Before Anyone Travels: Korea MICE Expo 2022

Tourism was one of the slower industries to recover after COVID-19. It depends on people being able to move and gather. Even as ordinary life began to return, travel and events were still restarting cautiously.

Korea MICE Expo 2022 took place at Songdo Convensia in Incheon at that moment. MICE stands for meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions. Convention bureaus, public agencies, businesses and overseas buyers had come together to plan the events that would bring visitors back.

That purpose was apparent as soon as I walked in. The conversation was about what goes into arranging a trip before someone makes it.

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The Business of Getting People There

The broader KME program ran from November 8 to 13, 2022. Exhibition booths and business meetings were concentrated on November 9 and 10. Buyers and sellers could compare what they needed, what was available and whether there was a deal to work out.

Convention bureaus and local governments from Seoul, Gyeonggi, the Gyeongsang and Jeolla regions and Jeju were there, alongside tourism companies. They showed the infrastructure, hotels and tours that could help a city host an event. Walking around the booths was a way to see who might be able to work together.

At a travel show, you might come away thinking about where you’d like to go. Here people were deciding where they could hold a meeting and what they would need to get people there.

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What the Scale Felt Like on the Floor

Overseas buyers came from around 20 countries. Including domestic and international organizations and businesses, about 2,000 people attended. The expo counted 394 booths, 226 participating organizations and businesses, and 21 cities promoting themselves as places to hold events.

The numbers suggest a busy show. On the floor, what you noticed was the conversation at each booth. Many people had schedules in their hands and were on their way to an appointment.

The work of bringing in visitors was already under way, months or years before those visitors would be there.

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Sustainability on the Exhibition Floor

What stood out at KME 2022 was the attention to how an event is run, down to the materials used to build a booth or furnish a rest area.

The Korea Tourism Organization and exhibitors including Seoul, Busan and Goyang used recycled materials in their booths. Online information replaced much of the printed material. Tables and chairs made of paper in the rest area were a visible attempt to reduce waste.

Travel involves transport and consumption, which makes environmental claims difficult to put into practice. Seeing the choices made at the expo gave some idea of what an organizer could change on the ground.

The pitches for hosting events had room for another question alongside capacity: how sustainably could the event be run?

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The Booth I Remembered: Homestay Korea

A booth can stand out for the kind of conversation people are having around it. This was one of those.

Homestay Korea, operated by S&G United, had built a program around staying with a household. Much group travel is planned around hotels, transport and sights. Here the proposal was to give incentive travelers and other groups from overseas a chance to experience daily life in a Korean home.

The company said it held around 45 consultations during the expo and received a stronger response than it had expected for this type of offering. The conversations suggested that there was an appetite for spending time with people as part of a trip.

It struck me as a form of travel that could make the particular character of Korea come through in an ordinary day.

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Before the Trip Begins

KME 2022 wasn’t built around performances or visitor attractions. Cities and companies spent the day making a case to one another. It made visible how many organizations shape a trip before the traveler gets anywhere near it.

Travel is remembered as an individual experience. Behind it are meetings and decisions made in rooms like this one. The expo showed that preparatory work while it was happening.

It also showed what restarting after COVID could look like. People were arranging trips again and reconsidering how they would run them.

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