Building events tourism in a country- Santiago Corrada, Tampa Bay & Valsa Nair Singh, Maharashtra

With easy access to information on global trends, venues, cultures and traditions, event planners today are exploring global experiential venues for their events. But how one can build events based tourism in a country is a prominent question that needs to be answered and the same was the topic of the first session on day 2 of EEMAX Global Conclave 2015.
Addressing the session were Santiago Corrada, President and CEO, Tampa Bay Association and Valsa Nair Singh, Secretary - Tourism and Culture, Govt of Maharashtra.

Sharing his story on how the city of Tampa Bay in Florida that hosted the majestic IIFA awards in 2014, builds event tourism, Santiago Corrada said, “For us the process of landing a large multinational event begins through a primary research wherein we take a look at our competitors and if we feel that we can take up the challenge we then consider the event requirements that we will have to deliver. It is integral to dwell deep on aspects like the funding requirements as well.”
Adding further he said, “Next for us is prospecting the international business the event in question will bring to us and accordingly we submit rep and become the hosting partners for the event. Succeeding it is the process of strategic operations, budgeting and the process of marketing and communication.”

Elaborating further on the subject Santiago stated, “Then comes the implementation of the event but after the event has been executed our work does not stop here. We also calculate the ROI from the event hosted which is usually a process undertaken by a third party. The parameters to calculate it are the number of visitors, visitor spending, spends on hotels and media impressions created.”

When asked what was the most important factor in generating tourism of events in the country, Santiago responded by saying, “Relationships are the most important. You have to be constantly connected with the city administration as well as with everyone who will be involved towards the execution of an event.”

Highlighting the initiatives taken by the government of Maharashtra to build events tourism in the state, “Valsa Nair Singh said, “It was three months ago that we met the organizers of EEMA and today we stand less than a month away from making some revolutionary announcements. We are in the process of executing a single window licensing process for the fraternity in the state and we will also soon be launching a list of pre-approved venues for events.

We have also launched an ‘adopt a monument’ scheme for corporate wherein we are handing over some of our historical monuments and forts to them and they will be using them as venues for their events. Talks are also on to resolve the issues pertaining to entertainment tax and additionally we have included the provision for creating of an event board in our state tourism policy.”

Emphasizing on the plans of the state to boost and promote events the secretary assured the members of the fraternity that the government of Maharashtra stands in full support of the events industry and will work towards making the state as event friendly as possible.