São Paulo – From Bonito, Mato Grosso do Sul, to Areia, Paraíba, different municipalities across Brazil proved to be up-and-coming international business event hosts in 2014.
For the first time, these cities joined the ranks of Brazilian localities that welcomed major meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions (Mice), based on a ranking released by the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) this month.
Last year, Brazil hosted 291 international Mice events, placing 10th in the ICCA’s global ranking, which the USA tops. From that total, 23 events took place in 21 cities that had never hosted global business events before.
“We are focusing heavily on the Mice segment. Business tourists’ spending far exceeds that of leisure tourists. They also require much higher service standards, therefore the personnel needs to be highly trained,” said Vicente Neto, the president of Embratur (the federal government’s tourism industry regulator), regarding the positive impact of destination diversification in the country. He also noted that more venues hosted events last year in Brazil.
São Paulo led the ICCA ranking in Brazil at 66 events, followed by Rio de Janeiro with 64. The capital city with the highest increase in events hosted was Salvador, up 100% from 2013 to 14 events in 2014.
Two municipalities hosted their first-ever events: Vitória, in Espírito Santo, where the 5th Ibero American Nutrition Congress took place; and Aracajú, Sergipe, which hosted the 8th International Conference of Distance-Learning Universities.
“The effects on the [tourism industry] chain are huge, spanning multiple segments, from handicraft sales to aircraft purchases,” Neto explained regarding how these events affect the economies of the places they are held in.
With approximately 24,000 residents, Paraíba’s Areia municipality made its debut with the 18th edition of Latin American Summer School of Operational Research (Elavio, in the Spanish acronym), designed to foster and encourage collaborative research by postgraduate students.
“A tourist who goes to an event in a city in Paraíba and stays there for a week helps the local economy. They will catch a cab, try local foods etc. We have been doing research and the habit of experiencing local aspects is increasingly widespread,” the Embratur president said. “Business tourists, when they go somewhere and like it, they come back and they tell their friends,” he asserted.
FIFA World Cup
The FIFA World Cup was not considered by the ICCA, but helped put Brazil in evidence and attracted several parallel events as it ran its course, some of which were held near the Cup’s host-cities.
As capitals like Natal (Rio Grande do Norte), Fortaleza (Ceará), Recife (Pernambuco) and Salvador (Bahia) hosted World Cup matches, João Pessoa (Paraíba) had three international events: the 17th Congress of the Latin American Linguistics and Philology Association, the 18th RoboCup International Symposium (for robotics) and the 25th International Seminar on Research in Music Education. Canoas adjoins Rio Grande do Sul’s capital Porto Alegre, another World Cup host city, and entered the ICCA ranking for the first time by hosting the 14th Conference of the International Observatory of Participatory Democracy.
“We, who attend international events constantly, have sensed the strong effects from the FIFA World Cup. I returned from an event in Germany and their tour operators are hugely curious. Brazil has left a beautiful afterimage with them,” Neto said.
According to him, interest in Brazil is growing exponentially. “There are great expectations that World Cup-related exposure will cause tourism to soar over the next few years,” he said. Another factor that should drive tourist numbers up is the loss of value of Brazil’s real currency against the US dollar. According to Neto, the “outlook is fairly optimistic” when it comes to Brazil seeing stronger tourist numbers in 2015.
According to the executive, Embratur provides the necessary support for cities to bid for hosting international events, and is receiving more and more consultations from mayors and aldermen from different municipalities looking to attract events to their cities.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
