'MICE Conversations'. In this episode, we talk with Caroline Phelan, VisitBritain Meetings and Incentive Senior Manager Europe (Paris). VisitBritain (www.visitbritain.org) is the national tourism agency, a nondepartmental public body, funded by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), responsible for promoting Britain worldwide and developing its visitor economy. VisitBritain's mission is to grow the value of inbound tourism to Britain, working with a wide range of partners in both the UK and overseas. Through their global reach, the agency aims to increase visitor spend to all parts of Britain and improve Britain’s ranking in the eyes of international visitors.

More about VisitBritain and Caroline Phelan
https://www.visitbritain.org/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/caroline-phelan-tourism/
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/live-events-reinsurance-scheme
VisitBritain Corporate Web site (for industry): https://www.visitbritain.org/business-events-0
VisitBritain Business Events (for buyers): https://www.eventsaregreat.com
https://hello.cvent.com/hospitality-uk-mice-business-insights-sep21-recording.html
https://citiesrestart.com/report-launch-uk-business-events-worth-27-6bn-by-2026

Recorded Friday 13th October 2021.

'MICE Conversations' is also available as a YouTube video.
https://youtu.be/3rYoLPIKpX0

Topics and questions, timeline or video chapters.
00:00 - Intro and welcome.
00:22 - How has Britain opening up ahead of other countries translated into the MICE market?
02:40 - Learning from reopening with new protocols to be ready to welcome international visitors
04:13 - How does the change to the COVID19 traffic light system impact the UK market long term? Are people more confident that those restrictions are as good as gone?
05:20 - Current booking trends & cvent platform
06:35 - What are the practicalities in terms of standards? Are there UK wide standards or does each organisation decide on what standards are appropriate?
08:20 - Have costs increased for events due to the staffing and labour in the UK?
11:00 - Has the industry in the UK used the opportunity for a strategic reboot? What changes can people expect?
13:20 - Any trends for 2022 in terms of different types of bookings?
14:40 - Are there any bottlenecks in the industry in terms of availability being an issue?
16:15 - Other challenges
16:55 - What is the role of VisitBritain within the MICE industry?
18:40 - Where can people find out more?
19:15 - Examples of sectors with supports available
20:35 - MICE MeetUp Dublin
20:48 - Closing & Outro

Video transcript:
- So hello and welcome to another MICE conversations the YouTube series and podcast. Today I'm delighted to be talking to Caroline Phelan, who is Meetings and Incentive Senior Manager Europe at Visit Britain and based in Paris. Caroline you're very welcome. Thank you for joining us.

- Thank you Michael, It's lovely to be here.

- So the obvious question with the UK with with Visit Britain is how are you getting on? I mean, from a European perspective, obviously you're based in Paris, I'm based in Ireland. We've all been watching since the start of the year as Britain, I suppose, has been ahead of the rest of us in terms of opening up. How has that translated into the MICE market, or has it?

- Well, I suppose, Michael, before 2019 the value of business events was 19.4 billion to the UK and that just plummeted like, like all destinations.

- Yeah

- So I, but on a positive side, I was reading the, I don't know if you've heard of the group, the Cities We Start group?

- No

- It's a group of industry around the UK and they requested a study by tourism economics, which commenced in September, So it's hot off the press really and well worth the read. They were predicting, business to b

'MICE Conversations'. In this episode we talk with Ciaran Delaney, founder and CEO of hubli and MeetingsBooker. Today, Tuesday 7th September 2021, MeetingsBooker has rebranded as hubli. Find out more on https://www.hubli.com. hubli empowers organisations to give teams space to succeed. Employees can access 185,000 spaces on-demand with in-built controls on spend, safety and sustainability. Meetingsbooker.com has evolved to now include group stays, workspaces and enterprise management platform.

More about hubli, MeetingsBooker and Ciaran Delaney.
https://www.hubli.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ciarandel/
https://www.meetingsbooker.com/

Recorded Friday 3rd September 2021.

This pocast is also available as a video, on the TravelMedia.ie YouTube channel.
https://youtu.be/9Ivb42DqRIw

Topics and questions, timeline or video chapters.
00:00 - Intro and welcome.
00:30 - Background of MeetingBooker
01:42 - Was the recession the reason for setting it up in 09?
02:49 - Are there insights you can gain from what's happened over the last 18 months? Are there trends developing now that we're going back to work?
04:44 - Has there been an increase or decrease in meetings?
05:42 - A lot of organisations are hiring people remotely.
07:00 - White label route, in-house technology e.g. BP.
08:25 - hubli.com
10:01 - Evolution of MeetingsBooker
10:26 - Reason of re-branding & challenges
11:02 - Mission of hubli
13:30 - Are you targeting a certain audience? Is hubli.com suited to everyone?
14:46 - Where are you seeing take-up in terms of markets that are adapting to this new work environment?
16:04 - Future challenges
16:30 - Availability for spaces
18:02 - Focus of the business
20:13 - Where can we find out more about the product?
20:33 - Closing and outro.

Video transcript:
- So hello and welcome to "MICE Conversations." We are back after a short break from the summer. We were hopefully all taking some downtime during August. So it's great to be back and great to be back with Ciaran Delaney from MeetingsBooker. Ciaran, great to see you. Thank you for joining us today. I noticed some new branding on your top there, which we will discuss in a second. But first, if you could maybe just, for those who don't know you, maybe if you could give a little bit of background to MeetingsBooker, I know it was started in 2009 and before that you were with Tourism Ireland and also the City West Hotel here in Dublin. So if you could give us a little bit of background, Ciaran.

- Sure, yeah. So I started my career, Michael, with Tourism Ireland. So I spent seven years promoting Ireland as a tourism destination with Tourism Ireland in Italy actually, and also in Northern Europe. And I then took up a role as Director of Sales and Marketing for City West Hotel which is at the time a 1,000 bedroom conference hotel in Ireland. And yeah, and then in 2009, atthe brainwave of setting up my own business and becoming an entrepreneur. So I set up meetingsbooker.com in 2009 to really automate how people would discover places to meet and to allow them to easily book spaces online and to kind of automate that process and create a marketplace for MICE venues. Intrigued that you set it up in 2009, which obviously was the peak or height of the recession. Was there, I mean it's probably the best time to set up a business because if it doesn't work in a recession then it will never work. Was that the reason for setting up in 09?

- No. The hindsight is great. No, it just, I think it was just my career development, you know, it was the right time for me. I gained a lot of experience working internationally with Tourism Ireland and obviously at City West as well. So just, the timing was right for me personally, within the .......

'MICE Conversations'. In this episode I talk with Roger Dow, President & CEO, U.S. Travel Association, the Washington, D.C. - based organization representing all segments of travel in America. U.S. Travel’s mission is to increase travel to and within the United States. Prior to joining U.S. Travel in 2005, Dow spent 34 years at Marriott International, rising to senior vice president of global and field sales.

More about Roger Dow and the U.S. Travel Association.
https://www.ustravel.org/profile/roger-dow
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerdow/
https://twitter.com/USTravel

Recorded Friday 9th July 2021.

This pocast is also available as a video, on the TravelMedia.ie YouTube channel.
https://youtu.be/axC7Wd69ByA

Topics and questions, timeline or video chapters.
00:00 - Intro and welcome.
00:39 - Has travel re-opened smoothly in the US?
01:50 - When will the US open up again to travel from Europe?
03:27 - MICE. What is happening in the US right now?
05:06 - What are the protocols for meetings and events taking place in the US?
06:12 - Has the US travel industry changed, post-pandemic?
08:28 - Has anything good come from the pandemic?
10:32 - US travel trends, e.g. bubble tours, rural v urban, sustainable etc?
12:43 - Communications challenge.
14:18 - Experiences v destinations.
15:32 - Vaccine passports.
18:03 - Follow the science.
19:05 - Connectivity.
20:50 - A positive or pessimistic future for travel?
21:56 - Time for positive messaging from media, gov and the industry.
22:07 - Outro and thank you.

About the MICE Meetup Dublin
https://www.travelmedia.ie/mice-meetup-dublin/

Audio transcript:
- So hello and welcome to another session of MICE Conversations. My name is Michael Collins from TravelMedia.ie. And today I am delighted to be joined by Roger Dow, who is President and CEO of U.S. Travel Association. Roger you're very welcome. Thank you for joining us.

- Well, it's always good to be with you, Michael. I'm sad that it's virtual. I much more enjoy having a beer with you in person.

- I agree a hundred percent. Well, hopefully this is a, I think we're getting towards the end of this virtual world and things are opening up very shortly. So it's an opportune time for us to be talking. I wonder, obviously I'm based in Europe and most of our audience here is based in Europe. So I wonder if you might set the scene for us in terms of what's happening in the U.S. at the moment. Obviously it's mid July, 2021, summer season is up and running and I'm intrigued to know how are things going in the U.S. as in, we know travel is happening in the U.S., but I want to know, are there hiccups? Are there delays? Are there issues at airports with queues, et cetera, or is it running very smoothly?

- Actually it is running quite smoothly. The domestic leisure market has come back extremely strong. In fact, we had a holiday weekend a couple of weeks ago, and basically they had the highest number of people that weekend, 10 million, to go through TSA. Since January, 200 million Americans have flown. And the interesting thing is despite all the talk, we cannot find one case where someone has said, "I got on a plane and I got COVID." So it's come back. Now, we're having some worker shortages, which is a problem which hopefully we'll address soon. So TSA has moved through a little more slowly than usual, but we hope to see that up and going very smoothly when we open up into international.

- Well, that's great to hear because one of the concerns here in Europe and in Ireland in particular is the fact that, there is talk of there being delays and the additional paperwork that's required for travel. So it's great to hear that things are moving smoothly in the U.S. Can we move to international travel? Because obviously that is very important..........