Why have a Brussels Meetings Week ?

20 avril 2011

This was the exact title of this year’s Brussels Meeting Week press release. And that is precisely the question I asked myself at the end of the latest edition in March, as I am sure many others did too.

This year was the 6th edition. It all started back in 2006. In its first year the Brussels Meetings Week won an important international award, and deservedly, from the Joint Meeting Industry Council, the body representing the meetings industry at a global level.

The original idea was to raise the profile of the industry with politicians, the media, international institutions, corporate decision-makers, job seekers, students and ultimately the taxpayers of Brussels to make them more aware of the vital contribution the meetings & events sector makes to the Brussels economy and local employment.

I have always been a great supporter of the event, but in the last two years it has lost its way. And it has never found that elusive formula which could make the theme appeal to the general public.

What’s new?

Well, the week started with a press conference at which there were at most five journalists. The rest were people who should have been at the Tourism Jobs Forum which began late as a result.

Two Brussels Ministers and a City Councillor spent the best part of an hour talking at us and had very little to say which was new. And of course, they talked so much there was no time for any questions. It was not an auspicious start to the week or a very good demonstration of how meetings should be run. 

A general Tourism Jobs Forum followed at which there seemed to be almost as many speakers as members of the audience with another three hours of being talked at, before some round-table discussions. There was a Brussels Awards Evening on the same Monday; EMIF on the Tuesday & Wednesday; a VIP Buyer programme on the Thursday and Brussels Jobs Day on the Friday.

Out of focus

For me the Brussels Meetings Week has lost its focus and turned into a general tourism event which pays lip service to meetings and events.

There are even rumours about people wanting to turn EMIF into a mixed MICE and tourism fair. Now, that really would be the kiss of death for a specialist exhibition. It would destroy the business atmosphere and concept, and turn it into just another overcrowded, paper-filled tourism show. The exhibitors would not want it, and certainly neither would the professional visitors.

Out of seven awards at the Brussels Awards, only two are now directly meetings-related – the international Congress 2010 and the new venue categories. The former was won by ASEM 8, the 8^th Asia-Europe Summit which was apparently “a great success and a fine demonstration of Brussels’ ability to put in place unrivalled security services”.

Mixing meetings and tourism is exactly what the Meetings Industry has been trying to avoid over the past 15 years, as it successfully carves out its own identity and demonstrates its enormous value. Combining it again with general tourism is doing the industry no favours. Maybe It’s time for a radical re-think. Why not drop the Meeting Week altogether, and just concentrate together on making EMIF the success it should be in 2012 and beyond?

PS I have just checked the www.brusselsmeetingsweek.be website again, and strangely it has not been re-branded. The Brussels eye and BITC name still figure prominently. Maybe it’s already obsolete?

BT