Inventive incentive = big bucks

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The Net Group's director for MICE, Paddy Paul, outlines the future of the region's incentives industry, which still has potential to rake in the bucks, despite demand reaching a plateau.

What is the role of Net Group's Incentive Productions (IP) business?

IP has been in business for a number of years, from when Dubai first started to receive incentives groups. Even though we see a decline in this segment of the market due to high prices, there will always be the clientele that has never been to Dubai and that has a [big] budget. There is still potential for incentives in Dubai because it is a wow destination and the accessibility [from other countries] is good.

In your opinion, why has there been a decline in IP business?

Some of the markets are finding it a bit difficult to work within the budgets they have and some of the major companies that used to bring incentives to Dubai from some of the traditional markets are no longer in a position to do so. If they used to bring 10 people they now bring two. Looking at our database [business from] the UK, and, to a certain extent, Germany, is declining. However, there seems to be a boom in requests from Italy now.

Will the incentives aspect of the MICE market ever be as profitable as conferences and events?

For us it still brings us huge bottom lines. It's all about how you present incentives; you have to be very creative and very inventive and then your clients will follow you.We have done some mega events that have been very profitable; in 1997 we did an incentive trip for 1000 Italians working for Omnitel. They came on a three-day programme as they had just successfully launched a new mobile phone. We did all kinds of activities - they participated in games in the desert, we went to Hatta, and we took them into the desert for a dinner - all 1000 of them.

How do you think the incentives model will evolve?

A lot of people now are going into the desert to do activities per se - like team building exercises. If you have people from different countries and you try to put them all together and you want them to interact, you need team building activities. We still find that the traditional desert trip - the main frame - stays. They want to do sand boarding and they want to try their hands at quad biking but people are increasingly concerned about the safety of the quad bikes to the extent that some agents ask us not to offer this.

How is the incentives business faring in emirates other than Dubai?

Business to Abu Dhabi is growing and with all the new hotels and the emphasis on infrastructure, I think the incentives market will grow there. Al Ain, Fujairah, and RAK are still more leisure oriented destinations and have not yet caught up with the incentives market. When people go on an incentives trip they don't want to relax - that's the point - you have to keep them on their toes 24-hours-a-day. If you drive them to Al Ain and tell them to stay there quietly and relax - they don't want that.

What is the key role of Net Conference and Conventions (NCC)?

We were the first company to form a separate division for the meetings business. International bodies that want to hold congress and conventions would always look for a PCO. We are training more staff to gear up for [the meetings and conferences] market because I think it's a segment that is going to grow for this region.

What is NCC's main focus?

Local and regional at the moment, now that Dubai is winning contracts for international conferences. We are bidding for conferences in 2009 onwards. By that time Dubai will have its entire infrastructure in place - like road transportation, trains and the other things that we need if we want to host huge events in the 10,000s. We are not handling those large numbers [yet] but I think the government and the venues are conscious of this and are trying to help organisers to make conference organising as smooth as possible. However, because it is a destination that they are still trying to improve, there is a lot of construction work going on so I think for a while we will suffer with that.

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