It is a great opportunity for everyone involved in the Meetings industry to reflect on how important conferences and business meetings have become as a solution for both professional associations and corporations.  
       A lot has been said in recent years about the merit of tele-conferencing, and there is no doubt platforms such as Skype have a role to play.  However, getting together for face-to-face meetings and conferences is still the most effective way to convey a key message, motivate an audience or reward people for past performance.  
      In China & across Asia Pacific the growth of the Meetings sector is set to continue the strong growth of the past 5 years. More and more of this business is staying in Asia Pacific, at the same time Asia Pacific destinations are seeing less meeting business coming from outside Asia Pacific.  Therefore, our future clearly lies in the Asia Pacific region, both as a set of economies generating domestic and outgoing meetings, and as a set of globally competitive destinations able to host meetings of any scale.

Nigel Gaunt

President 

Incentive Conference & Event Society Asia Pacific