meetings in 2004. “We now offer more than 3,000 such meetings for our exhibitors and visitors at Computex Taipei. Together with his deputy, Brian Lee, Horng is also campaigning for more exhibition space in Taiwan. Currently TAITRA has 100,000sqm of space under its management.
Flora Expo
One of the big forum discussion was Taiwan’s investment in its bid to host the Taipei International Flora Exposition. The Flora Expo cost the local government more than US$150m to stage and three years in preparation.
The show runs from 6 November until April 2011, and will be spread over 92 hectares, 70 of which will be covered by floral landscapes.
The city mayor Hau Lung-Bin is clearly hoping for a political dividend on the big investment. “It will be the first such internationally recognised exposition to take place in our city, and the seventh of its kind to take place in Asia,” he said. “We have been hard at work upgrading our infrastructure and improving our services, transforming Taipei into a city of gardens.
Flora Expo has 14 exhibition halls and occupies grounds stretching east from Yuanshan MRT station. Above all, the event symbolises the bloom in relations between Taiwan and the Chinese mainland, with Taipei passing the baton on to Xian in China, which will host Flora Expo from April to October 2011.
Identity crisis
Taiwan has much going for its exhibition industry, not least the backing of a Government MICE Advancement Programme. However, the feeling at Exco and AMF was that this was a state still seeking out a strategy for positioning itself.
One recommendation coming in loud and clear from forum participants and MICE industry professionals was that a national convention bureau was needed. At present, the functions associated with such bureaus are being fulfilled variously by different Government departments and independent organisations.
Taiwan has a highly developed manufacturing base, but its MICE offer is not yet first rate and, therefore, its business tourism chiefs shy away from going head to head with Hong Kong and Singapore in presenting themselves as the full premium package; but neither does the island have the strong leisure business and low prices to be found in Thailand.
Clearly, the years in the political wilderness have not helped this identity crisis, but a new attitude of positive engagement, allied to fast improving infrastructure and strong manufacturing sectors to build new shows around, gives every cause for optimism that Taipei is on the right trade show track.
