Over to the professionals

Beggs: unprofessional companies give the rest of the industry a bad name.

MIME talks to MVM Global Conferences and Events managing director Richard Beggs about planners' ploys, Blazing Saddles and setting up shop in Dubai.

Why did you choose to open an office in Dubai and what do you hope to achieve here?

I couldn't help but feel that if there was a country with the progression that Dubai clearly has, then within its infrastructure it would have conferences and events taking place, whereby they would need a far more sophisticated approach than something that would be delivered by a hotel banqueting department, a PR company or a DMC.

I started a feasibility study on the likely opportunity to open MVM Dubai. I never knew when it was that I just decided to do it, but I never concluded the study because I was so blown away by the potential opportunity of this amazing country.

What did you find when you got here in terms of other events management companies?

I found that the scene in Dubai was rather like the scene from the film Blazing Saddles, when everybody pulls up on their horses in the town that was built overnight, and they looked behind the façade to find it was all held together by bits of two by two, glue string and sellotape.

Whilst there was this amazing country with amazing things going on, there was no serious infrastructure that would back up and support the requirements that they wanted to fulfil.

A law firm I work for in the UK asked me to launch a Dubai office, which we duly did, because they were unable to find an events management company that would fulfil the remit they were looking for.

Events management has a great deal more sophistication than just bringing together A/V, production, food and beverage, and some people. It needs stylising - it is the extension of a sales and marketing activity, that is neither PR, nor sales and marketing.

Do events planners here operate in the same way as those in the rest of the world in terms of the way they organise and book their events?

Yes I think so. The companies here are still getting their arms around how to effectively launch something and the components that they need to do so successfully.

When a company is standing looking at its budget and they say to themselves ‘we have AED 500,000 (US $136,000) to promote our business next year; are we going to do that through PR, advertising, websites, events or all of the above', they are now far more likely to select events from their corporate promotion tool box than ever before. Dubai is now realising that that is probably a route that it wants to follow. The events tool is becoming a much more user-friendly component.

What issues are affecting companies like yours in this region?

From an event management perspective, the entry into this industry is a spare bedroom, a computer and someone who might want an event. As a consequence, one-man, or more often, one-woman bands, are setting up over night. They do so without any proper insurance or understanding of the industry. They are negligent in due diligence and risk assessment and as a consequence, they simply hope it will all go OK.

It is that part of the industry that negates the professionalism that those others are trying to deliver.

What issues are affecting events planners in the region?

Clients are very happy to take up huge amounts of our time putting together schedules, strategies and proposals that they then either decide to do themselves, having had us work out the solution, or abort the programmes because it was only on a speculative basis anyway.

When someone rings up and says they are thinking of having an event in Doha or possibly Bahrain for 50 people in four months time, they have just unleashed (if we chose to prepare a proposal for them) work for someone who is going to have to spend at least two days putting that proposal together for them.

If you are going to have an event in Doha, Abu Dhabi or Dubai, and it is an international audience coming in, it is likely to come to Dubai because of its connectivity to other international airports.

We don't charge for putting together a proposal. If we did, some clients wouldn't pay the price. Sometimes you need to measure the likely conversion rate of the proposal before you start putting pen to paper too much.

The biggest problem we face is providing the client with information, for them to do it themselves, or worse still, for them to give to a one-man band operation who will do it for them and be very cost cutting in their fees because they don't have the infrastructure to deliver.

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