SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.
Meeting & Incentive Forum (M&I Forum), The Americas 2016, held at the Scottsdale Resort at McCormick Ranch, wrapped May 26.
The four-day hosted buyer event featured one-on-one appointments matching U.S. meeting and incentive buyers with U.S. and international suppliers.
According to George Randall, Director of Sales-The Americas for Worldwide Events, the Forum provides an opportunity for U.S. buyers to meet face-to-face to form business relationships from a global set of meeting and incentive suppliers.
“M&I Forum is a part of Worldwide Events, and we specialize in organizing one-on-one networking events for the meetings and conferencing industry,” Randall said. “This week we’re going to be bringing together a number of exhibitors who are hotels, DMCs, convention bureaus and hotel groups to meet with meeting [and] incentive planners, and people organizing conferences from across the U.S.
"Our suppliers this week are all coming from across the U.S.," he continued. "We’ve got some Mexicans, some Canadians and a large delegation of European destinations from all across the key European markets—the U.K., Germany, France, Scandinavia—they’re all coming over to meet with American meeting planners.”
Randall said that thorough research conducted long before the meeting ensures that buyers and suppliers are finely screened to ensure a proper match.
“We take real care in making sure the right people meet with the right people, and that’s the whole philosophy of our business,” he said. “So that also extends to making sure that we invite the buyers and suppliers who both select who they want to meet with, and we have a refined system that allows us to target the meetings together.
"This week 98 percent of the meetings—it’s actually 98.7 percent of the meetings—carry a preference … so both sides have said yes to the meeting. Less than 2 percent of the meetings this week don’t carry a preference," he continued. "So … everyone’s only meeting exactly the right people, and making sure that they’re working with the right people for them and their future MICE business.”
Networking events at M&I Forum ranged from a golf tournament to an evening dinner event at Los Cedros Arabian Horse Ranch, to river rafting and Sonoran Desert Humvee excursions, among other engaging opportunities.
Split into segments that rotate in two separate sets of buyers, the event featured nearly 110 buyer tables and two sets of approximately 100 meeting and incentive buyers over the four days.
M&I Forum, The Americas is part of a larger component of global travel events, named M&I Forums, operated by Worldwide Events, a division of Big Worldwide, a travel, tech, events and media company.
The next M&I Forum, The Americas will be held April 23-26, 2017 at Grand Fiesta Americana Coral Beach in Cancun. For more information, visit www.mi-forums.com.
