Macao's MICE events down 2.2% in Q3

There were a total of 218 MICE ( Meetings, Incentives, Conventions and Exhibitions) events held in Macao in the third quarter of 2013, 2.2 percent down from a year earlier, according to the figures released on Monday by the city's Statistics and Census Service (DSEC). The average duration of the MICE events stood at two days, bringing a total of 623,000 participants and attendees. There were 197 meetings and conferences held in the third quarter of 2013, with the number of participants surged by 92 percent year-on-year to 30,000 on account of an increase in number of Conferences and participants of Corporate Meetings. Twenty-one exhibitions were organized, and the number of exhibition attendees totalled 593,000, according to the DSEC figures. The figures also indicated that MICE events decreased by 45 from a year earlier to 728 in the first three quarters of 2012, while number of participants and attendees reached 991,602, up by 29 percent year-on-year. In accordance with the information from organizers, of 21 exhibitions, 13 were repeated events, engaging 367 full-time workers. Number of exhibitors was 2,280, with the majority coming from Macao (39 percent) and China's Mainland (26 percent). Professional visitors totalled 38,482, and 64 percent were from Macao. Moreover, total revenue and expenditure of exhibition organizers in the third quarter of 2013 amounted to 19.15 million patacas (2.4 million U.S. dollars) and 39.15 million patacas (4.9 million U.S. dollars) respectively.