Right across Asia, once-former backwaters are making event planners look twice with a compelling mix of luxurious hotels, cutting-edge new event spaces and intermediaries who’ll over backwards to win business. Here’s what’s happening in the region’s five fastest emerging cities for business events in 2016.
PHNOM PENH
With its strategic location in Southeast Asia, a decisive pro-business government and a construction boom that’s seen hotel room inventory increase in leaps and bounds and giant new event spaces like the Diamond Island Exhibition and Convention Center rise like a Phoenix over the city, it was always a matter of when, not if, Phnom Penh would start catching larger MICE. “What makes Phnom Penh interesting for business events is that it hasn’t been on the radar for a long time. It’s new,” says Stefan Willimann, general manager of Hotel Cambodia, a riverfront luxury hotel that hosted the ASEAN Energy Meeting in September. And while traffic and air quality raise serious concerns, they’re handsomely compensated by positive cost differentials. “We are way cheaper than Singapore and Bangkok yet we can offer the same quality of service,” says Alexia Brund, digital marketing manager at the Sofitel Phnom Penh.
Read more about all the top 5 emerging MICE cities here.
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